I grew up in Southwood Mobile Home park, a housing community located off 5th Street on the outskirts of the City of Charlottesville. By 2007, it was the largest Latino neighborhood in central Virginia. It was a mix of Mexicans, Salvadorians and Hondurans, who took up residency with people from many places.

In 2007, it was purchased by Habitat for Humanity of Greater Charlottesville in a bold effort to save and support residents from the threat of displacement posed by encroaching developers, as well as a severely failing infrastructure that posed significant health and safety risks. At the time, the neighborhood had more than 1,500 residents, according to Charlottesville Tomorrow’s news reports.

Nearly 20 years later, Southwood has made monumental strides in transforming the land into an inclusive, mixed-income neighborhood; Habitat’s goal was to provide at least 500 affordable homes for many of the original residents. Truly a national model for resident-led development, it continues to expand, with an anticipated completion of 2037 and a total cost of more than $500 million. And the influx of support and financial investment hasn’t stopped. Habitat for Humanity was the recipient of a $29.1 million grant from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in December 2024.

Growing up, my memories of Southwood are rooted in a more impoverished and destitute experience. I knew we were poor. It was obvious in the environment we inhabited and evident in how my parents worked paycheck to paycheck just to make ends meet. My sister and I had free and reduced lunch. Our clothes were secondhand and sometimes donated. During our Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks, the schools would deliver us toy gifts and canned food with non-perishables. There were many Latino immigrant families like ours, hard-working but always struggling to find sustainable employment. My mother cleaned houses for the wealthy, my father was a lumberyard worker.

For many of the neighborhood youth, the thought of pursuing higher education was an unrealistic endeavor. Very rarely did you hear about someone from Southwood getting accepted into an institution of higher learning. But my sister, who is a year older than I, was the first in our family to attend a four-year university, eventually earning her undergraduate degree and MBA from Liberty University. I followed suit, attending James Madison University on a full-ride scholarship as a Centennial Scholar.

This was all made possible through organizations such as Head Start and the Boys and Girls Club, which played a vital role in cultivating a love of learning and instilling in us a deep desire to break free from the chains of poverty. The number of teen members at the Boys and Girls Club in Southwood was in the single digits when I was growing up — there were nine of us. Today, overall there are hundreds of members; the club is staffed with headquarters in a renovated building where a dingy corner store once stood. Kids go on trips to Kings Dominion and the Richmond Zoo. Tutoring and help with schoolwork are provided. The community uses the space for a large back-to-school festival in which backpacks and school supplies are given out. There was no city bus in Southwood growing up, but now CAT Bus Route 3 provides reliable transportation to key areas of Charlottesville for many Latino immigrants who cannot afford their own cars.

It is a stark contrast to my upbringing, where many in the community were trapped in the vicious cycle of poverty and its devastating outgrowth of addiction, domestic abuse, and the pressure to join gangs and engage in criminal activities.

To witness the incredible transformation of Southwood from 2007 to today, I feel an enormous sense of pride, jubilancy, and relief that the Latino community I was raised in, once threatened by profit-driven developers and certain displacement, now has resources, support and enhanced opportunities to climb the socioeconomic ladder.

And the growth and lasting presence of Latino immigrants does not stop in Southwood. There are numerous Latino-owned businesses that have opened and achieved lasting prosperity in the greater Charlottesville area. You can buy delicious Salvadorian pupusas at Mi Casita Restaurant. Try mouth-watering Mexican tamales at Super Amanecer. Enjoy a refreshing paleta ice cream from La Flor Michoacana, with its dizzying array of bold flavors and tasty fruits. Buy the freshest choice cut meats from El Tio Variedades, or authentic handmade coffee mugs from La Guadalupana Latino Market. Take home some exotic Latin American fruit from Amigo Mercado Latino. Need a stylish hairdo or color highlights? Head over to Ana’s Salon, owned by an entrepreneurial and established Salvadorian immigrant. For a fresh fade or beard trim, House of Cuts Barber Studio offers premier services by Fernando Garay, a prestigious barber and son of immigrants from Colombia and Puerto Rico. Find C’ville Bachata Social’s dancing classes at businesses all over the region, roll the dice on karaoke at Mejicali. And if all of those don’t sound enticing, you can never go wrong with the numerous Latino-owned taco and food trucks found throughout the city.

And perhaps no other indicator of the growth of the Latino community has been as pronounced as the annual Cville Sabroso Festival, which will be celebrating its 14th year on Saturday, Sept. 19. In Sept. 2025, the Charlottesville City Council formally recognized the role the festival plays in the community with an official proclamation — the first time the city honored the festival was for its landmark first year. Founded in 2012 by the nonprofit organization Sin Barreras, the festival is a celebration of Latino culture and heritage that offers an array of food, music, and dance performances, artisan crafts and community resources. The first festival was at the Incarnation Catholic Church; it was later held at McGuffey Art Center, Booker T. Washington Park, IX Park and, for the last two years, the pavilion on Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall. The popularity and surge of public support for Cville Sabroso over the years has been remarkable to witness.

My own journey with Sin Barreras reflects the deep civic connection Cville Sabroso inspires across our region. I first started as a volunteer helping out in any capacity needed to keep the festival running smoothly. This year, I am proud to serve on the festival’s Sponsorship Committee, working directly alongside local businesses, civic leaders and community partners. From long-standing local supporters who have anchored our efforts for years to enthusiastic new partners eager to invest in our mission, building these bridges ensures that Cville Sabroso remains a free, thriving hub of culture for every family in central Virginia.

Sadly, however, across the United States, a climate of fear fueled by immigration raids is forcing the cancellation of Hispanic heritage festivals and other public events celebrating cultural pride. Event organizers report that the perceived threat of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids is creating an environment of deep fear and apprehension. During our run-through of Cville Sabroso’s itinerary last year, we were informed that we simply could not promise a safe, celebratory space for immigrant attendees. We couldn’t say ICE would not show up.

Across the nation, the climate for large-scale cultural events has grown increasingly complex. In major metro areas like Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and New York City, many signature Hispanic heritage festivals and public gatherings were tragically canceled or scaled back, weighed down by an pervasive environment of fear surrounding ICE enforcement.

Yet, against that backdrop, Charlottesville chose a different path — and Cville Sabroso stood tall as a beacon of joy, resilience and unity.

While our leadership team faced the candid reality that we could not unconditionally guarantee federal agents wouldn’t show up, Cville Sabroso refused to let fear eclipse our purpose. We gathered anyway. We danced, shared our traditions, lifted up local vendors, and claimed our space on the Downtown Mall with unyielding pride.

In doing so, Cville Sabroso did more than just host a successful festival — it provided a national blueprint for what it truly means to honor and preserve Latin American identity. It proved that even when national circumstances attempt to quiet our heritage, a community rooted in courage and solidarity can create an undeniable hub of cultural appreciation.

The positive impact on our city, our families and our local economy is a testament to what happens when we refuse to retreat. Cville Sabroso isn’t just an annual event; it is a declaration that our stories, our contributions and our culture belong at the very heart of Charlottesville.

Throughout my upbringing, I’ve seen the incredible transformation of Southwood and the rise of a thriving Latino community in Charlottesville. Today, we face new battles. Increasingly hostile rhetoric has led to a climate of fear, threatening to dismantle the very progress my community has worked so hard to achieve. We see it in the drop in foot traffic at local businesses, the fear-fueled absences at cultural festivals, and the devastating cuts to programs that once lifted families like mine out of poverty. Head Start, which fueled my love for reading, has seen proposals to significantly cut its federal funding. Language immersion programs have been eliminated. ICE agents have entered our courthouses unannounced to apprehend immigrants, many with no criminal convictions or history of violence. These aren’t just statistics; they are direct assaults on the spirit of a community that has found its home and its voice here.

Yet, I remain steadfast in my hope. I believe in a future where Charlottesville lives up to its promise as a city of inclusion and opportunity for all. I envision a Charlottesville that isn’t just a beacon of hope for local immigrants, but a model for the entire nation. It will be a place where the cultural richness of the Latino community is not just tolerated, but celebrated and woven into the very fabric of the city. A place where the success of a single person, whether a business owner, a student, or a new homeowner, is seen as a victory for everyone.

