Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano could have saved Stephanie Minter by simply doing his job.

by Drew DiMeglio

Sierra Leone national Abdul Jalloh, 32, has been arrested more than 30 times in Fairfax County, Virginia. From five malicious wounding cases in a two-year span to additional assault, battery, and theft-related offenses, Jalloh racked up quite the rap sheet between his initial capture by immigration officials in 2018 and his most recent arrest in February. Yet somehow, the list still wasn’t long enough for Fairfax County Commonwealth Attorney Steve Descano, who dismissed the violent charges in each case. 

The consequences: Jalloh was released to the streets, where he allegedly went on to stab Stephanie Minter, a Fairfax-born single mother, to death earlier this year.

The Fairfax County Police Department had warned Descano’s office that Jalloh posed a danger to the community. The attorney’s office responded with silence.

The egregious leniency Jalloh received was not a fluke. In fact, it was by design.

Descano’s website proudly featured the following statement until recent, interestingly timed edits: “If two people commit the same crime, but only one’s punishment includes deportation, that’s a perversion of justice and not a reflection of the values of Fairfax County.” 

How can that be? The two people did not commit the same crime if one entered the country illegally and the other did not—that is, unless you think illegal immigration is not a crime. 

Descano does not stop at absolving illegal entry as a crime. His website also recently stated that he “will make charging and plea decisions that limit or avoid immigration consequences.” In practice, this means prosecutors are instructed to limit or avoid deportation triggers in charging and plea bargaining. 

Deportation triggers can include sentences of more than a year or convictions for aggravated felonies, certain firearm offenses, domestic abuse, and human trafficking—charges that Descano’s office could and does lessen if the offender is an illegal immigrant.

Jalloh is not the only illegal immigrant to receive leniency from Descano. Kevin Alexander Lemus, a Salvadoran national, was released twice in April and May of 2022 on gun and drug charges. Four months later, Lemus shot a man. 

Wilmer Osmany Ramos-Giron, a Guatemalan national, received a plea deal in 2025, replacing a felony for allegedly strangling a woman with the misdemeanor charge of brandishing a blade. This reduced his prison sentence from over 15 years to mere months. Descano’s office cited the victim’s wishes as the reason for the plea deal, but the victim explicitly denied that. She said she and her two young children feared for their safety with this criminal on the streets, and that he should be put away for years.

These examples show that Descano’s office prioritizes the freedom of violent illegal immigrants over the safety of legal residents in his own community. 

Descano’s record exposes the Left’s backward logic. Illegal immigrants are already unlawfully residing in our nation, with no legal processes requiring them to assimilate. If anything, they should be on a shorter legal leash due to their unlawful immigration status. But that’s not how it works in Steve Descano’s Fairfax County, where native Virginians fear for their safety because criminal illegal immigrants get preferential treatment.

Descano’s actions have prompted calls for a potential recall, along with a federal civil rights complaint asking the Justice Department to probe his office over the “preferential treatment for illegal immigrants over native-born citizens.” Both efforts are led and endorsed by Cheryl Minter, the grieving mother of Stephanie Minter. 

Descano’s campaigns for commonwealth attorney have, time and again, been funded by Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros. During Descano’s 2019 campaign, in which he narrowly defeated the incumbent, two-thirds of his million-dollar war chest came from two Soros-funded organizations: the Justice and Public Safety PAC and the New Virginia Majority PAC. 

Descano, along with Fairfax County Sheriff Stacey Kincaid, is set to testify before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee’s immigration subcommittee on May 15. The hearing will explore the role Descano’s soft-on-crime policies played in Stephanie Minter’s death. 

On May 15, the message will be clear: Public safety should not be subordinate to protecting illegal immigrants. 

Drew DiMeglio is a Restoration News contributor and student at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, where he studies government and is President of the College Republicans. This article is republished with permission from Restoration News.