As ICE Seeks to Expand Footprint in Virginia, Youngkin’s Final-Day Prison Sale Directive Draws Scrutiny

On his last full day in office, outgoing Gov. Glenn Youngkin instructed state officials to move forward with selling the shuttered Augusta Correctional Center to a private asset management company, a directive Gov. Abigail Spanberger has since withdrawn pending further review.

The shuttered Augusta Correctional Center in Craigsville closed in 2024 after decades of operation and is now the subject of renewed scrutiny over a proposed sale and potential future use. (Photo courtesy of Nyttend)

Details of the now-stopped sale first came to light last week, against the backdrop of a broader push by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to expand immigration detention capacity in Virginia — including controversial proposals in Hanover and Stafford counties.

‘Not the right location:’ Hanover supervisors, residents oppose DHS ICE facility

In a Jan. 16 memo obtained by The Mercury, Youngkin instructed the Virginia Department of General Services, which oversees the sale of state-owned property, to proceed with selecting Moxie Asset Group, LLC as the buyer for the prison complex in rural Augusta County.

Spanberger’s directive, issued less than two weeks after she took office, formally withdrew that order and reopened the decision-making process — a move that comes as the former prison has emerged in public debate over potential new immigration detention facilities in Virginia.

As of Monday, the property remained listed for sale by Jones Lang LaSalle.

From full capacity to closure

Owned and operated by the Virginia Department of Corrections in Craigsville, the Augusta Correctional Center opened in 1986 and for decades housed up to 1,222 inmates at a Level 3 security classification.

Prisoners were required to maintain two years without disciplinary infractions to be eligible for transfer to a less secure facility.

In December 2023, VADOC announced that Augusta would permanently close, alongside three other state prisons, effective July 1, 2024.

The agency cited persistent staffing shortages, rising overtime costs and concerns about employee safety. According to VADOC, more than $1 million a year was being spent on overtime at Augusta alone, and as of January 2024 — months before its closure — the prison’s population had dropped to 489 inmates.

The decision to shut down the facility sent economic shockwaves through the surrounding community, where the prison had long been one of the region’s largest employers. Local officials warned at the time that the loss of hundreds of jobs would reverberate through Augusta County’s tax base, schools and small businesses.

In his memo to DGS Director Banci Tewolde, Youngkin said the proposed sale of the prison followed a competitive process and complied with state law and legislative authority.

He wrote that the administration sought informal guidance from members of the Joint Money Committees, who declined to provide written comments and “indicated that they had no notable concerns with proceeding under the authority granted by the General Assembly.”

The memo made no reference to the prison’s potential future use, including whether it could be repurposed as an immigration detention facility.

Youngkin said DGS evaluated multiple offers and concluded that Moxie Asset Group’s $3.25 million bid “represented the best outcome for the commonwealth,” citing its higher price, fewer contingencies, and lack of financing risk compared with other proposals, which he said were lower in value or carried greater execution risks.

He directed DGS to proceed with selecting Moxie’s offer and to coordinate with the Office of the Attorney General to complete the transaction.

The Mercury has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with DGS seeking all correspondence, records, and communications related to the marketing, bidding, evaluation, and proposed sale of the Augusta Correctional Center, including any contacts with prospective buyers or other state and federal agencies.

Spanberger pulls the plug

Spanberger moved quickly to undo the directive after taking office, ordering DGS to halt any action taken under Youngkin’s instructions.

“Any directives previously issued by the Office of the Governor to the Department of General Services related to the sale of the Augusta Correctional Center and related property are hereby withdrawn and should not be followed,” Spanberger wrote in a memo to Tewolde last week.

She added: “Given the existing comprehensive and competitive bidding process that resulted in multiple offers for the property, I hereby direct the Department of General Services to promptly review all received offers and provide a recommendation for a sale in a manner consistent with Virginia law.

A spokeswoman for Spanberger declined to comment further for this story.

Responding to an email from The Mercury, an ICE spokesperson said the agency had “no new detention centers to announce at this time,” while emphasizing that it is continuing to expand detention capacity nationwide.

The statement added that DHS continues to conduct law enforcement activities across the country and that “it should not come as news that ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S. and is actively working to expand detention space.”

It remains unclear whether there is any connection between Moxie and the Department of Homeland Security or its immigration enforcement arm, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Attempts to reach the company continue.

Local officials in Augusta County emphasized that they oppose the use of the former prison as an ICE facility.

In an email to The Mercury, Augusta County Administrator Timothy Fitzgerald said, “The Augusta County Board of Supervisors has made it clear that they do not support an ICE facility at this location.”

“Augusta County understands that several proposals for the Augusta correctional property were previously presented to Governor Youngkin’s office for consideration, some of which include options for ICE detention facilities,” Fitzgerald wrote.

“It is our understanding that these proposals have been transitioned to the Virginia Department of General Services (DGS) for the selection of a proposal for final negotiations.”

Augusta County, he concluded, “has been in communication with DGS to share our position regarding the sale of the property.”

