Strewn along roadways throughout Ruckersville, dozens of abandoned vehicles sat empty Tuesday as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and Greene County Sheriff’s deputies stopped motorists and made arrests across the community.
During a phone call on Tuesday afternoon, Greene County Sheriff Steven Smith told Charlottesville Tomorrow that his officers were working with ICE agents to make the arrests.
It’s unclear how many people were arrested or detained, or who they are. Smith declined to share that information, saying that any questions about the arrests should be directed to ICE.
No one from ICE responded to Charlottesville Tomorrow’s requests for information Tuesday afternoon.
The operation appeared to consist mainly of traffic stops, community members who witnessed the event told Charlottesville Tomorrow.
Andrew Wilder Young, a Charlottesville-based attorney with the Allegheny-Blue Ridge Alliance, told Charlottesville Tomorrow that he saw ICE and the Sheriff’s deputies using more than two dozen marked sheriff’s vehicles and unmarked white SUVs to pull people over.
“The sheriffs are driving all over town, all over Spotswood Trail, all over [U.S. Highway] 29,” he said Tuesday afternoon. “And I saw dozens of work vans and other vehicles that were just abandoned because people had been detained, presumably.”
Several community members present at businesses near the intersection of routes 29 and 33 on Tuesday said it appeared that the officers were targeting work trucks.
An employee of a restaurant located near the Legacy Church office on Spotswood Trail in Ruckersville said that officers were stationed in the parking lot of the church for much of the morning. He said he saw four vehicles pulled over, followed by arrests.
The last arrest that he saw occurred around 12:30 p.m. Charlottesville Tomorrow spoke with residents who said that the operation began at no later than 6:30 a.m.
Another community member said that ICE agents had been present at Lowe’s on Route 29 on Tuesday. Two Lowe’s employees confirmed that report. They also claimed that a coworker of theirs, who is Latino, was pulled over that morning, but was ultimately released. The employees declined to provide further information about the individual who was arrested or the circumstances surrounding the arrest. Charlottesville Tomorrow reached out to Lowe’s public relations contact for comment on Tuesday, but did not immediately receive a response.
Take action
Here’s what you can do if you are looking for someone who might have been detained in an immigration raid.
If you believe a friend or family member has been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, you can search for them using the official Online Detainee Locator System. You will need the individual’s Alien Registration Number and country of birth, or their exact full name, date of birth and country of origin. However, if they were recently detained, they will likely not be in the system yet.
If you do not find the detainee in the online system, you can contact the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations field office nearest to where the person was picked up. If you are looking for someone detained on Tuesday in Ruckersville, the nearest office is the ICE Washington Field Office in Chantilly, Virginia, and can be reached at 703-633-2100. If the person is not in an ICE-operated detention facility, they may have also been taken to a local jail or correctional facility. The closest jail to Ruckersville is the Central Virginia Regional Jail (CVRJ) in Orange, Virginia, which can be reached at 540-672-3222.
For more assistance, including help locating someone you suspect might have been picked up in the raid and connecting to immigration attorneys, you can also contact Charlottesville-based nonprofit community organization Sin Barreras by calling 434-531-0104 or emailing info[AT]sinbarrerascville[DOT]org.
Sheriff Smith did confirm one report that was circulating online in social media — sheds located behind the Green County Sheriff’s Office building on Route 33 in Stanardsville are being used to process detainees. A Charlottesville Tomorrow reporter visited the sheriff’s office on Tuesday afternoon, but was asked to leave by a deputy after entering the rear portion of the parking lot from which the sheds are visible.
The deputy escorted the reporter a short distance around the corner of the building toward the front of the parking lot. She then offered to connect Charlottesville Tomorrow with Smith by phone. During the call, Smith said that those arrested on Tuesday had been “treated very humanely” and that the sheds are equipped with air conditioning and television. He said that the shed area is one of several locations used by ICE to process detainees in the area and it is used for short-term processing, not for long-term detention.
The reporter was allowed to leave the property on her own following the call.
That reporter was not the only person asked to leave the sheriff’s office Tuesday.
When attorney Young got word of the ongoing ICE raids in Ruckersville, he drove straight to the sheriff’s office.
When he arrived, he told officers there that he had come to offer legal representation to those who had been detained, he said. An ICE agent told Young that he wasn’t allowed on the premises, Young said.
“And then the sheriff said, ‘If you stay here, I’m going to arrest you,'” he told Charlottesville Tomorrow.
After Young left the sheriff’s office, he was pulled over by a Greene County Sheriff’s officer who was driving one of the unmarked white SUVs he had seen when he arrived in Ruckersville.
There were several ICE agents in the SUV with the deputy, Young said.
One ICE agent was masked and remained in the car, he said. Two, who were unmasked, emerged from the vehicle with their guns drawn — although not pointed at him — Young said. The ICE agents were in plainclothes, except for green vests that read “ICE Police.”
The Greene County officer asked for Young’s license and registration, which he provided, he told Charlottesville Tomorrow, while the ICE officers questioned him about why he was in town and what he was doing.
The Greene County officer gave Young three citations: one for an improper use of his horn, one for failing to yield to an emergency vehicle and one for using a handheld device while driving. Young told Charlottesville Tomorrow that he did yield to the officers who pulled him over, and would contest that citation, as well as the others. He said that he had a first amendment right to honk his horn and record the officers with his phone.
“I think that they were trying to intimidate me, is what it felt like,” Young told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “They failed to scare me, but what will haunt me is that there were so many empty vans and cars on the side of the road from people that they had taken. That’s going to stick with me for the rest of my life.”
This is the second large-scale ICE action in Greene County in recent months. In May, ICE and the Greene County Sheriff’s Office arrested multiple people. The Daily Progress (subscription required) reported that a work crew was targeted in the raid and 26 people were detained. ICE released just one name in a statement to news outlets, and claimed that person was a member of an international gang. The Daily Progress did not find any convictions or criminal charges in public records.
The agency does not have any other information about that raid on its website and did not respond to Charlottesville Tomorrow’s call or emails Tuesday.
Greene County Sheriff’s deputies assisted ICE during the operations today and in May. The sheriff’s office is among nearly 2,000 state and local law enforcement agencies across the country that actively partner with the Department of Homeland Security on immigration enforcement efforts.
The partnership between ICE and the Greene County Sheriff operates through a 287(g) agreement, which Charlottesville Tomorrow obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request in February. The 287(g) is a federal program that allows trained local officers to carry out certain immigration enforcement duties while working in coordination with ICE.
Greene County signed a 287(g) agreement in May 2025. As part of the agreement, the sheriff’s office received $137,500, which it used to purchase a vehicle and to train five officers for the ICE Task Force. As of March 2026, 11 of its 34 officers — including Sheriff Smith — had been certified to join said Task Force, said Smith. Smith told Charlottesville Tomorrow in February that soon the entire department will be certified and trained.
The training, which can be done virtually, is on immigration laws and practices and takes less than a day to complete, Smith said.
