Trump is ramping up federal immigration enforcement. How’s it impacting trust in Fairfax County police?
As President Donald Trump’s administration continues to focus on federal immigration enforcement, there’s no evidence it has impacted community trust in Fairfax County, Virginia, Police Chief Kevin Davis said.
While trust in police is difficult to quantify, Davis said the department has been monitoring certain crime data, “to see if there’s some type of tangible example that folks are reluctant to call 911 or interact with the police.”
One category that’s been insightful, Davis said, is domestic violence calls for service.
“What we thought at the beginning of 2025, if (those calls) start to go down, that can be an indication that community trust is wavering, because there’s a reluctance to call the police,” Davis said.
However, during an interview about year-end crime data with WTOP, Davis said Virginia’s largest jurisdiction hasn’t seen “any substantial change whatsoever in domestic violence disturbance or domestic violence crimes involving folks inside homes.”
“That’s something we’re going to continue to keep an eye on in 2026, because if we see a tangible dip in folks reaching out to us for help, that would at least tell me that we’ve got some work to do,” Davis said.
In response to Trump’s law enforcement surge, some D.C. community members have expressed fear that the presence of federal officers would prevent people from calling 911 for help.
In December, Interim Chief Jeffery Carroll said in his first days leading the agency, he’s planning to attend community meetings and engage to prevent that scenario. He took over as interim chief Jan. 1.
In another Virginia suburb, Prince William County Police Chief Peter Newsham said trust is “a very difficult thing to measure.” However, a community satisfaction survey found the department’s satisfaction rate at over 94%, Newsham said.
“That measure suggests that people are not afraid to talk to us at this department,” Newsham said. “But I’m not so naive as to believe that there aren’t some folks out there that are reluctant.”
In Fairfax, meanwhile, Davis said the department doesn’t “touch with a 10-foot pole any federal immigration enforcement efforts. It’s not what we do. We never have done it. We never will do it. Our relationships with federal law enforcement are stellar because they have to be.”
The department has officers assigned as task force officers to work with agencies such as the FBI, DEA, ATF and U.S. Secret Service, Davis said. Even though Fairfax County police aren’t involved with federal immigration enforcement, “it doesn’t mean that we’re at odds with the federal government or we’re at odds with federal law enforcement,” he said.
“It’s just something that we never did and we’re never going to do,” Davis said. “Because I realize that at two o’clock in the morning, when a woman with three children in her apartment is being abused by her spouse or a relative or loved one, that they need to have the wherewithal and faith that if they call 911, their family is not going to be negatively impacted by that.”