Who and What Are Our Delegates Fighting For?
Our First Amendment right to free speech lets anyone say what they want and, by extension, to believe what they want. Ninety-nine percent of those of us who occupy a low spot on the pecking order, don’t get a lot of attention and so the odd little things we say and believe don’t create any drama. But when someone rises and achieves a little fame, the things they say and believe can grow an audience. Look how the presidents of the United States get to say anything they want and have it blasted all over the world.
Somewhere lower down on the pecking order than the president are our local delegates in the West Virginia legislature, the people who we elected to improve our lives in some large or small ways. These people are politicians and to get elected they have to tell us in their campaigns just what they intend to fight for. “Fight” is a word politicians use a lot, because it implies that they feel strongly enough about something that they will put on the gloves and take the blows in order to make what they’re fighting for happen.
The reality too often though is that the fighter of the campaign season becomes the sitting legislator who forgets what they promised to fight for and actually fights for something else entirely, even something that if they said it out loud during the campaign would end up losing them the election.
Case in point. There is a bill pending in the House of Delegates now, HB 5477. As summarized, “The bill mandates participation by state-supported law enforcement agencies in the federal 287(g) program [my italics].”
The 287(g) program that the bill references is an ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) program “ to allow ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) to partner with state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies to identify and remove criminal aliens.”
These are the same operations that we’ve seen ICE put into action in Minneapolis, which resulted in traumatizing that community through tear gassing, harassing citizens, breaking into homes and cars without warrants, abducting Americans and legal residents, splitting families, and killing two American citizens, all while masked and unidentifiable.
But my argument here isn’t about ICE, as much as I find its operating procedures excessive, indiscriminate, and unconstitutional. It’s about two of the legislators who are sponsoring HB 5477. These are William Ridenour (the lead sponsor) and Joe Funkhouser, both representing Jefferson County, Ridenour in District 100 and Funkhouser in District 98.
To my knowledge, neither one of these two men as campaigners mentioned collaboration with ICE as something they would fight for. Instead, they talked about local control, economic development, less government and tax relief. Granted they’re interested in security, as we all are, but sponsoring a bill to mandate our law enforcement agencies do the work of ICE in our communities? That’s not going to make our communities safer. It’s going to shift law enforcement priorities from maintaining safety to carrying out ICE orders. It’s going to make our small immigrant community feel threatened, as we already saw in the ICE involved raids on two of our Mexican restaurants last fall.
It’s going to ultimately erode the trust so many of us have in local law enforcement. It’s important that we stay confident in our police, that they will be there for us when we need them. That suggests that they need to stay in their own lane — protecting our .citizens from the crimes that actually do take place here, not the ones that ICE manufactures so often.
Law enforcement is predicated on the principle that you’re innocent until proven guilty, while ICE contorts that principle to mean you’re guilty until proven innocent. Our local law enforcement needs to reject that false and unconstitutional premise.
There are some communities in West Virginia that are participating in the 287(g) program, but others that are not. In Jefferson County, the Sheriff’s Department has signed an agreement, but the cities of Charles Town and Ranson have resolved that they will not participate. The Charles Town resolution was pretty mild, but the Romney (WV) Town Council, which also rejected a 287(g) tie-in, indicated that it “wanted no association with the agency’s increasingly controversial activities.” Romney has it exactly right.
Ridenour and Funkhouser’s bill, if passed, would overturn Charles Town’s and Ranson’s decisions. That kind of blows a hole in their arguments for local control.
The fate of HB 5477 is still uncertain, but part of its aim might still be realized since Governor Morrisey recently sent a letter of intent to ICE for the entire state to be included in the Warrant Service Officer part of the 287(g) program.
Both Ridenour and Funkhouser are up for re-election this year. They both need to be clearer about who and what they’re really fighting for. Also, if they are on-board with our law enforcement agencies working with ICE, will they also be open and forthcoming about how they’ll handle the disruptions this will cause in our community?
This article was published as a letter to the editor of the Spirit of Jefferson on Feb. 26, 2026.
