House Judiciary Hearing on Sanctuary Laws — Curated Transcript — September 15, 2026

The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement convened a hearing titled "The Continuing Tragedy of Sanctuary Laws" on September 15, 2026. The committee's official announcement said the hearing would focus on what the majority described as the deadly cost of sanctuary policies in California, Oregon and New York.

The official witness list identified three witnesses: Elizabeth Carter, the mother of William Micah Carter; Anatoly Varfolomeev, the father of Anya Varfolomeev; and Frederick Akshar II, sheriff of Broome County, New York. Because Carter and Varfolomeev are private citizens, their testimony is paraphrased here rather than reproduced verbatim.

Carter described the death of her son, William Micah Carter, in a November 2025 crash involving a truck driver whom the committee identified as an undocumented immigrant who had received a California commercial driver's license. Her testimony, as framed by the committee, connected her family's loss to questions about licensing policy, immigration enforcement and whether state rules can create avoidable public-safety risks. The causal claims are presented as the witness and committee's position, not as an independent finding by LongScribe.

Varfolomeev discussed the death of his daughter, Anya Varfolomeev, who the committee said was killed in California in November 2021 by an undocumented driver who was intoxicated. His appearance placed a second family's experience at the center of the policy debate. His testimony is summarized as an argument for stronger immigration enforcement and greater accountability when state or local policies interact with cases involving noncitizens.

Sheriff Frederick Akshar focused on New York. He is one of a group of county sheriffs challenging a state law that restricts forms of cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. The lawsuit, filed in federal court in August 2026, asks a court to block the state restrictions. Akshar's hearing position was that local sheriffs should retain greater ability to work with federal immigration agencies when they believe cooperation is necessary for public safety.

The hearing therefore combined two different kinds of evidence: personal accounts from families who had lost relatives and an institutional argument from a local law-enforcement official challenging state policy. Majority members used those accounts to argue that sanctuary policies can obstruct immigration enforcement and expose communities to preventable risk.

The broader policy dispute concerns how federal immigration authority should interact with state and local control over policing, detention, licensing and information sharing. Supporters of tighter federal-local cooperation argue that state restrictions can prevent officers from acting on immigration information or federal requests. Critics of aggressive immigration enforcement have argued in the wider sanctuary-policy debate that local separation from federal immigration enforcement can preserve trust with immigrant communities and keep local police focused on local crimes.

This page records the hearing's stated purpose, witnesses and principal policy arguments without treating the hearing title or any participant's causal claims as established fact. The central question before the subcommittee was whether state sanctuary laws protect legitimate state and local priorities or instead create public-safety costs by limiting cooperation with federal immigration authorities.