Riverside Regional Jail is now a contractor for federal immigration enforcement, which is paying the facility to provide detention services, according to a contract between the two obtained by The Times-Dispatch.
The facility signed off on the agreement on May 8. The document itself is heavily redacted.
“The purpose of this task order is to provide Detention services under the provisions of the USMS Agreement No. 83-99-0058,” the contract stipulates. It then goes on to detail daily reimbursement rates for detaining prisoners, figures that were withheld by a public records officer for the jail.
The contract also includes a requirement that the agreement be kept confidential, stating that there “shall be no public disclosures regarding this agreement by the provider” without review and approval from ICE.
Riverside Regional Jail, in Prince George County, differs from other local Richmond jails by virtue of being run by a board, which hires an appointed superintendent. In October 2024, the board hired Col. Jeffrey N. Dillman to the position.Dillman came to the jail after years as a warden within the Virginia Department of Corrections.
Dillman declined to comment on the contract.
The 1,500-bed jail has a history of garnering attention for the wrong reasons: 12 people died within the jail in the past three years, the highest total of any jail in Virginia, a figure first reported by WRIC news. Last October, disturbing photos emerged of jail staff appearing to pose an unconscious woman’s body for a mugshot. The woman, Neicole Sankey Lewis, died shortly afterward.
The contract may be necessary because of ICE’s ramp-up in immigration enforcement. Since President Trump took office, arrests of undocumented immigrants have surged, particularly in Virginia. The state has seen a 470% increase in immigration arrests, according to figures from the Deportation Data Project. The organization has been regularly suing ICE to access up-to-date statistics, which the agency doesn’t regularly share.
On April 13, the most recent date for which The Times-Dispatch could find publicly accessible data, 45 out of 181 ICE facilities across the country exceeded their contractual capacity. That includes the agency’s two Virginia facilities. On that date, an ICE facility in Caroline County rated for 336 individuals exceeded its contractual capacity by 32, according to data shared by researchers with the TRAC data project at Syracuse University.
A spokesperson for ICE did not reply to questions on the need for the contract on Monday morning.
Immigration Insight 