The path forward will not be easy, but the groundwork has been laid. The stories of Southwood, of thriving businesses and vibrant festivals, are not just isolated victories; they are the foundation of a new Charlottesville. It is a city that understands its past and has the courage to build a better future. I have faith that Charlottesville will continue to choose courage, and in doing so, will become a city where every person, regardless of their origin, can live without fear and with the certainty of a brighter tomorrow.

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Former Virginia immigration judge Anam Petit was in a courtroom at the Annandale Immigration Court in September 2025, in between hearings and about to issue a decision on a case, when she got an email. 

It was from the acting director of the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the agency that oversees immigration courts, and said that she had been terminated, effective immediately. There was no further explanation. 

She stepped out of the courtroom for a moment to text her husband the news, but didn’t have time to wait for a response. 

“There were folks in the courtroom waiting for me to issue my decision,” she told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “One of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do was to give that oral decision, which is a very complex, difficult part of being an immigration judge, while my mind is trying to go in a million different directions and I’m trying to bring it back to this case. And then I packed up my office, because I had to give my government equipment back by the end of the day, and that was my last day as an immigration judge.” 

Across the country, cases like these have become increasingly common, immigration lawyers and former judges told Charlottesville Tomorrow. It’s emblematic of a broader politicization of the immigration courts by the second Trump administration that they say has had dire consequences for judicial independence and due process, including in central Virginia.

Mass firings reshape the nation’s immigration courts

Charlottesville Tomorrow spoke to four former immigration judges for this story, three of whom worked in Virginia courts and two of whom agreed to let Charlottesville Tomorrow use their names. 

It used to be rare for immigration judges to be fired, and they were generally only fired following serious complaints or issues, Petit told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “You would have never heard of an immigration judge being fired without cause,” she said. 

But since January 2025, the Trump administration has fired more than 113 out of around 700 immigration judges without cause or explanation, as reported by The Guardian, while others were reassigned or said they felt compelled to take buyouts or retire early to avoid being fired. The administration recently filled many of those empty roles in May 2026, swearing in 77 new permanent and five new temporary immigration judges, according to Reuters. 

One former Virginia immigration judge told Charlottesville Tomorrow that they accepted a buyout because they feared they would be fired.

Another former Virginia immigration judge told Charlottesville Tomorrow that they’d dreamed of being an immigration judge for their entire career, but left under the second Trump administration because they also feared that they would be fired if they didn’t leave on their own terms. Both judges spoke to Charlottesville Tomorrow on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. 

According to an April 2026 investigation by The New York Times (subscription required), White House and DOJ officials have been closely monitoring judges’ rulings, threatening disciplinary action or firing those who grant too many asylum or bond requests. More than two dozen immigration judges who served under the second Trump administration told The New York Times that they felt “a consistent sense of pressure to deport immigrants or risk losing their jobs.”

NPR analyzed the professional backgrounds of 70 immigration judges across the country who received termination notices between February 2025 and October 2025. The investigation found that judges with immigration defense experience accounted for the largest portion, or about 44%, of the firings. After the firings, judges with immigration defense experience made up 26% of judges remaining on the bench. The fired judges have since been replaced with less experienced temporary military judges or political appointees, The Guardian reported. The DOJ told NPR it does not target judges for termination based on their prior experience and that the terminations were not politically targeted.

A DOJ spokesperson told Charlottesville Tomorrow via email that, while they wouldn’t comment on personnel matters, the “DOJ is restoring integrity to our immigration system,” adding that the Biden administration was “forcing immigration courts to implement a de facto amnesty for hundreds of thousands” of non-citizens. 

DOJ leadership, including acting Attorney General Todd Blanche, have told outlets like the Associated Press that judges under the Biden administration were too lenient in granting asylum or other statuses to applicants, arguing that the Trump administration’s mass firings of immigration judges is part of a much-needed overhaul to help fix an inefficient system and cut down on the current backlog of almost 4 million cases. In an April 2026 press release, the White House described the firings as part of an overhaul of a “broken system” that included “replacing activist judges.”

The number of individuals granted asylum spiked during the Biden administration, as did the number of denials. That’s because the number of asylum petitions filed in immigration court rose to “record highs” during the later part of his administration, according to data from the Congressional Research Service. The number of applications have remained at roughly the same level during the Trump administration.

Immigration judges oversee civil immigration cases, deciding whether people can remain in the United States or be removed. They hear asylum claims, removal proceedings and other cases involving immigration status. People typically appear before an immigration judge after the federal government initiates removal proceedings against them or when they seek forms of relief that require a judge’s approval, such as asylum, cancellation of removal or certain waivers.

Petit was fired from Virginia’s Annandale Immigration court, the primary court handling cases for Northern and central Virginia, including Charlottesville. Her asylum grant rate of 8.4% was above the current national average of 7.3%. Most of the Annandale immigration judges who were fired or retired under the second Trump administration had higher-than-average grant rates. The vast majority of Annandale’s remaining immigration judges have asylum grant rates below the 7.3% national average. Under the Biden administration, asylum grant rates averaged about 45%, rising from around 30% during the first Trump administration.

“I definitely think that the terminations are political,” Petit told Charlottesville Tomorrow. Petit and other former immigration judges who spoke to Charlottesville Tomorrow said that, from what they’d seen, the administration disproportionately targeted women and judges of color for termination. While the DOJ does not disclose personnel data, some former immigration judges have filed lawsuits alleging the same. Among them are former judges Florence Chamberlin, Irma Pérez, Carla Espinoza and Tania Nemer, who allege they were unlawfully fired because of their sex, race, national origin or political affiliation.

Petit was sworn in as an immigration judge in September 2023 after working as an immigration attorney and adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center. Despite receiving high performance evaluations, Petit said she was fired one day shy of completing her two-year probationary period, a mandatory trial period for all new immigration judges. Now, she’s returning to work as an immigration lawyer.

“Everyone I know in my class who got fired in those days had the exact same experience I did, which is, you got an email, you didn’t get a reason for your termination, you had positive probationary reviews, and then you’re terminated,” she told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “I had a conversation with my assistant chief immigration judge after I was fired, and he told me that he didn’t know about the decision, he wasn’t a part of it and he wrote me a glowing probationary review.” 

“The people being fired, they have wonderful reviews, they’re doing amazing work,” Jeremiah Johnson, a former San Francisco immigration judge and vice president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, agreed with Petit. “Their supervisors in their courts are taken by shock that they’re being fired. This is not performance-based.” 

Johnson was fired by email in November 2025. He was one of at least 18 San Francisco immigration judges to be fired since 2025, leading to the closure of the San Francisco immigration court, one of the courts most likely to grant asylum applications in the U.S. Like Petit, he said there was no explanation for his firing. 

“I received an email in the afternoon that said, pursuant to Article II of the Constitution, the Attorney General has decided to remove you from your position as an immigration judge, effective today,” Johnson told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “Within 30 seconds, I couldn’t even print out the letter. I was locked out of the computer system, packed up, escorted out of the building.” 

“Judges are being tapped on the shoulder mid-hearing, taken out of their hearing, when they receive that email,” he added. “Imagine that you’re before a judge, you’ve waited years to have your case, and the judge, mid-hearing, says, the Attorney General has just removed me from my position. What confidence does that give you in the system?” 

Political pressure threatens due process, former immigration judges say 

Immigration judges are supposed to have independent judicial decision-making authority, Johnson said. But “by firing judges with no stated cause or reason, you send a chilling effect upon judicial independence.” 

The judges who are left, Johnson added, are operating “under constant threat or fear” of being fired. Because of the mass firings, many feel an implicit pressure to rule in-line with the Trump administration. 

“As it stands, the system itself is not independent,” Johnson told Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Christopher Day, a U.S. Army Reserve lawyer who was assigned to serve as a temporary immigration judge in Virginia began hearing cases in late October. He was fired by early December after granting asylum or other relief in six out of 11 cases he heard, which is out of step with the Trump administration’s priorities, as reported by the Associated Press.

Petit also described feelings of pressure and intimidation when immigration judges are seeing so many colleagues terminated. “And despite knowing many judges who are still trying to do the right thing and uphold due process, it’s just getting harder and harder for them emotionally and mentally to do the right thing.” she said. 

