By Mary Rooke
A Virginia county and local school system are covering for an illegal immigrant who groped at least a dozen female students, most of them being minors.
Authorities charged an 18-year-old illegal immigrant from El Salvador named Israel Christopher Flores-Ortiz with nine counts of misdemeanor assault and battery March 7 after being enrolled at Fairfax High School in Fairfax County, Virginia. Flores-Ortiz entered the United States illegally in 2024 and was released under former President Joe Biden.
Over several months in early 2026, he is accused of sneaking up behind female students and reaching between their legs to grope their private areas before sometimes shifting to their buttocks. Parents describe the acts as deliberate and invasive, not accidental horseplay. One mother told reporters it was “a groping of a private area” that had been occurring for months. The victims said they endured this in crowded transitions between classes, where supervision was evidently lacking.
Despite the nature of the allegations, which are reportedly supported by hallway surveillance footage, the Fairfax County Public Schools principal, Georgina Aye, waited until March 12 to notify families. Her email described the incidents blandly as “the student touching students’ buttocks while they were transitioning in the hallways,” according to 7News.
Unsurprisingly, the parents were outraged, calling the school’s handling of the situation “abysmal.” Multiple parents labeled the letter an attempt to minimize the harm inflicted on their children by Flores-Ortiz. They also claim some of the girls experience bullying from other students who said the accusations were “attention-seeking.”
Despite being almost 19, Flores-Ortiz was enrolled as a junior at Fairfax High School.
Immediately after his arrest, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) issued a detainer requesting that local authorities hold him for deportation proceedings. However, Fairfax County’s Sheriff’s Office refused to honor it due to the county’s longstanding “Public Trust and Confidentiality Policy,” which explicitly limits cooperation with federal civil immigration enforcement.
Fairfax County Circuit Court Judge Dipti Pidikiti-Smith denied bail to Flores-Ortiz after reviewing surveillance video, citing public safety risks despite the local prosecutor not opposing his release. Yet because of the county’s policy, if Ortiz ever walks free from custody, ICE cannot easily take him into federal custody for removal. He remains protected from deportation by local government decisions that prioritize non-cooperation over accountability.
Of course, Fairfax County officials claim their immigration policy is not the same as creating a sanctuary for illegal immigrants, insisting that the county complies with criminal warrants.
“Immigration enforcement falls squarely within the authority of the federal government, and Fairfax County fully complies with all applicable federal and state laws, regulations and court orders,” Fairfax County Chairman Jeff McKay said.
However, the facts tell a different story. Their 2021 Public Trust and Confidentiality Policy clearly requires that county employees “do not voluntarily cooperate with federal civil immigration enforcement.” It also prohibits sharing information about citizenship or immigration status with ICE unless required by a judicial warrant, court order, or specific law. Additionally, the county sheriff’s office terminated its agreement with ICE years ago and does not honor standard administrative detainers. Only a criminal judicial order would force their hand.
This means illegal immigrants, like Flores-Ortiz, benefit from a deliberate firewall created by Fairfax County. Federal authorities cannot simply pick him up after the local charges are resolved. Critics, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), have called him a “predator” who “should NOT have been attending a Virginia high school.”
“This 19-year-old criminal illegal alien should NOT have been attending a Virginia high school and allowed to prey on innocent teenage girls. He now faces nine counts of assault and battery. This is yet another example of the Biden Administration’s failed open border policies,” said DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis. “We are calling on Fairfax County sanctuary politicians to NOT release this predator from jail back into our communities to assault more teenage women. Unfortunately, Governor Abigail Spanberger ended cooperation with ICE and is siding with criminal illegal aliens over American citizens.”
ICE echoed the plea, noting that the policy choices allow criminal illegal aliens to remain and potentially reoffend.
“Unfortunately, sanctuary politicians like Gov. Spanberger are outlawing cooperation with ICE and choosing to RELEASE criminal illegal aliens from their jails back onto their communities to create more American victims,” an ICE spokesperson told 7News. “We are calling on Fairfax County to honor our detainer to ensure this violent criminal is removed from our country so he can never claim another victim again.”
This case exposes the reality of leftists’ immigration policies. The lack of robust verification allowed an adult male from El Salvador access to a high school full of teenage girls. The alleged assaults continued for months before Flores-Ortiz was arrested. The school downplaying his alleged actions and peer harassment afterward only adds to the initial trauma. And throughout the ordeal, the immigration system that let him in, plus the local policy shielding him now, stacked the deck against justice for these girls.
The pattern is clear and repeats nationwide. Sanctuary jurisdictions across the country have ignored thousands of ICE detainers, allowing individuals with criminal charges or convictions to remain in communities. Fairfax County alone ignored at least 1,150 ICE detainers between October 2022 and February 2025. (RELATED: Trump Allies Beckon President On Deportations As Admin Seems To Back Off)
What happened to the Fairfax High School girls should serve as a wake-up call. The left’s policies allow unvetted adults to enter schools and harm vulnerable students, then protect those same individuals from removal. Taxpayers bear the financial burden. Communities bear the safety burden. Victims and their families bear the human cost.
In December, an illegal alien killed a man after he was freed from jail in Fairfax County, despite facing several prior charges, and despite Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) requesting his detention.
A convicted criminal with a long history of arrests recently stabbed a woman to death in Fairfax County, due to the soft-on-crime policies of the local prosecutor, Steve Descano, who drops charges against violent criminals, or agrees to short sentences that lead to them being swiftly released.
Steve Descano, the Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney, lets a fifth of all killers escape a conviction by agreeing to their plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, which would almost certainly be rejected by a jury. Less than 1 percent of all killers are actually legally insane enough to qualify for an insanity plea, but Descano colludes with defense lawyers to accept what appear to be bogus insanity pleas.
