Oscar Evaristo Nunez, a Honduran national who entered the United States illegally in 2003, was arrested in August 2025 on charges of aggravated sexual battery, two counts of filming or videotaping an undressed minor, and two counts of aggravated sexual battery of a victim under 13 years old.
Two days later, ICE filed a detainer with the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center. Fairfax County ignored it and let him walk back into their community.
The charges against Nunez aren't minor. This isn't a paperwork dispute or a misdemeanor plea deal. Aggravated sexual battery of a child under 13. Filming an undressed minor. These are the kinds of charges that make you read the sentence twice because your brain doesn't want to process them the first time. And Fairfax County, Virginia — a jurisdiction that sits twenty minutes from the nation's capital — looked at those charges, looked at the federal detainer requesting they hold him, and said you are free to roam our city streets!
ICE's Washington, D.C. Field Office Director Robert Guadian was incensed by Fairfax officials behavior, "Oscar Evaristo Nunez is charged with some disgusting and horrifying crimes and represents a significant threat to the members of our Northern Virginia communities. When local officials refuse to work with ICE and honor our detainers, they are prioritizing politics over the safety of their neighborhoods."
Prioritizing politics over safety. That's the diplomatic version. The blunter version is that Fairfax County officials, a country run by Democrats, made a calculation — cooperating with federal immigration enforcement would cost them more politically than releasing a man charged with sexually assaulting a child under 13. They chose the politics.
On September 15, 2026, ICE agents tracked Nunez down and arrested him anyway. More than a year after the county let him go. A year during which a man charged with crimes against children was free to roam one of the most densely populated areas in the country, because a local government decided that honoring a federal detainer was beneath them.
DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin put the situation in terms that didn't require a law degree: "Another criminal illegal alien has been taken off the streets by the brave men and women of ICE, with no help from sanctuary politicians in Fairfax County. This illegal alien from Honduras had been arrested for child sex crimes in August last year, but Fairfax County refused to honor ICE's detainer and let this creep back out onto the streets."
Fairfax County operates under the governance of Virginia's Democratic Governor Abigail Spanberger, whose administration has maintained policies that limit local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. The detainer process isn't complicated. ICE files a request. The jail holds the individual for up to 48 hours so agents can take custody. Fairfax County received the request two days after Nunez's arrest. They chose not to comply.
The sanctuary framework depends on a premise — that local law enforcement shouldn't act as an extension of federal immigration authorities. Applied to a traffic stop or a misdemeanor, that argument at least has a shape. Applied to a man charged with aggravated sexual battery of a child under 13, the premise collapses under the weight of what it's protecting.
Nunez entered the country illegally twenty-three years ago. He was arrested on charges that carry serious prison time in any jurisdiction in America. A federal agency asked the county to hold him for 48 hours. The county said no. ICE spent a year hunting him down and caught him on September 15.