Any Roanoke resident with a smartphone and a curiosity about news saw ample footage of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swarming larger historically Democratic cities throughout 2025. Citizens made videos of ICE agents on their streets.
Throughout the year, in contrast, Roanoke’s streets remained seemingly quiet.
But in the places smartphones don’t reach and record — the cells and beds of the Roanoke jail — more than three times the number of ICE detainees were checked in last year than were the previous year, in a city that has historically been welcoming to immigrants.
The Roanoke jail likely held about 206 ICE detainees in 2025, compared to 59 in 2024 and 16 in 2023, according to Cardinal News’ analysis of the Roanoke City Adult Detention Center’s invoices to the Department of Homeland Security. Determining an exact number for 2025 was complicated by discrepancies on several of the billing statements, and by the fact that detainee names were redacted from all documents.
Local immigration attorneys say the increase is due to immigration policy changes on the federal level — immigrants without legal status were not being granted a bond hearing, for example, and ICE agents can no longer use discretion in their enforcement.
The jail more than tripled ICE detainees held in 2025
Tameka Paige, spokesperson for the Roanoke Sheriff’s Office, said the number of people in custody fluctuates yearly due to factors “outside of the Sheriff’s Office’s control.”
The 2025 total, 206 detainees, takes into account six instances where a detainee was brought in twice, according to an email from Paige.
Paige wrote in an email that trying to characterize the reason for that jump in numbers would be “just a guestimate.”
She wrote that all detainees identified in the reports were arrested on criminal offenses occurring within the city of Roanoke, or were arrested by the Roanoke Police Department for outstanding warrants from anywhere in the state.
Paige said that the agency does not have on hand the breakdown of how many arrests were made by local police, versus how many were made by local ICE agents. That information is expected back to Cardinal News on April 1, which is the deadline set by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.
“We would only receive a detainee from another locality if that locality for valid reason is unable to accept them and we are the closest facility, not simply because we have a contract,” Paige wrote in an email.
Local immigration attorneys told Cardinal News the reason for the increase was not a heightened ICE presence, but a change in behavior brought on by federal decisions.
Removal of discretion, lack of bond contributed to the increase
ICE presence in Roanoke hasn’t changed in recent years, said Jaime McGuire, immigration attorney with Amaryllis Law in Salem. She said the area hasn’t seen extra ICE agents deployed, similar to what larger cities, like Minneapolis, Minnesota and Charlotte, North Carolina, have seen.
McGuire said the rising jail numbers are due to recent federal decisions that impact agent behavior nationwide.
She said agents are no longer permitted to weigh a person’s good deeds or family circumstances when deciding whether to detain, deport or place them into removal court proceedings.
McGuire said that this change was implemented during President Donald Trump’s first administration, and that prosecutorial discretion gradually came back under President Joe Biden. Now, that discretion has been taken away again with Trump’s second term.
“So now, when an immigrant gets detained, even if it’s for something as small as driving without a license … and they’re unable to produce proof of status, but they might have a driver’s license, they can get detained,” McGuire said. “And the ICE officers have very little authorization to choose who can get detained or who cannot get detained.”
Additionally, ICE officers no longer have the authority to release immigrants once they’ve been taken into custody. They are typically transferred to a jail, then to an ICE detention facility; the closest to Roanoke is in Farmville.
Mary Sirmans, another attorney with Amaryllis Law, said in an email she has seen a few people released without having to request a bond hearing, but “it is a very small percentage of cases.”
“Individuals that have not committed any crime, they’ve just entered the United States without inspection, are no longer eligible for a bond, is what the immigration courts are holding,” McGuire said. “So the reason for the spike in the detentions and the cost associated with the local jails is because the ICE officers have no discretion to release them.”
A recent blog post written by Sirmans explains that in July, the Department of Homeland Security stated that ICE could detain immigrants and hold them without allowing them to request a bond hearing.
The memo, dated July 8, is addressed to all ICE employees and states that immigrants without legal status “may not be released for the duration of their removal proceedings absent a parole by DHS.” The memo explains the change as “prohibitions on release once an alien enters ICE custody upon initial arrest or re-detention.”
A September ruling by the Board of Immigration Appeals backed that decision, finding that judges lack the authority to hear bond requests for immigrants who entered the U.S. unlawfully, Sirmans states.
This September ruling was later declared unlawful in December by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Sirmans wrote.
Sirmans said in an interview in late February that attorneys can file habeas petitions — legal procedures that allow detained individuals to challenge their detentions — in federal court. She said she had success with two bond hearings in the previous week, and her clients were issued bonds of $1,500 and $3,000. She said many judges are still denying bond because they find the detained individuals to be “flight risks.”
“A lot of times, immigrants get so tired of the harsh conditions of the detention facilities that they just accept deportation. They just want to leave,” she said. “To the effect that they’re effectuating rapid fire case completion, it is meeting the administration’s goals of doing that. But at what cost?”
ICE detainee numbers vary widely at jails across the region
Cardinal News reached out to the Roanoke City Jail and six other local and regional jail authorities in Southwest and Southside Virginia, and requested copies of their contracts with the federal government as well as invoices billed to ICE.
Our reporter and editor hand-counted the instances of billing (line items with names redacted) for each month to arrive at the numbers reported. The sheriff’s office invoices the federal government based on the number of nights a bed was occupied by an ICE detainee. Some of the line items show multiple nights. Most show a single night.
Cardinal News identified inconsistencies in the DHS billing documents for Roanoke’s jail. For example, for October 2025, the documents accurately bill for 36 days that month, but counted 53. In February 2025, the jail billed for 33 days, when Cardinal News actually counted 39.
The jail billed ICE for 421 nights holding immigrant detainees in 2025, most of them single-night stays. The tally doesn’t include same-day releases that are charged as $0.
That’s nearly five times the number in 2024, when 88 total nights were billed to ICE by the jail.
All told, the jail billed ICE for $30,513 for overnight stays for ICE detainees in 2025, compared to $5,280 in 2024, based on the invoices provided by the jail to Cardinal News.
Here is information on ICE detainments in the other jails in the region:
- Documents obtained from the Blue Ridge Regional Jail Authority in Lynchburg show that from May to December 2025, the facility billed ICE for a total of 64 nights that detainees stayed in the jail.
- Invoices obtained through the Southwest Virginia Regional Jail Authority in Abingdon show that from May 2025 to January 2026, only two months show more than 10 nights per month charged to ICE: August 2025, with 31 nights, and September 2025, with 254 nights charged.
The jail authority modified its agreement with the U.S. Marshals Service in October 2025 to add the Western District of North Carolina. From May 2025 to January 2026, the SWRJA billed for 311 nights, including the unusual one-time bump.
- Sheriff Mike Mondul with the Danville City Jail shared documents contracting with the federal government to hold detainees, but said, “We do not have any billing reports to ICE, no[r] have we billed them.”
- Capt. Travis Hambrick with the Henry County Sheriff’s Office said that although the office does maintain an agreement with the federal government to hold federal detainees, including ICE detainees as of 2025, no ICE detainees have been housed at the Henry County Adult Detention Center.
- Spokespeople for the New River Valley Regional Jail and the Franklin County Jail both said that the facilities do not have contracts with the federal government to hold federal inmates.
- A spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Corrections stated in an email that the department does not have records of a federal contract with the Bland Correctional Center, or invoices to ICE, because “the records do not exist.”