Is Gloucester really a sanctuary county?
According to a list of jurisdictions published a couple weeks ago on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security website, and then (without explanation) abruptly taken down, the answer appears to be “Yes,” and then, “Maybe Not.”
Over 500 localities across the nation and more than 30 in Virginia—including Gloucester—made the list, which set out to identify localities “obstructing immigration enforcement,” with the implication that those localities could face the loss of federal funds because of their failure to help the federal government with the enforcement of illegal immigration.
The list contained numerous factual errors among the Virginia localities, including listing Martinsville as a county and Duffield, a town in Scott County with 73 people as of the 2020 Census, as a city.
Sen. Tim Kaine and others have theorized that artificial intelligence may have had something to do with generating the list. An AI search on Gloucester, for instance, may...