At the end of the day, Petit said, the issue isn’t partisan or political — it’s constitutional. When immigration judges lose their independence, she said, it risks the due process rights that the Constitution guarantees everyone, regardless of citizenship.

“The consequences are dire. We are seeing a complete erosion of due process at the courts,” she said. “There is a loss of public trust. Both immigrants and many of the attorneys who represent them have completely lost faith in the immigration court system to be just and fair and rooted in the due process that these immigrants are entitled to.”

“If you care about judicial autonomy and you look at the immigration system, you should be extremely concerned, regardless of your politics,” she added. “Not just citizens, not just residents, but all people are entitled to due process. And the question is, do we still think that’s true? Because if it’s not true for my neighbor who was born on a different side of a border than I was, pretty soon it’s not going to be true for me or for you.”

Elizabeth Schmelzel, who is a Charlottesville-based senior immigration attorney with the Legal Aid Justice Center and a University of Virginia School of Law lecturer, agreed.

“The politicization of the immigration court is ghastly,” she said. “You cannot believe that in the United States of America, in 2026, judges are being yanked off the bench in this summary way with no reason in a one-line email, because frankly, they aren’t complying with the goals of certain people.” 

“My colleague was at a hearing several months ago for a bond case, and in the middle of the hearing, the judge received an email saying, ‘you are not allowed to hear detained cases anymore,'” Schmelzel said. “I had appeared in front of that particular judge more than any other judge in my career. She’s not biased towards us at all, I’ve lost many cases with her, I’ve won some as well. But she was removed, as was our other detained judge, because they were granting too many bonds in the eyes of the administration.”

Until last year, temporary immigration judges generally had to be former immigration judges, administrative law judges or DOJ attorneys with at least 10 years of immigration law experience. But after slashing those qualifications in August, 2025 so that any licensed attorney may now serve as a temporary immigration judge, the Trump administration is replacing fired immigration judges with temporary judges who often have no immigration law experience.

This has contributed to a significant loss of institutional knowledge across immigration courts, Johnson told Charlottesville Tomorrow. 

“With the firing of experienced immigration judges, you don’t have that mentorship, that depth of knowledge that new judges can rely on,” he said. “I learned from judges who had that institutional knowledge, and then I could pass that on to other judges. That’s lacking now.” 

On top of everything, the immigration judges that are left, including the less experienced, temporary judges, are now expected to fulfill a much heavier caseload at a much faster rate than in the past. 

“When I took the bench, it was one hearing in the morning, one hearing in the afternoon,” Johnson said. “When I was fired, I was scheduled for six individual hearing cases a day.” 

“Individual judges no longer have the choice to take more time to navigate complex cases,” he added. “It’s a structural problem — the chilling effects of the firings, but also not being able to handle your own docket.” 

Combined, these factors have left immigration lawyers feeling exhausted and demoralized.

“It feels impossible for immigrants to get their due process,” Petit, who is once again a practicing immigration lawyer in Virginia, told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “From a mental health perspective, I feel more of an emotional toll doing these cases.” 

“This is the worst it has ever been,” Schmelzel agreed. “It is indescribable. When people ask me how my day was, oftentimes I don’t even know what to say.” 

High turnover of judges leads to ‘confusion and chaos’

Schmelzel is seeing the effect on her own cases in Charlottesville, she said. 

For instance, it’s much harder to win asylum cases, she told Charlottesville Tomorrow. Since the start of the second Trump administration, the number of asylum seekers approved for protection has fallen dramatically, from more than 50% under some periods of the Biden administration to historic lows of just 7%, according to The White House.

The Board of Immigration Appeals, the highest administrative body for interpreting and applying immigration laws, also began ruling disproportionately in favor of the government after the Trump administration cut its membership by nearly half and filled the remaining slate of 15 judges with Trump appointees, as reported by NPR. Since then, the Board has ruled in favor of the government in 97% of publicly posted cases throughout 2025, increasing drastically from 64% under Biden in 2024, according to NPR.

How you can help

Since it was reconstituted, the Board has enacted multiple rulings limiting the rights of non-citizens, Schmelzel told Charlottesville Tomorrow. For instance, In the past, immigration judges had the authority to grant release from detention on bond if they determined that detainees without disqualifying criminal records were not a danger to the community or a flight risk. But in September 2025, the Board reversed decades of precedent, essentially guaranteeing mandatory detention for undocumented immigrants by proclaiming that anyone who crossed the border unlawfully is ineligible to be released on bond. The new rule makes people more likely to self-deport before exercising their legal rights rather than risk staying in detention indefinitely, immigration lawyers told Charlottesville Tomorrow.

“The biggest change, and one of the hardest parts of immigration work right now is just how many people are detained,” Petit told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “Detained cases just take on a whole new level of resources and mental health and emotional toll to the respondents, to their family members and to the attorneys.” 

Recent Board decisions have also severely restricted the rights of children in immigration court, Schmelzel added. In November 2025, the Board issued a decision limiting the ability of immigration judges to pause removal cases for minors awaiting Special Immigrant Juvenile status petitions to be processed or finalized. 

“This kid is probably going to get a visa that leads them to a green card, they don’t really need to be in court,” Schmelzel said. “That is no longer considered good cause for pausing or terminating immigration court proceedings, which is a very significant change.” 

“So, again, this idea that it’s all about efficiency isn’t really borne out by the data, because it’s more efficient to close that process and let somebody else take that slot in immigration court,” she added. Instead of ensuring efficiency, she said, the change makes it easier to deport more individuals, in this case children, who might have otherwise had a good case to stay in the country.

Petit agreed. 

“It’s very inefficient to fire immigration judges if your goal is efficiency,” she said. “Judges are there one day and gone the next, and that leads to confusion and chaos.” 

“The separation of powers is crumbling,” Schmelzel added. “As an immigration practitioner, that is the thing that gives me this existential fear for my country. What is happening now is a deviation from even the worst times.”

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The Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee monument, removed in 2021 from Charlottesville’s Market Street Park, will be replaced by a 27-foot bronze baobab tree, known for its life-giving fruit and pan-African symbolism.

The Jefferson School African American Heritage Center announced Friday, on the fifth anniversary of the statue’s removal, that MASS Design Group will create the new public work. Swords Into Plowshares, the community-driven public art initiative, is moving forward with a plan to repurpose the bronze from the removed Robert E. Lee statue. The decision follows a three-month community engagement process in which nearly 1,000 people ranked three final design proposals, with MASS Design Group’s project, “Rooted,” emerging as the top choice for 64% of respondents, according to a JSAAHC press release.

“Opportunities like this are extraordinarily rare,” said Jha D Amazi, principal of MASS’s Public Memory and Memorials Lab. “To transform the very material of a monument is to acknowledge that history cannot be erased, but it can be reimagined.”

For Charlottesville, the announcement marks a decade-long process, which began in 2016 when then-15-year-old high school student Zyahna Bryant petitioned the Charlottesville City Council to remove the Lee statue. During the Aug. 12, 2017 “Unite the Right” rally, counter protester Heather Heyer was killed when James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters. Fields was convicted of first-degree murder in 2018. Additionally, two state troopers died in a helicopter crash responding to the scene, and 19 others were hospitalized.

Once the statue was removed, JSAAHC took possession of the monument to decide what should be done with a symbol that represented racial hierarchy. The statue was installed to advance the “Lost Cause” narrative.

MASS Design Group, JSAAHC and Swords Into Plowshares will now work with community members and Dana King, the sculptor behind the vision, to further develop the project. Public engagements and design changes will continue to ensure the new monument will be “both locally grounded and nationally resonant,” the press release said.

MASS Design Group’s work, which focuses on helping communities design landscapes, memorials and spaces of remembrance, is included in the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama.

“One year after white supremacists attacked our city, the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center led a 100-person delegation from Charlottesville on a pilgrimage to the national lynching memorial in Montgomery, Alabama,” said Jalane Schmidt, co-founder of Swords Into Plowshares, in the news release. “There we experienced first hand the powerful healing work of this design firm, MASS. We look forward to collaborating with MASS in the community engagement process to transform our public space to support our striving for multiracial democracy.”

