Gov. Patrick Morrisey released an executive order directing all law enforcement agencies in the state to fully cooperate with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on finding and arresting undocumented people on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2025. (West Virginia Office of the Gov. Patrick Morrisey | Courtesy photo)
At least 72 people in West Virginia have been identified and detained for residing in the country without proper documentation as of Thursday, according to Gov. Patrick Morrisey. That’s up from the 58 people who were identified earlier this week.
The detentions are part of a nationwide crackdown on undocumented immigrants spurred in recent days by President Donald Trump’s administration.
To aid in that effort, Morrisey on Thursday released an executive order directing all law enforcement agencies in the state to fully cooperate with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on finding and arresting undocumented people. The action also ordered all officials under the authority of the governor to cooperate with the efforts.
Despite West Virginia sitting nearly 1,500 miles away from the nation’s southern border, Morrisey during a news briefing Thursday said he believed unauthorized immigration was responsible for the deadly toll that fentanyl has taken in the state. In 2023 — the most recent year nearly complete data is available from the state Department of Health — more than 81% of fatal drug overdoses in West Virginia involved fentanyl.
“For many years, people have talked about ‘Well, West Virginia is not a border state. Why is it relevant here?’” Morrisey said. “Well, it’s relevant because of the drug plague and the fentanyl that comes in.”
Morrisey’s sentiments echo those shared often by former Gov. Jim Justice, who used unauthorized immigration as political fodder during his successful run for the U.S. Senate last year.
Morrisey said he believed drug “mules” traffic fentanyl up to West Virginia from the southern border, where it is smuggled into the country “multiple ways” at both legal and illegal points of entry, largely by people who are undocumented.
The governor did not say if any of those people detained in West Virginia were suspected of or wanted for crimes related to fentanyl trafficking.
According to the United States Sentencing Commission, more than 85% of people charged with fentanyl trafficking annually are U.S. citizens. Nearly 82% of all convicted drug traffickers in 2023 were U.S. residents.
Most — more than 90% — of the fentanyl that is seized at the Mexican border comes through legal points of entry, according to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.
In 2023, former Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters it was “unequivocally false” that “non-citizens” were bringing fentanyl into the United States. Most immigrants at the border, he said, are asylum-seekers who are “making claims of credible fear” and looking for a safer place to live.
Who is being detained and how
Ten of the people detained through the ongoing crackdown were sent to Kentucky, Morrisey said, however he did not specify why.
Morrisey said at least 36 of the people detained in West Virginia have violated immigration laws in some way. This includes potentially missing a hearing, not having filed proper paperwork or having a prior deportation order filed against them by a court, among other things.
About 13 of the individuals identified were in state “prisons and jails serving a West Virginia sentence,” Morrisey said. Others were being held through orders from the U.S. Marshals Service.
Anyone who has been identified through these investigations are being held at prisons and jails throughout West Virginia.
Spokespeople for Morrisey did not respond to a request from West Virginia Watch to clarify how exactly individuals being detained were being identified in the state.
During the press conference, Morrisey said he had “heard these are targeted activities,” but did not expand on the technical process for how they were targeted.
“It’s not walking in and trying to find people hidden under the bush,” Morrisey said. “This is an instance where these folks are going in and they know that generally there’s some specific paperwork — it could be that immigration judge that did the order. It could be someone deported … I’m not going to tell you the numbers of how many people did what, because we don’t have access to that.”
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