A high-profile crackdown on immigration violations and gang activity in Virginia hit a milestone this week, as officials announced more than 500 arrests since the launch of the Virginia Homeland Security Task Force (VHSTF) in late February.

But while Gov. Glenn Youngkin and federal partners hailed the operation as a national model, some researchers and critics warn that the data used to justify such crackdowns often paints an incomplete — and potentially misleading — picture.

Launched through a partnership between the U.S. Department of Justice and Virginia, the VHSTF is a sprawling initiative involving more than 200 officers from agencies including the FBI, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Virginia State Police and the Department of Corrections, among others.

The task force has made 521 arrests to date, according to Youngkin’s office. Of those, 132 individuals were identified as gang-affiliated, including members of MS-13 and Tren de Aragua.

“Thanks to the brave men and women of our federal and state law enforcement, more than 500 criminal illegal immigrants, including more than 130 gang-members, are off of Virginia’s streets and facing justice for their crimes,” Youngkin said in a statement Monday. “All Virginians should be proud. … What’s happening in Virginia is a model that should be replicated all across the country.”

U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi echoed that sentiment, calling the effort “the product of unprecedented collaboration” between state and federal law enforcement and praising the Youngkin administration’s alignment with President Donald Trump’s “Make America Safe Again” agenda.

FBI Director Kash Patel said the task force’s early results had been “a tremendous success,” while ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons highlighted the expansion of ICE’s controversial 287(g) program in Virginia.

That program, which allows state and local officials to enforce federal immigration law, was authorized in Virginia through Executive Order 47, signed by Youngkin on Feb. 27 and approved by ICE within 20 hours — a turnaround the governor’s office touted as a record.

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., offered a more measured response Monday, signaling support for law enforcement while stopping short of endorsing the operation’s broader political framing. “I appreciate the work of our law enforcement officers,” Kaine said.

Yet amid the political fanfare, some experts say the celebratory tone doesn’t align with the broader data.

A 2024 report funded by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) found that undocumented immigrants are arrested at significantly lower rates than U.S.-born citizens.

The study, which examined six years of Texas criminal records between 2012 and 2018 that included verified immigration status, found that undocumented immigrants were arrested at less than half the rate of native-born Americans for violent and drug crimes, and at only a quarter of the rate for property crimes.

“The question of how often undocumented immigrants commit crimes is not easy to answer,” the study’s authors wrote, noting that arrest rates often reflect law enforcement priorities rather than actual crime rates.

Still, their data showed that native-born citizens had the highest offending rates across most felony categories, with undocumented immigrants consistently showing the lowest.

The findings challenge an unproven core assumption underlying the rhetoric around initiatives like the VHSTF — that undocumented immigrants pose an outsized threat to public safety.

Virginia Secretary of Public Safety and Homeland Security Terry Cole, however, called the task force’s approach “a proven model” for tackling transnational criminal threats.

“The significant number of arrests and ongoing investigations highlight the effectiveness of a collaborative approach to complex enforcement challenges,” Cole said.

But critics argue that such high-profile sweeps often overstate the role of immigration status in violent crime — and underplay the potential for racial profiling and civil rights violations when local law enforcement is deputized to enforce federal immigration laws.

For now, VHSTF operations are expected to continue, with law enforcement agencies conducting long-term investigations into narcotics trafficking, organized crime and gang-related violence.

This article was originally published by the Virginia Mercury . To read the story there, click here .