On Tuesday morning, two men were detained by plainclothes US Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials at the Albemarle County Courthouse, causing confusion and spurring a Wednesday protest.
There were at least three officials in the general district courthouse who did not fully identify themselves, according to Nicholas Reppucci, who works with the Albemarle County Public Defender’s Office. The office was representing Teodoro Dominguez-Rodriguez, one of the men who was later detained.
VPM News has not yet been able to identify the second detainee.
Reppucci was only in the building briefly, as different members of his office attended court for the proceedings.“None of us saw any identification, any badges, and no one said they had a warrant, showed a warrant, or identified themselves as law enforcement. And one, as seen in the video, is clearly hiding his identity,” Reppucci said Wednesday morning.
In a Wednesday evening press release, Albemarle County Sheriff Chan Bryant said, "federal agents identified themselves with their badges and federal credentials with the bailiff before proceeding through the screening area. ... The federal agents showed the bailiff their paperwork and photographs of the individuals they were looking for and waited outside the courtroom until the conclusion of each case."
The sheriff's office has jurisdiction over the Albemarle Courts Complex.
The incident was first reported in The Daily Progress, which also obtained footage of one of the detentions. In the video, a man is approached in an unrestricted portion of the courthouse lobby and restrained by multiple people (including one person wearing a full-face balaclava) as several others pulled out their phones while asking what was happening.
The video ends as the man is escorted out of the building.
Bryant said in the release that the first detention occurred "without incident," but a crowd began to form and record the agents.
"When the federal agents became the subject of individual recording them, one of the agents put on a hood to cover his face," Bryant said in the Wednesday statement.
Reppucci said a possible ICE agent was spotted in a courtroom, which is in the building’s secured area beyond a metal detector — where cellphones are to be turned off.
“It became clear that there was one member of ICE — or allegedly ICE, I should say — in the courtroom observing and two people, one concealing his identity, in the outer lobby area,” Reppucci told VPM News. “So I don't believe — in reviewing the video, because I was not present for that — that the two individuals detaining the person ever actually physically entered the courtroom or necessarily went through the metal detector.”
In February, Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed an executive order calling for the creation of joint task forces out of state agencies to enforce federal immigration law by cooperating with federal officials. Earlier this week, Youngkin announced that the task force had arrested 521 migrants his office described as “criminal illegal immigrants.”
"The Albemarle County Sheriff’s Office does not have legal authority to enforce federal immigration," Bryant said in the statement. "Immigration enforcement falls within the jurisdiction of federal agencies like U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Albemarle County Sheriff’s Office does not have any contact with federal agencies regarding any individuals who have court cases."
Virginia code permits state law enforcement officers to conduct warrantless arrests after receiving confirmation from ICE that an immigrant is in the country illegally and has been previously convicted of a felony — under certain circumstances. But state law says that any person arrested under that provision “shall be brought forthwith” before a magistrate or similar authority to determine whether there is probable cause that they committed a crime.
The Albemarle public defender’s office did not know that ICE officials were going to be in the courthouse, nor did the federal agency or a deputized authority tell the public defender’s office that they were going to take people into custody, according to Reppucci.
“At some point, it became pretty clear that there were three people there that were not normally there, and that something was going to happen, although they never identified themselves,” Reppucci said.
Dominguez-Rodriguez’s charges were dismissed, according to general district court records, before he possibly was taken into federal custody. VPM News reached out to ICE for comment but did not hear back by the time of publication.
Reppucci said the public defender’s office has “no ability” to intervene in federal legal matters, as public defenders represent people they’ve been appointed to represent — on state court matters heard by state court judges in both the city of Charlottesville and Albemarle County.
In an emailed statement to VPM News, Albemarle Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingeley said he was not at the courthouse when the arrests happened “by individuals who claimed they were law enforcement agents from the Department of Homeland Security.”
“Because I do not have firsthand knowledge, I am investigating the circumstances of the courthouse arrests,” he said. “The information I have reviewed so far indicates that these alleged law enforcement agents did not display a badge or other indication of authority that would empower them to make lawful arrests in these circumstances.”
Hingeley also said that further actions like Tuesday’s arrests “would constitute a grave danger to our community.”
Reppucci said his office has not been able to speak to Dominguez-Rodriguez since his detainment, and they have no idea where he is as of press time. He also doesn’t know if the federal government would update the public defender’s office as to his status because legally, the man no longer has an open case in Albemarle.
The Albemarle Public Defender’s Office is trying to come up with a plan to advise clients, witnesses and the public at large on how to respond to a situation like this, Reppucci said, because “this has caused anxiety in large segments of our community.”
“Court is here for everybody in the community,” he said. “It's a public space where we can solve disputes, whether civil or criminal, with due process, and it's going to make it harder for both defendants and, quote, unquote, victims to get a fair shake in court, if people are less willing to come to court and tell the truth about what they know happened in a public situation.”
In response to Tuesday’s detainments, several dozen protesters lined the sidewalk outside the courthouse on Wednesday afternoon, waving signs and chanting.
It was not immediately clear who organized the protest, though several social media accounts — including the Charlottesville Democratic Committee — credited local Quakers.
One of the demonstrators, Robert Fudge, said he didn’t feel like he was in the US while watching the footage published by The Daily Progress.
“It was the kind of thing that [the] KGB would do, roughing up people and carting them away,” he told VPM News. “That's not America, and I'm pretty upset about that.”
Another protester told VPM News that as detentions mount, some immigrants may feel unsafe in courthouses, regardless of immigration status.
“I just don't see why you would attack a state's judicial system by taking people in a courthouse if you didn't want people to be afraid of going,” they said.
Wednesday’s demonstrators said they were pushing for local and state officials to refuse compliance with ICE.
