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Ever since it opened in 2010, Farmville Detention Center (also known as ICA-Farmville) has been a site of human rights abuses against detained immigrants. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the Free Them All VA Coalition, of which the Legal Aid Justice Center is a member, has been organizing to shut down the detention center with the goal of releasing those detained there. Read more about the campaign and why the detention center must be shut down here!

Due to mounting community pressure to permanently shut down Farmville, in September 2023 the Town of Farmville expressed interest in exploring options to withdraw from their ICE detention contract in advance of its March 29, 2024 expiration date. A Request for Proposal recently posted on Prince Edward County’s website suggests that another private company and Prince Edward County is moving forward with executing a contract with ICE despite the facility’s record of abuse and neglect and the ongoing calls for closure.

The Free Them All VA Coalition will continue to mobilize to end the contract once and for all! 

On September 13, 2023, the FTA-VA coalition mobilized more than 80 people to the Farmville town council meeting demanding the contract set to expire on September 15th was not renewed. The city council felt the presence of the community and voted unanimously to have the town manager investigate the impact of withdrawing from the contract. However, after meeting with the company Immigration Centers of America (ICA) and communicating with ICE contracting officers, the town signed the contract extension on September 15th without any public meeting or notice. Later that day, we received news that the town extended the contract only for 15 days to September 30th.

After continuing to organize for the contract to terminate on September 15th, the coalition found out the contract was extended for another six months, until March 29, 2024, without the town council engaging in intentional conversations with their constituents.

The Farmville Detention Center (Farmville) first opened in 2010, after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) reached an agreement with the town of Farmville and the private prison corporation, Immigration Centers of America (ICA). Community members have been resisting the incarceration-deportation pipeline and organizing against the detention center even before its construction. Since it was built, the facility has been notorious for its brutality, abuse, and neglect, including the use of solitary confinement, retaliation by staff, and inadequate medical care. The Free Them All VA (FTA-VA) Coalition came together in 2020 to amplify the demands of people organizing inside to shut down the center and release everyone and community members have been organizing and resisting against detention since before it was built.

Please join us in sending emails and making calls to Prince Edward’s board of supervisors to demand for the county to NOT enter a new contract with ICA-Farmville Detention Center now that Farmville Town has decided to not renew that same contract after lawsuits connected to the abuse, mistreatment and medical negligence of the facility.


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