Overview

The Riverside Regional Jail (RRJA) in Prince George County (FIPS 51149) is a 1,500-bed regional facility that entered into an agreement with ICE in May 2025 to hold immigration detainees. It functions as a high-throughput staging/processing site rather than a long-term detention center: officials describe it as a temporary holding site, generally up to 72 hours, before individuals are transferred into ICE custody.

Key Details

• Throughput: 7,344 people booked under a federal-immigration-enforcement designation from January 2025 to early April 2026 (VPM) — a volume that dwarfs Caroline and Farmville and reflects RRJA’s role as a churn/processing node.
• Revenue-driven expansion: Facing a FY2026 revenue shortfall, the jail’s superintendent asked the Riverside Regional Jail Authority Board to approve continued negotiations with ICE and to possibly expand the jail’s ICE role. This is a textbook fiscal-dependency signal — detention revenue filling a local budget gap.
• Member localities: Houses inmates from Prince George, Charles City, Chesterfield, and Surry counties, plus the cities of Hopewell, Petersburg, and Colonial Heights — so the ICE agreement implicates 7 jurisdictions’ governance.
• Opposition / oversight: Defense attorneys called the arrangement “inhumane”; Rep. Jennifer McClellan (VA) demanded transparency on the ICE agreement.
• Why it matters: RRJA is the newest and highest-volume node in Virginia’s detention pipeline, opened under the 2025 surge, and is actively seeking to grow its ICE footprint for revenue — the opposite trajectory from the state’s Democratic policy turn.

Sources

• WRIC: Riverside Regional Jail will hold ICE detainees under new agreement
• WRIC: Riverside Authority Board hopes for more ICE detainees due to financial concerns
• WRIC: “It’s inhumane” — ICE detainees at Riverside
• Rep. McClellan: Wants transparency on ICE agreement with Riverside
• VPM: Immigration enforcement in Virginia has risen sharply (May 1, 2026)