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After two large-scale immigration raids conducted jointly by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Greene County Sheriff’s Office on May 14 and June 23, some Central Virginia residents plan to attend the next Greene County Board of Supervisors to express their views.

One group plans to express concerns about the Sheriff’s cooperation with ICE, while another plans to show their support for law enforcement outside the meeting, according to a social media post.

The supervisor’s meeting will take place on Tuesday, July 14, and will include a public comment period. While immigration is not on the agenda and the Board has no direct oversight of the county’s Sheriff’s Office, at the last meeting, residents expressed concerns about the Board’s approval of budget items related to the Sheriff’s contract with ICE.

Over the past year, Greene County has embraced one of the closest working relationships with ICE of any local law enforcement agency in Virginia. Since signing a formal contract with ICE in May 2025, called a 287(g) agreement, the Sheriff’s Office has repeatedly assisted federal immigration enforcement efforts through traffic stops that witnesses say appeared to target work trucks and people of color.

This Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting follows weeks of heightened community conversations about the county’s partnership with ICE. It also comes a month after the June 9 Board meeting; that meeting was filled with people who supported the public comments of three Greene County residents who expressed concerns about the Sheriff’s participation in the May ICE raid. An official recording of the meeting shows at least a dozen attendees standing in support during the public comment period, while a video from The Piedmont Journal Recorder shows residents holding signs. Residents raised concerns about racial profiling and a lack of transparency from the Sheriff’s Office and urged county leaders to reconsider approving federal funding tied to the Sheriff’s Office 287(g) partnership with ICE.

Greene County Sheriff Steven Smith is an elected constitutional officer who operates independently from the Board of Supervisors. The Board cannot direct the Sheriff’s Office or decide whether it partners with ICE. But in Virginia, boards of supervisors are tasked with distributing funds to all county offices. Several people associated with the County who did not want to be named told Charlottesville Tomorrow it was unclear to them if legally, in the state of Virginia, the Board of Supervisors can decline to appropriate those funds.

During the June 9 Board of Supervisors meeting, Greene County resident Melanie Johnson criticized the board for enabling and expanding the sheriff’s ability to collaborate with ICE through its recent budgetary approval.

“Those decisions are tearing families apart, undermining public safety and terrorizing this community,” Johnson said during the public comment period. “Under Virginia law, the sheriff is an independently elected constitutional officer, but you control the money, you approve his budget, his vehicles and his equipment and you have repeatedly voted to accept federal ICE money. You have done some of it through the consent agenda, without public discussion, and that is not neutrality, it is participation.”

The July 14 meeting will be the first regular Board meeting since the ICE raid on June 23 when 49 people were arrested.

Tuesday’s meeting will provide an opportunity for Greene residents to directly address county leaders during the public comment period. The meeting will begin in closed session at 5:30 p.m. in the County Administration Building, located at 40 Celt Road in Stanardsville, Virginia. The open meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. in person and on a livestream, linked from the agenda. Public comment, or “Matters from the public,” are the last item on the agenda.

While we can’t cover every story that’s important to you, we do our best to be responsive to your needs. We use tips from readers to choose which stories to cover, to incorporate information into broader reports or to help us decide how to grow Charlottesville Tomorrow. Here’s where you can tell us what you think we should be covering.

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On July 22 and 23, the Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless will hold its first-ever summer Point in Time Count, and it’s looking for community members’ help.

The Point in Time Count, or PIT Count, is mandated by the federal government and is meant to provide a snapshot of how many people are experiencing homelessness in communities all across the country. It’s held every year, on the fourth Wednesday of January. But in recent years, some communities have started doing a second count in the summer to get a better understanding of who in their community is experiencing homelessness and why.

“Conducting a summer Point in Time Count has been on my radar since I stepped into this role about two and a half years ago,” said Shayla Washington, executive director of the Blue Ridge Area Coalition for the Homeless. BRACH is a local nonprofit organization that coordinates services among the area’s homeless service providers, including The Haven day shelter and People and Congregations Engaged in Ministry (PACEM), a nonprofit that runs an overnight shelter during the colder months.

“I believe a summer count will more accurately identify the number of beds that are truly needed for people who are unsheltered in the warmer months when our seasonal shelter, PACEM, is not open,” Washington said.

Getting a sense of that need is important, because BRACH, The Haven and PACEM are currently working together with the City of Charlottesville on a plan for a year-round overnight low-barrier shelter located in a former office building at 200 Holiday Dr.

Currently, the area doesn’t have enough shelter beds to serve everyone who needs one.

In order to conduct the count accurately, BRACH needs help, and Washington hopes community members will want to pitch in. 

“BRACH is only a staff of three, and we need to survey dozens of locations in a short period of time,” Washington said. The count starts at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday, July 22 and goes through 8 a.m Thursday, July 23.

Community members interested in volunteering can sign up online for a particular location and time slot. BRACH will host training sessions prior to the event so that volunteers can learn how to interact with unhoused community members in a safe and respectful way, and how to properly conduct the survey.

While we can’t cover every story that’s important to you, we do our best to be responsive to your needs. We use tips from readers to choose which stories to cover, to incorporate information into broader reports or to help us decide how to grow Charlottesville Tomorrow. Here’s where you can tell us what you think we should be covering.

The post How many people need shelter? A new count in the summer will help us plan, says Charlottesville advocate appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Local news needs fresh ideas. 

Across the nation, the loss of trust in mass media and the decline in paid subscriptions have left major gaps in local visibility for businesses and nonprofits. Outlets reach fewer readers while charging higher rates. Audiences have migrated to online and to nonprofit news platforms. 

In this new reality, Charlottesville Tomorrow has attracted national recognition for our innovative approach to local news, from prioritizing community impact over clicks to publishing in-depth, high-impact reporting.

Another way we innovate that is central to our work is by building new revenue streams. To run an impactful newsroom, including reporting staff, operations, technology and our investments in engaging with the communities we serve, we need resources. In addition to contributed revenue from philanthropic sources, building up earned revenue — our local sponsorships and public notices — is crucial for long-term sustainability.

As a community-driven newsroom, we are building revenue models that are beneficial to our region and align with our organizational values of trust, community and equity.

That’s why we’re excited to announce our new Community Growth & Visibility sponsorship program, which will offer five grant-funded sponsorship packages to small businesses and nonprofits in Charlottesville, with support from the City of Charlottesville’s Vibrant Community Fund.

With this public investment, sponsorships will support organizations to promote their programs, services and events on Charlottesville Tomorrow’s platforms. The program resonates with our newsroom’s commitment to community and inclusivity and will help organizations often cannot access commercial marketing.

Charlottesville Tomorrow offers free, accessible and community-centered journalism that reaches an average of 56,000 engaged readers per month. We have nearly 9,000 newsletter subscribers, and 10% of our subscribers are donors. We have an average email open rate of more than 50% — higher than the industry standard.

“High-cost, low-return or paywalled advertising options, along with over-saturation on digital platforms, have made meaningful reach hard to come by,” said Revenue and Partnerships Lead Sakeena Alkateeb. “As a community-based nonprofit newsroom with an engaged audience, we can offer a solution through our sponsorship program.”

We designed the Community Growth & Visibility program to help organizations gain visibility, attract new supporters and sustain their operations.

In alignment with the City of Charlottesville’s strategic plan framework and commitment to Justice, Equity, Inclusion, Diversity, and Racial Equity, sponsorship packages will be awarded to Charlottesville-based small businesses and nonprofits that have a stated commitment to equity and community benefit. See the City’s definitions here and here.

Business owners from historically underrepresented groups (race, ethnicity, LGBTQIA+ identity, religion, incarceration history, and more) and fewer than 20 full-time employees, as well as nonprofits with budgets under $1 million that serve historically underrepresented communities, are eligible to apply.

Charlottesville Tomorrow is proud to be among just a few of the newsrooms that are piloting innovative earned revenue models. We appreciate the guidance from the Henrico Citizen newsroom, which shared valuable insight and recommendations with us as we structured our new sponsorship program that combined small business marketing with community benefit.

“We aim to level the playing field and help build a more vibrant, interconnected community,” said Alkateeb.

