Federal data obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests shows that several city and regional jails in Virginia serve as staging grounds and transportation hubs for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation operations.
It’s old news that some jails in Virginia have direct relationships with ICE. The Riverside Regional Jail in Prince George County signed a contract last year to rent out a large number of jail spaces to the federal agency. The Caroline Detention Facility is a jail that is owned by the county and operated exclusively for ICE, making it one of the largest immigrant detention centers in the state.
But information from the Deportation Data Project indicates that local and regional jails’ cooperation goes far beyond these two facilities in Virginia. Jails across the state regularly hold individuals who have no criminal charges on behalf of ICE. Looking at the numbers, five jails stand out: the Western Virginia Regional Jail (located in Roanoke County), the Rappahannock Regional Jail (in Stafford), Rockingham County Jail, Roanoke City Jail and Chesapeake City Jail.
The information made available through the database is quite detailed, and we can see that, while the numbers vary, the majority of individuals deported by ICE after spending some time in a local Virginia jail never had a previous run-in with the law, most having no pending charges or only having an immigration-related charge or a traffic violation.
The Trump Administration has regularly conflated unauthorized immigration and criminality. Studies done by social scientists, however, consistently find that unauthorized immigrants are less likely to commit property, drug or violent crimes than persons born here in the United States. Nevertheless, any kind of interaction with law enforcement can make an undocumented person vulnerable to deportation, which is why we see much more extensive criminal histories in this jail data than is reflected in the general population of unauthorized immigrants.
Still, it bears repeating that many local jails here in Virginia hold people behind bars only because they lack lawful residency, not because they have committed a crime.
The Deportation Data Project also includes information about the ICE custody chain for each individual, or the sequence of jails and detention facilities he or she entered and left before being removed from the country.
In one common scenario, for instance, a person is picked up and taken to the “Roanoke Sub-Office Hold Room” in Salem, and is then transferred to the Western Virginia Regional Jail. From this point, the individual is put in a van with other undocumented persons and transferred to the Farmville Detention Center, which is a privately run prison operated entirely for ICE, where he or she awaits a final decision about deportation. Next, the person is taken to an ICE holding facility in Chesterfield County where he or she is temporarily detained until being put on a jet at the Richmond airport. From there, the person is flown to a large federal complex outside of Alexandria, Louisiana, which serves as the U.S. government’s main hub for international deportation flights.
Even while ICE has processed hundreds of undocumented immigrants through local Virginia jails en route to deportation, the legal basis for jails detaining people based on a civil immigration warrant rather than a criminal charge is murky. In fact, most jails in Virginia do not have a direct contract with ICE.
Instead, they typically have contracts — or intergovernmental service agreements — with other federal agencies like the U.S. Marshals Service and the Bureau of Prisons that open up local jail space to the federal government more broadly. Through this administrative maneuver, ICE gains access to local jails without needing to sign a direct public contract, effectively shielding this relationship from community oversight and local accountability.
Moving forward, local and regional jails’ cooperation with ICE may soon face new requirements. Legislation passed by the General Assembly this past session, the Virginia Community Safety and Trust Act (SB 783), imposes new limits on local law enforcement from utilizing community resources for national immigration enforcement. Importantly, the law does not prevent local jails from transferring an undocumented immigrant who is a convicted felon into ICE custody or if federal authorities present the jail a valid judicial warrant.
But what will enforcement of this law look like? And will local jails comply? And will the law stand? The Trump Administration is seeking to block it in federal court.
Community members around the commonwealth can ask the leadership of their local jails these questions themselves.
City and regional jails are, after all, an important part of local government, and they are beholden to voters. Every city and regional jail has a supervising jail authority board, which includes at least some elected officials as members. And every jail in Virginia has regularly scheduled board meetings, which include time set aside for public comment. Finally, local and regional jails receive funding from local governments, and therefore depend upon good relationships with city councilors and members of county boards of supervisors.
The information from the Deportation Data Project shows that not every jail closely cooperates with ICE, other than when required by state law. Both the Prince William County and Norfolk City Jails stand out as facilities that have transferred persons to ICE custody only in very limited circumstances over the past year. In Prince William County, this is in part an outcome of political pressure from engaged citizens in 2020 to demand that their jail end its direct contract with ICE.
Empowered with information from the Deportation Data Project, Virginians from across the state can learn from this example and, if they choose, put democracy into action.
Eric Bonds is Professor of Sociology at the University of Mary Washington.
