CHESTERFIELD, Va. — Lawyers say they are feeling intimidated by groups of men standing silently in rooms not typically open to the public. Spouses are crying in hallways. Families go days without being able to contact loved ones who have been detained, not knowing if they remain in the same state.
These are the realities for some people who have lived in the United States after entering the country illegally but have completed all the required steps to exist within the legal system.
Chesterfield was thrust into the spotlight of the national immigration debate this week with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers operating in the courthouse. The latest census data shows that 12% of Chesterfield County’s nearly 400,000 residents are Hispanic — nearly the same as the combined number of Hispanic residents in Richmond and Henrico County. Hispanic immigrants make up the largest undocumented immigrant population in the United States.
Chesterfield County Sheriff Karl Leonard confirmed to Virginia Scope on Tuesday that ICE officers detained six people inside the courthouse on Friday, another six on Monday, and two more on Tuesday. He wondered aloud in a phone call why this isn’t happening in other localities.
“I haven’t heard anything about them being at other courthouses,” he said.
Leonard cannot stop ICE officers from working inside his courthouse, he said, and his deputies are not physically assisting with ICE’s detainments of undocumented immigrants. However, they are helping lead the ICE targets into rooms between courtrooms after their hearings.
The ICE officers are not detaining people in public areas, a condition Leonard said he requested to avoid a situation similar to one that recently occurred in Charlottesville. Two ICE officers made public detainments there, spurring protests in April.
The alleged ICE officers in Chesterfield would not identify themselves when asked by Virginia Scope Tuesday. When a Richmond Times-Dispatch reporter attempted to question them, they responded, “I don’t know why you think you can talk to us and ask us questions.”
Leonard said ICE officers are not required to identify themselves, though they do present their credentials to his deputies upon arrival each morning.
According to several sources, when ICE officers have approached and detained targets in the Chesterfield courthouse, they lead them down the hallway near the cashier’s office. The individuals are taken down an elevator to the bottom floor and then walked to a vehicle parked on the side of the courthouse.
Virginia Scope witnessed a car back into a fenced area on the side of the courthouse Tuesday morning, which is guarded by Chesterfield deputies. The deputies shut the gate, leaving the vehicle out of public view.
Moments later, the car pulled out and the driver waved to reporters as he left the parking lot.
The next step in the detainee’s journey has historically involved visiting the nearest ICE field office, such as the one in Midlothian.
“It’s like jail without the same protection that criminal defendants have,” said Miriam Airington-Fisher, an immigration attorney in Virginia.
Airington-Fisher said she had a client who was detained by ICE at the Chesterfield courthouse during President Joe Biden’s administration. The client believed he was being kidnapped because as he walked through the parking lot, a man tackled him to the ground and threw him into an SUV.
From there, detainees may be transferred to one of Virginia’s two ICE detention centers — located in Caroline County and Farmville — to be processed.
This can take time, leaving families wondering about the status of their loved one.
We regularly get calls from families who don’t hear anything of their family member for several days,” Airington-Fisher said.
Additionally, because ICE is a federal agency, detainees can be transferred anywhere in the country.
“That poses challenges to the family because they can’t find them,” Airington-Fisher said. “The lawyers don’t know where to find them. Even if the family hires a lawyer, the lawyer can’t find them. That creates a jurisdictional issue, because if ICE moves somebody to another state, then that jurisdiction moves to that other state…You have to know where they are, and you have to know what court to file the legal challenges.”
“It’s kind of a tactic that the government uses to make it very, very difficult for people to assert their rights,” Airington-Fisher said.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares praised ICE’s actions on Tuesday, saying the agency is helping remove criminals from the streets. But these detainments in Chesterfield are happening in the county’s General District Court — mostly on traffic dockets.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch witnessed the detainment of an individual who arrived at the courthouse to pay a fine for not having vehicle registration.
“News that people are being arrested at courthouses, that can kind of play into that idea that ICE is arresting criminals,” Airington-Fisher said. “What happened at Chesterfield – these are people that are going to pay traffic fines – that doesn’t really sync up with what the administration said their priorities are. It’s just kind of low-hanging fruit.”
Airington-Fisher said detainments are also happening during ICE check-ins for asylum seekers.
To seek asylum in the United States, individuals must be physically present in the country, which typically requires them to enter the country illegally.
As part of the process, asylum seekers must attend check-ins with ICE — typically a brief appointment in which they show identification, sign paperwork, and leave to await adjudication.
But in recent weeks, Airington-Fisher said she has heard of ICE using these check-ins to detain people.
She said one of her clients — who has proper paperwork and is awaiting adjudication — was recently summoned to an ICE office.
“Fortunately, he was savvy enough to think that that sounded weird, so he called us,” Airington-Fisher said. “And sure enough, ICE was calling people in, essentially under false pretenses, to detain them.”
Lawyers from her firm were able to convince ICE officers to release their client.
“I think that the administration is being really disingenuous,” Airington-Fisher said. “They’re saying that they’re detaining people who are,’illegal’ [or that] they’re detaining criminals, but they’re not. They’re detaining people who have work permits, who have their cases pending.”
The growing ICE presence in Chesterfield also threatens to disrupt the broader judicial system, Leonard, the sheriff, said in a phone call with Virginia Scope on Tuesday night.
“I am concerned about the unintended consequences of these actions in that these actions will deter some victims and witnesses from actually coming to court in fear of being detained,” he said. “Which will result in court cases not being able to go forward. If that happens, victims will have their justice denied.”
A recorded message for the Richmond-area ICE office stated that it was closed when Virginia Scope called on Tuesday.