The post We’re launching a program to boost small businesses and nonprofits — and strengthen independent, local journalism appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Recent large-scale immigration enforcement operations in Ruckersville, Greene County have left many central Virginia residents with questions about how federal immigration policies work, who is most affected and what ongoing changes could mean for local communities. 

A free public presentation in Ruckersville on Friday, July 10 aims to provide some answers. The presentation will be delivered by Charlottesville resident Alyson Ball, who says she has researched immigration policy for years and is a volunteer with the International Rescue Committees. Ball has written that she spent the last 10 winters in southern Arizona, independently studying the U.S.-Mexico border so that she can inform the general public about immigration. In this session, she will offer a nonpartisan overview of the U.S. immigration system, explain recent policy changes and discuss which community members are currently most vulnerable, according to a description of the upcoming event. 

Ball regularly gives presentations on immigration around Charlottesville and Central Virginia. Two years ago, for example, she gave a presentation at The Center at Belvedere in Charlottesville in partnership with the community organization Welcoming Charlottesville. She is a retired adjunct faculty member at the University of Virginia’s School of Continuing and Professional studies and volunteers with immigrant support groups in Arizona in addition to the IRC in Charlottesville. Her presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session.

The presentation, titled “U.S. Immigration: An Overview,” will take place at 6:30 p.m. at Westover United Methodist Church, located at 2801 Fredericksburg Rd. in Ruckersville, VA.

While we can’t cover every story that’s important to you, we do our best to be responsive to your needs. We use tips from readers to choose which stories to cover, to incorporate information into broader reports or to help us decide how to grow Charlottesville Tomorrow. Here’s where you can tell us what you think we should be covering.

Editor’s note: This Short and Important report was updated on July 9, 2026 to include more information about the speaker at the event.

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As Virginia was about to pull its local law enforcement from participating in federal immigration operations, Greene County Sheriff’s deputies were lining roads around Ruckersville alongside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents.

On June 23, the Greene County Sheriff’s Office joined ICE in their largest joint immigration enforcement operation to date, stopping dozens of vehicles and arresting 49 individuals, according to a statement provided days after the event by an ICE spokesperson.

Seven days later, on July 1, a new state law went into effect that bans exactly that kind of local cooperation with ICE, attorneys who spoke with Charlottesville Tomorrow said.

The law, House Bill 1441, sharply limits the role local police and sheriff’s offices can play in ICE operations. In almost all cases, local officers are now barred from assisting the agency unless federal agents present a warrant signed by a judge or magistrate for a specific individual. 

“Virginia law enforcement cannot provide a lot of informal assistance to ICE’s civil immigration enforcement unless they have a judicial warrant,” said Rohma Javed, the director of the Immigrant Justice Program at the Legal Aid Justice Center, and one of several immigration lawyers who worked with legislators to write the new law. “A judicial warrant requires them to go before a federal judge, present facts, and get that signed and approved by a judge. They would need that before they are able to collaborate in many ways with local law enforcement.”

The law also limits when local law enforcement agencies can enter into formal partnerships with ICE.

These new restrictions could dramatically change the way Greene County works with the agency.

Over the past year, Greene County has embraced one of the closest working relationships with ICE of any local law enforcement agency in Virginia. Since signing a formal contract with ICE, called a 287(g) agreement, in May 2025, the Sheriff’s Office has repeatedly assisted federal immigration enforcement efforts, including large-scale operations that seemed to rely on local deputies to help identify and detain people suspected of being in the country illegally.

But the new law doesn’t mean Greene County’s cooperation with ICE will immediately end. Laws similar to this one passed in other states have faced a multitude of court challenges. And the Greene County Sheriff himself has been vague when asked whether he will continue cooperating with ICE.

“I’m a Constitutional officer,” Sheriff Steven Smith told Charlottesville Tomorrow in February, after a reporter asked if Smith intended to end his cooperation once the new law took effect.

“I was elected by the citizens to keep the county safe, and that’s what I’m doing. I’m arresting people that have warrants. They can’t stop me from doing that.”

What’s more, on the day of the joint operation in June, a man who identified himself as Sheriff Smith was captured in a video taken by Charlottesville-based attorney Andrew Wilder Young saying: “I don’t care what the governor says.”

According to Young, Smith made the comment after Young had said that “this isn’t allowed in the state of Virginia, to be cooperating with ICE.”

Smith did not immediately respond to Charlottesville Tomorrow’s follow-up questions about what he meant by those remarks, how the Sheriff’s Office plans to comply with the new law or whether the office intends to continue its 287(g) agreement with ICE.

Greene County Sheriff says partnerships with ICE and other agencies are essential to safety

During the June 23 operation, Sheriff’s deputies joined ICE in an hours’ long effort to stop motorists. The operation began by 6:30 a.m., witnesses told Charlottesville Tomorrow. Around two dozen marked Sheriff’s office patrol vehicles and unmarked SUVs moved through streets and highways in and around Ruckersville, mainly stopping what witnesses described as “work trucks” and arresting individuals inside.

The operation came at the beginning of a sharp increase in immigration arrests around the country, the New York Times reported. Between June 26 and June 30, ICE arrested more than 10,000 people.

The way the arrests were carried out in Greene County also reflected broader national trends. Data from the Deportation Data Project, a group of academics and lawyers who obtain federal records through Freedom of Information Act requests and litigation, shows arrests are increasingly taking place in communities instead of during ICE check-ins or at jails and prisons. The group also found that the number of noncitizens arrested without criminal convictions increased nearly ninefold compared with the last six months of 2024.

ICE has not released the names of the individuals arrested in Greene County, nor has the agency answered Charlottesville Tomorrow’s questions about whether any of them had warrants, criminal convictions or charges.

How you can help

In the days following the operation, Greene County’s cooperation with ICE drew criticism from community members and advocacy groups.

Around 20 people gathered the following day for a protest in the county, holding signs condemning the ICE action and the county’s involvement, according to a report from 29News. The ACLU of Virginia released a statement accusing the Greene County Sheriff’s Office of “directly coordinating with ICE to terrorize and racially profile our communities.”

In response, Sheriff Smith made a post to the Greene County Sheriff’s Facebook page on June 26 that seemed to defend the operation.

“I understand that some people may not agree with every law we are tasked with enforcing. However, our responsibility is not to decide which laws to enforce — it is to enforce the laws and serve our community professionally and fairly,” Smith wrote. “To accomplish our mission, we work closely with our law enforcement partners, including ICE, the FBI, the DEA, ATF, neighboring sheriff’s offices, and local police departments. These partnerships are essential to protecting our citizens and maintaining safe communities.”

Officials provided no information about the 49 people arrested. Nationally the number of people arrested for immigration violations with no criminal convictions has gone up

Smith has long spoken positively about his office’s partnership with ICE.

In February, he described the federal agents his deputies work with as “some of the most compassionate people that I’ve been around.”

“They are really good at what they do,” he told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “They know how to talk to people. They’re very calming, and just a great bunch of guys.”

At the time, ICE was also facing scrutiny elsewhere in the country. Smith spoke with Charlottesville Tomorrow about a month after ICE agents shot and killed two U.S. citizen protestors, and shot and injured an immigrant in January’s Operation Metro Surge in Minnesota. In those cases, the state is suing the federal government to cooperate in investigating the violence, according to ProPublica.

Smith, however, described a very different kind of experience with the agents he worked alongside in Greene County. He said that during one stop, ICE agents let someone go when they noticed he was accompanied by a child. 

“They caught the guy,” Smith said. “He needed to go back, to be deported. He had a kid with him. The ICE agent said, ‘No, leave him alone, he’s got a kid. Let him go.’ That’s the kind of compassion that they have.”

Smith shared that story before Greene County’s two large-scale joint operations, including the June 23 operation and an earlier one on May 14. During that time, local advocacy groups say ICE and the Greene County Sheriff’s Office were conducting regular smaller immigration enforcement actions all in the same area, by U.S. Route 29.

“We’re not going after law-abiding citizens. It’s not like in the media, where we go and bust people’s doors down,” Smith told Charlottesville Tomorrow in February. “We’re going after criminals and people that came over here, and a lot of people got licensed to drive trucks with no knowledge, no experience, can’t even speak English, can’t read our signs.”

