House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has issued subpoenas to district attorneys in Boulder, Colorado, and Fairfax, Virginia, accusing both of giving illegal immigrants preferential treatment in criminal cases, a charge both prosecutors reject.
Jordan sent the subpoenas after both offices failed to turn over documents the committee had repeatedly requested as part of a weeks-long investigation into local prosecutors who allegedly factor immigration status into charging and plea decisions. The letters, obtained by Fox News Digital, accuse Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney Steve Descano and Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty of endangering their communities by going easy on illegal immigrants who commit crimes.
Jordan's letter to both prosecutors was blunt. "Despite repeated requests for responsive documents and communications, you have not produced a single document," he wrote. "Accordingly, because you have failed to comply with the Committee's requests, the Committee is serving compulsory process."
The subpoenas escalate a probe Jordan has run alongside Rep. Tom McClintock of California, who chairs the Judiciary panel's subcommittee on immigration enforcement. The committee's core allegation is that both jurisdictions have adopted sanctuary policies that create a two-tier system, one set of consequences for citizens, and a softer set for illegal immigrants.
Jordan put the stakes plainly in his letters:
"Your office's lenient treatment of foreign national criminals endangers communities and ensures that criminal aliens escape both criminal and immigration accountability for their actions."
Descano's office drew particular scrutiny. In 2020, his office issued plea bargaining guidance instructing prosecutors to "consider immigration consequences where possible" and weigh "the collateral immigration consequences of the specific crime(s) the defendant is charged with." That guidance, first reported by WTOP News, effectively told prosecutors to shape plea deals around whether a conviction might trigger deportation proceedings, a policy that, in practice, could mean lighter outcomes for defendants who are in the country illegally.
Descano has led the Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney's Office since January 2020.
Boulder's sanctuary posture dates back even further. The city passed an ordinance in January 2017, shortly after President Donald Trump was elected, directing government employees not to work with federal immigration authorities or "inquire into a person's immigration status." That ordinance created a wall between local law enforcement and federal agencies trying to identify and remove illegal immigrants who had been arrested.
Descano recently made headlines after the stabbing death of Stephanie Minter, a 41-year-old U.S. citizen killed in Fairfax County. The man accused of killing her came to the United States illegally from Sierra Leone in 2012. The Department of Homeland Security said the accused killer had been arrested more than 30 times before Minter's death.
Thirty prior arrests. A man in the country illegally. And a prosecutor whose own office policy told staff to weigh whether a plea deal might get a defendant deported, and adjust accordingly. That sequence is exactly the kind of outcome Jordan's committee set out to investigate.
Descano's office pushed back on the subpoena, calling it a political escalation. A spokesperson said the office had already cooperated extensively.
"For the last eight months, CA Descano has engaged in good faith with the House Judiciary Committee's inquiries, providing over 1,100 pages of documents as well as voluntarily testifying to answer the Committee's questions. We will continue to respond to legitimate inquiries from the Committee."
The office added that it was "disappointed by the Committee's needless escalation of this matter, part of a partisan siege on Fairfax County residents and their values that does nothing to improve public safety." A spokesperson called the probe a "political sideshow" and said the office "remains focused on keeping Fairfax County one of the safest large communities in the country."
Jordan's letter tells a different story. Despite the claimed 1,100 pages, his committee says Descano "has not produced a single document" responsive to its actual requests, a gap that suggests the pages delivered may not have addressed what investigators were looking for.
Boulder County's Dougherty was equally dismissive. He told Fox News Digital that "Congressional Republicans are continuing the same political stunt they started months ago" and insisted he would not be "intimidated into abandoning my responsibility to protect public safety, stand with victims, and uphold the law."
Dougherty framed his office's approach as evenhanded:
"My office prosecutes violent offenders regardless of immigration status. At the same time, victims and witnesses, including survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, must be able to report crimes without fearing that doing so will put themselves or their families at risk of deportation."
That argument, that sanctuary policies protect victims, is a standard progressive defense. It sidesteps the committee's actual question: whether Dougherty's office gave illegal immigrants charged with crimes lighter treatment than it would have given citizens facing the same charges.
Dougherty previously told the Boulder Reporting Lab in May that Jordan's probe amounted to "political theater that ignores serious failures within the federal immigration system." He has since lost his Democratic primary campaign for attorney general of Colorado, a detail that does not strengthen his claim to be above politics.
The subpoenas did not arrive without warning. Jordan told Fox News Digital in late August that he had followed a deliberate process before resorting to compulsory measures.
"There's a process we always go through. We ask for things, we ask again, we explain why, we work with their office, in some cases their counsel, and back and forth. And then if we have to use subpoenas, we certainly will do that... but we want to know the facts."
That sequence, request, follow-up, negotiation, then subpoena, mirrors standard congressional oversight procedure. Both prosecutors had time to comply voluntarily. Neither, in Jordan's telling, produced the documents the committee sought.
Several questions remain unanswered. What specific documents did the committee request that neither office produced? What were the more than 30 prior arrests of Minter's accused killer for, and how many of those cases ran through Descano's office? Are additional district attorneys in other sanctuary jurisdictions facing similar scrutiny?
Both prosecutors want voters to see this as partisan overreach. Jordan wants voters to see a pattern: local officials in blue jurisdictions shaping criminal justice outcomes around a defendant's immigration status, then refusing to hand over the records that would prove or disprove the charge.
When a 41-year-old American woman is dead and her accused killer had been arrested more than 30 times in a jurisdiction whose prosecutor told staff to factor deportation risk into plea deals, the public has a right to see those records. Calling oversight a "political sideshow" is not a substitute for transparency.
