DACA recipients charged with DUIs get special treatment from Arlington Commonwealth's Attorney to shield them from immigration law

It has been revealed that the Commonwealth’s Attorney for the County of Arlington in Virginia testified over the summer that her office has a DUI policy that pertains only to DACA recipients. Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti had been subjected to a closed-door deposition in July, and the transcript for the hearing was released on Monday.

In the hearing, Dehghani-Tafti was asked about her office’s policy regarding DUI cases and DACA recipients. DACA, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, allows recipients who arrived in the country as a child to defer immigration action. It does not constitute legal status.

Dehghani-Tafti said that her office had undertaken such a policy less than 10 times. “The policy is to take into consideration that they will not get their status renewed,” she said, adding that the policy works to create a resolution that would “allow them to get the status renewed while holding them accountable.”

“Sometimes that was revoke bond and spend some time in jail, you know, and then we’ll do like a lateral shift to a different charge,” she continued, per the transcript. “Not dismiss differently than anyone else, not reduce necessarily, but, you know, allow, like do X, Y, and Z, and we will then, you know, in consideration of the extra stuff you’ve done, turn it into a sort of later different, like, but a lateral charge.”

“And what I mean by lateral is if something is a first-degree misdemeanor, it would still be a first-degree misdemeanor on their record.”

The deposition had taken place before the House Judiciary Committee, which also released a report regarding Arlington County’s sanctuary policies on Monday.

The report noted a memo from Dehghani-Tafti, which stated, “A DUI conviction constitutes a “significant misdemeanor” in the eyes of [U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services] and would prevent an individual from renewing their DACA status and thereby subjecting them to deportation back to a country they likely have never known. A DUI conviction for DACA recipients can therefore have disproportionate and devastating collateral consequences. Because of this, we must take an individual’s DACA status into account when developing offers to ensure that, while appropriate sanctions and conditions are put in place to protect the public and prevent future similar behavior, an individual is not deported because of their decision to drive while intoxicated.”

The memo added, “In an effort to do our part to prevent the disproportionate collateral consequences of a DUI conviction for a DACA recipient, ensure that defense counsel disclose their client’s DACA status to you early on. We can only take appropriate steps if we know about the status to begin with.”