An ICE spokesperson also defended the partnerships in response to Charlottesville Tomorrow’s questions about the June 23 operation. The spokesperson sent a prepared statement confirming that ICE arrested 49 people in a joint operation “in conjunction with their 287(g) partners” in the Ruckersville area.

“Partnerships with law enforcement are critical to having the resources we need to arrest illegal aliens across the country,” the spokesperson said in an email. “When politicians bar local law enforcement from working with DHS, our law enforcement officers have to have a more visible presence so that we can find and apprehend the criminals let out of jails and back into communities.”

The statement did not answer many of Charlottesville Tomorrow’s questions, including how many vehicles were stopped or how many people were questioned. They did not explain how law enforcement identified the people who were arrested, how many had outstanding warrants or whether any had previous criminal convictions.

Javier Raudales, the director of Charlottesville-based nonprofit immigrant support organization Sin Barreras, disagreed with the characterization that the Sheriff’s Office and ICE are targeting criminals.

Raudales told Charlottesville Tomorrow that the group had received around 10 phone calls in the first couple of days following the June 23 raid from individuals whose loved ones were caught up in the raid. 

“We’re hearing the stories of the people who are getting arrested, and it’s members of our community, it’s neighbors who really are just trying to live life and take care of their family,” Raudales told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “And we’re also concerned about how it affects those that are getting left behind here. They’re still trying to pick up the pieces.”

Other Greene County residents agree with Raudales. Several criticized the Sheriff’s cooperation with ICE during a Jun. 9 Board of Supervisors meeting following the May 14 joint operation. In that meeting, an ICE spokesperson confirmed that the agency conducted “administrative arrests” of 26 people.

An administrative warrant, issued by a government agency, is typically used for civil enforcement of immigration, in cases where the agency believes an individual overstayed their visa, violated the terms of their immigration, or committed a crime. However, this kind of warrant does not require probable cause the way a judicial warrant does. Judicial warrants are issued by a judge or magistrate independent of the government agency, and have a higher legal bar to allow agents to search or seize people or property.

That distinction has become more important as immigration enforcement has changed. More people are being arrested in what the Deportation Data Project is classifying as “collateral” arrests, according to an April report from Stateline that analyzes a little more than six months of ICE arrests. The report describes cases in which agents arrested people “based on appearance or proximity to someone wanted on a warrant.” About 70% of these arrests were people who had no criminal conviction.

“If deputies are conducting traffic stops that lead to immigration enforcement, what criteria are being used? How are these individuals being identified?” Kelly Marquez asked Board members during the public comment section of the June meeting. “Are they being targeted because they are a suspect of serious criminal activity or because they are believed to be undocumented or because they look [like] Latinos?”

Melanie Johnson of Barboursville shared that her neighbor and his elderly father were arrested by Sheriff’s deputies after a traffic stop, turned over to ICE and taken to Virginia’s ICA Farmville detention center. Her neighbor had lived in the country for 16 years, owned a home and a successful business and has two children who are U.S. citizens, Johsnon added.

“He has no warrant, no conviction, poses no threat, but he was targeted for the color of his skin and the type of vehicle he was driving,” Johnson said. “A 15-year-old girl cries herself to sleep every night terrified that she will never see her father again. A 21-year-old son is trying to hold his family together while knowing his father may be deported because they can’t afford the $10,000 needed for an immigration attorney.”

Johnson said that the Sheriff’s cooperation with ICE creates a “climate of fear in Greene County — fear that keeps hardworking neighbors from driving to and from work, from reporting crimes, from taking their kids to school, from supporting local businesses and from living their daily lives without worrying that one wrong turn could destroy everything they’ve worked so hard to build.”

Virginia put guardrails on local law enforcement’s work with ICE

That sentiment is partly what drove lawmakers to pass House Bill 1441.

“It’s about relieving the fear that exists in some new American and immigrant communities, amongst undocumented — as well as documented and naturalized and U.S.-born American citizen population,” Del. Alfonso Lopez (D-Arlington), who introduced the bill, told VPM news in March.

“Far too often, we’re seeing federal immigration enforcement continue to act recklessly as they target not only immigrants who have committed no criminal act, but also naturalized and U.S. American born citizens.”

The new law is sprawling, touching nearly every aspect of how local law enforcement agencies work with ICE.

Besides requiring a judicial warrant before any local cooperation can occur, House Bill 1441 fundamentally rewrites the agreements that allow local law enforcement agencies to partner with ICE.

The law does not outright ban those partnerships, called 287(g) agreements. Instead, it allows them to continue only if ICE agrees to a series of conditions written into state law.

One of the new law’s terms requires ICE agents to wear proper identification on their uniforms and vehicles while operating in Virginia. ICE must also provide local law enforcement agencies with the names and ranks of all agents who will participate in an immigration enforcement operation at least seven days before it begins.

ICE must also agree to cease conducting “any immigration enforcement activity on the property of any school, faith based organization, or courthouse within the commonwealth.”

If ICE declines to follow these and a few other rules, Virginia agencies are prohibited from entering into or maintaining the partnership.

The law gives any local law enforcement agency with an existing agreement until Sept. 1 to sign a new agreement that follows these restrictions, or the partnership will be void.

“The new law reflects the General Assembly’s decision to establish those very clear limits on when local officers might participate in civil ICE enforcement,” said Javed, the Legal Aid Justice Center program director who helped lawmakers write the bill.

The DOJ is suing to block the new Virginia law. The agency has lost similar cases in other states

House Bill 1441 has already faced court challenges. 

The U.S. Department of Justice sued Virginia on June 11, arguing that House Bill 1441 is unconstitutional because it attempts to regulate how federal immigration agents operate and interferes with agreements between ICE and local law enforcement agencies. The lawsuit also challenges a separate new law that restricts federal officers from wearing masks while conducting their duties.

A judge has yet to rule on whether House Bill 1441 violates the Constitution.

Alex Kornya, litigation director at the Legal Aid Justice Center, told Charlottesville Tomorrow the lawsuit is overall “very similar” to Justice Department lawsuits in other states challenging laws that limit or regulate cooperation between state and local law enforcement agencies and federal immigration authorities. Some of those cases have already been dismissed.

For example, in December 2025, a federal district court dismissed the Justice Department’s challenge to an Illinois law limiting cooperation between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. As with other similar cases, the Justice Department has appealed that decision.

“So other courts so far have rejected the very arguments that the DOJ is making now to strike down the 287(g) ban,” Kornya said. “The lawsuit doesn’t raise any legitimate or new arguments that haven’t been addressed by other courts and rejected by other courts.

“I think,” he added, “that when it comes to the question of, can a state control its own law enforcement and restrain the powers and authority of its own law enforcement, I would say the legal equities are on the side of the state here.”

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Hollymead Elementary Principal Joseph McCauley, who was placed on administrative leave after the school’s social emotional learning coach was one of two ACPS staffers arrested on charges of sexual crimes involving children, will not return to school in the fall, interim Albemarle County Public Schools Superintendent Chandra Hayes told parents on July 2.

Hayes stepped into the interim superintendent role after the Albemarle County School Board asked former superintendent Matthew Haas to resign during the June 11 school board meeting Soon after Haas’ resignation, McCauley was placed on administrative leave pending an internal investigation. 

“I’m sorry that we dropped the ball as a division,” Hayes said to the handful of parents who attended a meeting at Hollymead Elementary on Thursday. “I’m sorry that your last experience in this space may not have felt yours or been inviting and positive, but what I’m here to do is hopefully help us move forward. I don’t take lightly the responsibility that the school board has placed upon me.”

Hayes repeatedly apologized to those few parents and teachers who were able to make it to the meeting. She also informed them that ACPS administration is working to make changes, asking them to fill out a survey that was sent to parents and teachers. 

“I fully acknowledge that the last few weeks have been extremely difficult for this community and for the Albemarle community in general,” said Hayes. “I want to make sure what I do is right, and what we do as a district is right for you as well. We don’t have unlimited staff or unlimited resources, but there are things that we can do, and that’s listen and take from what you share with us and put into play.”

Hayes added that the social emotional learning coach (SEL), an unlicensed position, will be eliminated at Hollymead effective immediately, and will be phased out in the rest of ACPS schools. 

