Jason Miyares, former attorney general of the Commonwealth of Virginia, says he inherited a state in crisis marked by record murder rates, surging addiction deaths, and an explosion of cartel violence driven by open border policies, and fought back with aggressive prosecution, ICE cooperation, and landmark lawsuits against Big Pharma and Big Tech.
“When I took office, Virginia’s murder rate was at a 20-year high,” Miyares said on the Restoration Spotlight Podcast by Restoration News. “Our violent crime rate was at a decade high. Our addiction death rate was at numbers we hadn’t seen in 30, 40 years.”
Miyares said his targeted Operation Ceasefire program produced dramatic results by focusing on the small number of repeat offenders driving most violent crime.
“In our targeted ceasefire cities, we saw a drop of the murder rate by over 60%,” he said. “Leading to a one-third drop overall statewide. It was a very smart stance with the police, give them the tools they need to do their jobs.”
Virginia’s murder rate declined by 33.49 percent from 2022 to 2024, with Ceasefire localities responsible for 40 percent of the overall violent crime reduction, according to a VCU Wilder School Center for Public Policy report.
Miyares said the scale of illegal immigration under the Biden administration was unlike anything the country had ever seen.
“During the Biden administration, there were 8.2 million illegal crossings into the United States,” he said. “That is a population larger than the size of 32 US states. We didn’t need a new bill. We needed a new president.”
Miyares said the Sinaloa cartel dwarfs every other criminal enterprise in history and poses an unprecedented threat to Virginia communities.
“The Italian mafia, the different families, they may generate a couple of hundred million dollars total,” he said. “Just the Sinaloa cartel’s estimated revenue a year is between 38 and 40 billion a year. It’s like a small nation state.”
The Sinaloa cartel has operations in more than 50 countries, and by 2015, U.S. officials claimed it controlled drug markets in almost every state, with annual revenue estimates ranging as high as $39 billion, according to Britannica.
Miyares said his opponent, Jay Jones, the current attorney general of Virginia, championed an early felon release program that has had devastating consequences for Virginia victims.
“Just in fiscal year 2023, we saw 9,638 felons out early,” he said. “Close to 49.8% of them have been rearrested. We have over 50 Virginians who have been murdered by felons who got out early.”
Miyares said big tech companies deliberately targeted children using the same predatory playbook as Big Tobacco decades earlier.
“They intentionally targeted our children,” he said. “They acted very similarly to Big Tobacco. If I can get a child on an app, I have that child. We know that the more time you spend on social media, the higher your rates of addiction, depression, and anxiety.”
Children and adolescents who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of mental health problems, including depression and anxiety, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Miyares said the findings from his former office’s investigation into the Loudoun County school assault were among the most disturbing of his tenure.
“A teacher actually walked in on the sexual assault while it was happening and did nothing,” he said. “When asked under oath why they didn’t do anything, they said, ‘Well, because it’s not that unusual to see two pairs of legs in a bathroom stall in a school bathroom.'”
Miyares served as the 48th attorney general of Virginia from 2022 to 2026, the first Hispanic American elected to statewide office in Virginia, before losing his reelection bid to Democrat Jay Jones in November 2025. A graduate of James Madison University and William and Mary Law School, he previously served in the Virginia House of Delegates and worked as a prosecutor and private attorney.
Restoration News is an investigative outlet affiliated with Restoration of America, covering cultural issues, political funding, and border policy for conservative readers, with an emphasis on stories it says receive limited mainstream media coverage.
