CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – Heading toward a March 14 General Assembly session adjournment, Charlottesville Del. Katrina Callsen said she still has 21 of 24 bills she’s sponsoring under consideration.

“It’s been refreshing we have an Administration that’s been willing to communicate with us,” Callsen told Cville Right Now. “It’s been refreshing to have so many new peers that are aligned with my general goals, you know, protecting families, affordability, housing, all those things,”

Bills she’s sponsoring include pharmacy benefit management reform, and legislation started by the Center for Nonprofit Excellence in Charlottesville around nonprofits being able to provide health insurance at affordable rates.

“I do come in with an agenda,” Callsen said. “I do town halls throughout the year, I do polls, I try to identify what the top issues are and what I heard I write bills about.”

Callsen is also sponsoring a bill regarding ICE actions at courthouses. She said the bill was inspired by what occurred in the Albemarle County courthouse in April when two immigrants were arrested by federal agents, one of whom was masked and in plainclothes, without presenting their credentials or warrants at the arrest scene inspired her bill about ICE arrests in courthouses.

“Usually, common law is that you don’t do arrests in the courthouse unless you have a warrant, and so I wrote a bill on that along with the ACLU, and it has grown since then talking about due process protections for citizens in hospitals, schools, voting places, and courthouses as well,” she said.

In the Albemarle case, Sheriff Chan Bryant issued a release that said, “The federal agents showed the bailiff their paperwork and photographs of the individuals they were looking for and waited outside the courtroom until the conclusion of each case.”

She did not clarify what the “paperwork” was.

“The bill I’ve written is modeled after legislation in New York that has withstood judicial challenge at the federal level, and part of it is just clarity, clarity around the process and what this looks like so there’s not this chaos, there’s not this confusion that’s happening in courthouses,” Callsen said.

“The result is if we don’t have that, and I’ve talked to many lawyers in courthouses across the state, we know it’s having a chilling effect on participation in our court processes.”

“So victims aren’t coming forward, witnesses are not wanting to come to court, victims of crimes that we want to come to court so we can prosecute their assailants, they’re all afraid to come to court because they’re worried they’ll have to have interactions with ICE enforcement agents,” said Callsen.

Other legislation she’s tracking includes energy affordability, and legislation stopping data center tax exemptions which is in one version of the budget and not the other.

“You know, that will help address, or confront, or at least change the landscape for data centers in Virginia so I would encourage Virginians to make their voice heard on what they want to see happen,” Callsen said.