“We felt it best that this school did not receive another SEL coach or mental health support specialist,” said Hayes, adding that they will hire a full-time counselor. 

All mental health specialists will require a certification, said Hayes. 

“If you don’t have a license, there’s plenty of things that you could do,” she said. “Counseling, mental health support is not that, and so they’re going to work to clearly identify what those roles can do, what they should be doing, so that when they’re in buildings, principal staff know exactly what to expect.”

ACPS is hoping to have an interim principal for Hollymead by June 13, Hayes said.

While we can’t cover every story that’s important to you, we do our best to be responsive to your needs. We use tips from readers to choose which stories to cover, to incorporate information into broader reports or to help us decide how to grow Charlottesville Tomorrow. Here’s where you can tell us what you think we should be covering.

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Fifeville residents packed the auditorium of the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center auditorium June 24. It was the first time the neighborhood had the opportunity to meet face-to-face with representatives from Landmark Properties, a developer who, for the past year, has planned to build a seven-story luxury student housing complex in the heart of their neighborhood, one of the city’s last remaining majority-Black areas.

Charlottesville City Council has already approved the project, despite the city’s Board of Architectural Review saying no, and despite Fifeville residents showing up to official meetings and community forums over the past year to oppose it. 

And while the residents plan to continue to push back, they also continue to hit barriers that prevent them from turning their concerns into change. Currently, they don’t have a way to compel City Council to reconsider its decision, and they must work within a zoning ordinance that they say gives them little agency in the future of their neighborhood.

“I was not feeling optimistic,” John Mason, a retired University of Virginia professor who has lived in Fifeville for 14 years, told Charlottesville Tomorrow a few days after the meeting. 

During the meeting, residents demanded that City Council reverse its recent decision to approve a Certificate of Appropriateness for the building, called The Mark. In order to do so, they said, one of the councilors who voted ‘yes’ — Vice Mayor Natalie Oschrin, Councilor Lloyd Snook or Mayor Juandiego Wade — would have to want to change their vote and call for a re-vote. Residents talked about getting together to pressure them.

The most recent version of City Council’s rules and procedures, adopted in March 2024 and posted on the city’s website, states that a City Councilor can make a motion to reconsider, “subject to the restrictions set forth within City Code Sections 2-73 and 2-74.” The Code states that a motion to reconsider can be made, but only during the same meeting at which the original vote was taken.

The rules and procedures document also says that a motion to reconsider “may not be used in a land use decision involving a rezoning or a special use permit,” and The Mark decision did not involve either. 

But there will be no re-vote, Charlottesville City Attorney John Maddux told Charlottesville Tomorrow in an email on Tuesday. 

“The Development Code does not contain a procedure by which City Council may re-vote on, rescind, or otherwise undo its decision once it authorizes a Certificate of Appropriateness,” Maddux said, citing Section 5.2.7 of the city’s Development Code and Section 15.2-2306 of the Virginia Code.

That section of the Development Code has to do with Major Historic Review, which the Board of Architectural Review must undertake when a project involves any property located in an Architectural Design Control District or Historic Conservation District, and for any Individually Protected Property.

There are two Individually Protected Properties on the land where Landmark intends to build The Mark, which is why it needed a Certificate of Appropriateness from the BAR. The BAR did not issue the certificate, but Landmark appealed that decision to City Council, and Council voted to overturn the BAR’s decision and issue the certificate.

Even if they could re-vote on the decision, Snook and Oschrin both said that they wouldn’t change their vote in favor of the Certificate of Appropriateness for The Mark. 

“I am sorry that our decision on this matter has upset so many people in the neighborhood,” Snook told Charlottesville Tomorrow. “I still think it was the right decision.”

“Ultimately, there is no way to reach affordability without building more units to meet or exceed demand,” Oschrin said in her email. “It’s like musical chairs, if there aren’t enough, no matter how much subsidy is available, someone will be left out.”

With a re-vote out of the question, residents are figuring out their next steps.

“I’m realistic about how difficult it will be to prevent The Mark from being built,” Mason said. “I also don’t think we’ve reached the end of the road.”

‘What you’re doing is not right. I hope you hear us.’

The neighborhood has been fighting The Mark for more than a year. Landmark Properties, a Georgia-based real estate company with more than $15 billion in assets, filed preliminary plans for The Mark in mid-June 2025. Since then, Fifeville residents have attended every City Council meeting and many Board of Architectural Review meetings to voice their opposition to The Mark and to the zoning ordinance that is allowing it to happen.

They have been joined at all of these meetings by allies from other neighborhoods, most notably 10th and Page, another of the city’s historically Black areas. Residents of 10th and Page are watching a similar story unfold in their neighborhood, as LV Collective, a Texas-based real estate company with more than $6 billion in assets, plans to build an eight-story luxury student housing complex on West Main Street, right behind the Westhaven community.

As people arrived at the June 24 meeting, some Fifeville residents talked amongst themselves about what they envisioned for their neighborhood. Housing for seniors on a fixed income, one said. Housing for people who are struggling to stay in the neighborhood as housing costs rise. Townhomes. Affordable housing for low-income students would be nice, another person said. None mentioned luxury student housing.

As Landmark project lead Hamilton Reynolds and attorney Valerie Long started a presentation full of information about the project, four community members held up two large bold-lettered banners on either side of the stage.

“Listen to Fifeville,” one said. “Fifeville Residents Over $$!” said the other.

Reynolds and Long talked about The Mark’s size, location, zoning, and the number of car and bicycle parking spaces, among other things. They also talked about the $4.5 million the project will contribute to the city’s affordable housing fund.

“Oh, my God,” someone whispered when Long and Reynolds got to a slide with an architectural rendering of the building as it would look among the small one- and two-story homes along 7th Street SW. 

A few slides in, community members had seen enough. 

“I don’t see the church,” Gloria Beard said, referring to First Baptist Church, the oldest continuously operated Black church in the city, and one of the oldest in the state.

“You can see the church in the distance,” Long said, gesturing to the projection screen, where a sliver of the church peeked out from behind The Mark.

People in the crowd burst into laughter, and when Long tried to quiet them and continue the presentation, the laughter turned into a torrent of admonishing comments, with multiple community members shouting at Long and Reynolds at once.

“We’re not interested in the presentation,” an older Black woman called out. After many months of city meetings, residents knew the ins and outs of the project. They didn’t need a slideshow to tell them what they already knew. Instead, they had questions to ask and comments to make. 

Residents didn’t hold back when they repeated the litany of reasons why they don’t want The Mark in their neighborhood. They’re worried about increased traffic on already-narrow streets, about their property values and therefore their tax bills going up. They’re worried about being pushed out of homes they can no longer afford, and about transient UVA students taking over the neighborhood Black residents built. They’re worried about that because it’s been happening in their neighborhood for years.

Kelly, a Black man who did not give his last name when he spoke, is a member of a family who has lived on 6th Street SW in the Fifeville neighborhood for more than 60 years. 

“I’ve seen that neighborhood change to the point where my neighbors are no longer my neighbors, to the point where I look like a foreigner,” he said. “We’re probably one of the very few Black families in that neighborhood.” 

He asked the developer to have “an ounce of compassion” for the residents before them. “What you’re doing is not right. I hope you hear us.” 

Rosia Parker asked why Landmark chose this particular spot. 

Three reasons, Reynolds replied: proximity to the university, the zoning ordinance and the property was for sale.

Some people sucked their teeth at that. Others groaned. A few laughed.

Zoning code gives residents little power to influence development

Throughout the meeting, residents accused Landmark of holding the meeting as a box-checking exercise.

The city’s Development Review Procedures Manual advises, but does not require, developers to meet with the neighborhood they’re hoping to build in at the start of the development process.

The Mark is being built “by right,” meaning that it fulfills all of the requirements laid out in the zoning ordinance and doesn’t need special approval. The only thing it did need approval for was the exterior design and its plan for two historically protected structures on the property. Per the ordinance, that decision was up to the Board of Architectural Review. 

Because the BAR is looking at design and historic preservation only, it could not legally take residents’ comments into consideration. The BAR ended up denying the certificate, on the grounds that they believed the building wasn’t appropriate for the neighborhood, in December 2025. 