The controversy in Augusta echoes a recent fight in Hanover County, where the local Board of Supervisors last week announced its opposition to ICE’s proposal to open a detention center in a privately owned warehouse.

The announcement followed days of public backlash and a single, packed public meeting that drew widespread attention and opposition from residents and immigrant rights advocates.

After the mounting backlash, the building’s owner withdrew plans to sell the warehouse to ICE, effectively halting the proposal.

ACLU documents put spotlight on Augusta

Plans for the Augusta Correctional Center first surfaced publicly last week through new documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union, along with the ACLU of Virginia and the ACLU of North Carolina. The records reveal that ICE is considering six new locations nationwide for potential detention centers — including Augusta Correctional Center.

The 98 pages of records were disclosed in response to a lawsuit filed by the ACLU and its affiliates in October 2025, after ICE failed to respond to a Freedom of Information Act request.

The litigation is part of a broader series of lawsuits seeking details about ICE’s plans to expand detention capacity across the Midwest, South, and West Coast.

According to the heavily redacted documents, the Augusta proposal notes that the detention center is “in discussions with a private operator to run the facility,” which is not named. The ACLU said people held at the facility previously endured sexual assault and that former officers pleaded guilty to smuggling drugs into the prison.

The disclosures came less than a month after The Washington Post reported that President Donald Trump’s administration is planning to convert industrial warehouses into large-scale ICE detention facilities capable of holding more than 80,000 people at a time, which ICE denied in the statement emailed to The Mercury.

“These will not be warehouses — they will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards,” the ICE spokesperson said.

Sophia Gregg, senior immigrants’ rights attorney with the ACLU of Virginia, said the organization pursued the records because of what they view as a dangerous and opaque expansion of immigration detention — particularly in Virginia, which already hosts two large ICE facilities in Farmville and Caroline County.

“It’s important that the public knows that ICE is continuing to expand detention across the country, and especially in Virginia,” Gregg said.

“Any detention center that has capacity like the Augusta facility, or others, would dramatically increase the tension here in Virginia, which would have just really devastating effects on the communities that they would be put in, and to the people that would be impacted, who could be detained there,” she said.

Gregg pointed to rising deaths in ICE custody, alleging systemic failures in medical care and oversight.

“What we do know about immigration detention in the last year is that it has had more deaths in ICE custody than in two decades, and there’s been six recorded deaths so far in this year alone,” she said.

She also cited reports that ICE has stopped paying medical providers as detainee populations surged, and that oversight mechanisms within DHS have been dismantled.

“These are deadly detention centers that are being expanded exponentially across the country, in secret, and no community wants them there,” Gregg said. “They are a blight on any community, and in Virginia, there’s no need for any new detention facilities.”

A new survey by the Republican polling firm Cygnal, released by the White House on Monday, found majority support for several core aspects of federal immigration enforcement.

According to the poll, 73% of respondents said entering the United States without authorization is breaking the law, 61% said they support deporting people who are in the country illegally to their home countries, 58% said they oppose efforts to defund Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and 54% said they support ICE enforcing federal immigration laws.

In contrast, a CBS News/YouGov poll conducted Jan. 14-16 found public sentiment toward Immigration and Customs Enforcement shifting in the opposite direction.

The survey found that about 61% of Americans said ICE’s operations are “too tough” when stopping and detaining people, and roughly half said they believe the agency is not prioritizing serious criminals but instead targeting broader groups of people.

The poll also found that a majority viewed ICE as making communities where it operates less safe, with 52% saying so compared with 31% who said operations make communities safer.

Lawmakers enter the fray

Concerns over detention expansion reached Capitol Hill last week, when U.S. Rep. Jennifer McClellan, D-Richmond, led Virginia’s House Democrats in sending a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons opposing planned ICE facilities in the commonwealth.

“Since early last year, we have witnessed an increasingly aggressive and militant ICE under your leadership,” the members wrote. “Most recently in Minneapolis, we have seen federal immigration agents kill two American citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, and injure dozens more.”

Across the nation, “there have been reports of overcrowded detention facilities with poor ventilation, inadequate climate control, limited access to shower facilities and basic hygiene, and insufficient food and access to meals,” the letter continued, citing conditions reported at ICE’s Washington Field Office in Chantilly last summer.

“We do not want the commonwealth to be home to large detention facilities rejected by our local communities, which make no one safer,” the lawmakers wrote.

“Rather, these facilities undermine public safety, erode trust between local law enforcement and the public, and place a federal agency indifferent to constitutional liberties near our schools, hospitals, and residential areas.”

For now, the fate of the Augusta Correctional Center remains unresolved.

Spanberger’s decision to rescind Youngkin’s directive has paused the sale and reopened scrutiny of how the state disposes of former prisons — particularly when those properties could be repurposed for controversial federal uses.

Hundreds of people gathered outside the Hanover County Courthouse on Jan. 28, 2026, in opposition to a proposal to create an ICE detention facility in the county. (Photo courtesy Ryan Burgess)

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