The developer immediately appealed it to City Council, and in a 3-2 vote, City Council overturned the BAR’s decision in May 2026. That gave Landmark the Certificate of Appropriateness it needed in order to proceed to working with city staff on next steps, including a development review and plan approval.

Throughout the entire process, residents learned again and again that they have relatively little power within the zoning ordinance to control the future of their neighborhood. 

“It removes a lot of leverage and potential to actually make their concerns heard and translate into changes,” City Councilor Michael Payne said of the zoning ordinance in a phone call with Charlottesville Tomorrow a couple of days after the June 24 meeting.

“The new development code requires a community meeting, as we saw on Wednesday, that meeting is almost meaningless,” Payne said. 

Residents wanted to know why Landmark only decided to meet with the neighborhood after The Mark had approval from the city, and not at the beginning of the process. No one on the development team answered that question.

Dozens of people spoke up during the meeting, some giving impassioned speeches about their own experiences, others asking questions that they hoped would further reveal the developer’s intentions and attitudes toward the neighborhood.

Fifeville resident Frank Bechter asked Landmark why, after hearing all of residents’ concerns, the company doesn’t abandon the project.

“It’s complicated,” Reynolds said. “We’ve spent a significant amount of money already towards this. We have a fiduciary responsibility to complete this.” 

For many in the room, that response confirmed what they said they’ve known all along, that money, not people, is the concern.

Residents discuss other options to push back

Throughout the meeting, residents repeatedly talked about showing their power as a neighborhood. 

“It’s time for us to rise up as a people,” Zyahna Bryant, speaking as a community member and not in her capacity as a Charlottesville School Board member, said. “We don’t want to see Vinegar Hill happen again. We need to see that the people have the power.”

Residents’ takeover of the meeting was a reminder of that, Mason said afterwards.

“I was really happy with the way the citizens of Charlottesville took over the meeting,” Mason said. “It was no longer the developer’s meeting. They had to listen to the anger of the people of the community, the sorry and sadness of the people in the community at the disappearance of Black Charlottesville, of Black neighborhoods, of the sharply declining African American population in the city. They had to listen to both anger and heartbreak.”

So, what power do residents have in this situation now that pressuring City Council to re-vote isn’t an option? It depends on who you ask.

Some residents want City Council to change the zoning ordinance.

Oschrin and Snook, who were put on the spot by residents during the June 24 meeting, are interested in amending the ordinance, but in ways that don’t necessarily line up with what the community wants.

“What I would be in favor of is revisiting the question of how the zoning ordinance will treat neighborhoods like Fifeville going forward,” Snook told Charlottesville Tomorrow in an email on Monday. However, Snook believes that because so few parcels in Fifeville have the high-density zoning that The Mark properties have, “this project isn’t likely to spread in Fifeville.” Still, he’s open to reviewing the ones that do.

Oschrin has different ideas. She wants to see the zoning code amended to allow for more mixed-use commercial areas, something that makes neighborhoods like downtown and Belmont, as well as Fifeville and 10th and Page, attractive. That way, “development pressures can spread out,” she said. 

She’s also open to reducing limitations on Jefferson Park Avenue, where a lot of off-campus student housing is currently located. The idea is that encouraging greater density along that corridor would draw more student-oriented housing in that direction, she said.

City Councilor Payne, who voted against The Mark and who has repeatedly amplified residents’ concerns, has an entirely different idea of how, and when, the ordinance should be amended.

Payne wants to expand the “Core Neighborhood Overlay,” which in the zoning ordinance covers parts of the city’s neighborhoods that were deemed most vulnerable to gentrification pressures. He is also interested in either banning student housing altogether in the expanded Core Neighborhood areas, or making student housing allowable not by right, as it largely is now, but by special exemption permit only. In the previous ordinance, buildings of a certain size needed approval from City Council.

That could give Council leverage to require developers to collaborate with the neighborhood on what is known as a “Community Benefits Agreement” (CBA). It’s a type of contract between community-based organizations and the developer of a proposed project. In these agreements, the community commits to support the development of the project in exchange for the developer’s commitment to things that would benefit the neighborhood.

So far, only one development in Charlottesville has a CBA. That’s the 501 Cherry Ave. project, also in Fifeville. And the CBA exists because residents asked for it, City Council supported that request and the developer, Woodard Properties, agreed.

Previously, city officials have said that the 501 Cherry Ave. project and its CBA should be a model for how development should happen throughout the city. But that’s not what’s happening under the current zoning ordinance. 

It is unclear whether Landmark Properties is willing to work with the neighborhood on a CBA. As of publication, Reynolds had not responded to Charlottesville Tomorrow’s questions on the matter.

Oschrin said she hopes that the neighborhood and the developer can come up with a CBA, despite the limitations of the agreements, including their enforceability under the current zoning ordinance and development code.

“Even if a CBA is not currently legally enforceable, it can still be the difference between nothing and something,” she told Charlottesville Tomorrow.

Another thing City Council could do, quickly, is change the definition of “student housing” in the zoning ordinance, Payne said. Currently, it is defined as housing that is rented by the bedroom and that is within one-half mile of the edge of UVA Central Grounds or UVA North Grounds as determined by the city’s zoning administrator. 

And, when a project is defined as “student housing,” it is not required to include affordable units, and it pays 60% less into the city’s Affordable Housing Fund than non-student housing projects, Payne pointed out. (In The Mark’s case, the non-student housing rate would mean putting about $10 million, instead of $4.5 million, into the Affordable Housing Fund.)

If Council decides to go in that direction, they could also let residents of the neighborhoods decide what to do with that money, Payne said.

During a community meeting in the basement of First Baptist Church on June 22, community members discussed the options before them, including a CBA. They seemed wary, wondering how it would be enforced if it’s not required under the zoning ordinance.

Other options on the table include asking Landmark to contribute money (on top of its contribution to the Affordable Housing Fund) to a community land trust, which could help ensure affordable housing in the neighborhood, or having the area designated as a historic conservation district, which could limit future development.

Both have their pros and cons, said resident Deanna McDonald. McDonald is part of the Charlottesville Food Co-Op, a community group trying to open a grocery store in the 501 Cherry Ave. development.

“It is important that people understand what they are signing up for and signing off on when they decide to do or not to do these things,” McDonald said. She urged everyone to make the effort to understand the upsides and downsides of each option.

The best way to do that, she said, is to show up to meetings. 

Some community members are debating taking yet another action: petitioning to remove from office the three councilmembers who voted to overturn the BAR’s decision and allow The Mark.

Virginia law lays out possible reasons for removal, including “neglect of a clear, ministerial duty of the office,” “incompetence in the performance of the duties of the office” and the conviction of certain crimes. In order to bring such a petition before the Circuit Court, the petition must detail the reasons for removal and be signed by a number of registered voters who reside within the jurisdiction of the officer equal to 10% of the total number of votes cast in the last election for the office that the officer holds.

Charlottesville City Councilor seats are at-large positions, meaning that they represent the entire city. According to the Virginia Department of Elections, 25,619 votes were cast in the most recent City Council elections, when Wade was last elected. Based on those numbers, a petition to remove Wade would need the signatures of 2,562 registered voters.

Both Oschrin and Snook were last elected in the 2023 City Council election, when 27,036 votes were cast, according to the Virginia Department of Elections. A petition to remove either of them would require 2,704 signatures.

If a petition for recall gets enough signatures, it would go to the Circuit Court for a trial.

It’s up to the Fifeville community and their allies what they’ll do next, and the Fifeville Neighborhood Association is ready to listen and facilitate further conversations, FNA president Carmelita Wood told Charlottesville Tomorrow on Wednesday.

“Why adopt our residents’ vision into the Comprehensive Plan, if the City is not going to follow it?” Wood continued. “Our neighbors feel abandoned. We will continue to listen to Fifeville residents and try to find a path forward.”

That’s what Wood and others have done for years, and they’re not stopping now. 

“One thing about this neighborhood is that its people will not go down without a fight,” Mason said. “The alternative is giving up, and we are not a giving up set of people.”

The post For Fifeville residents, the fight over a seven-story luxury student housing complex isn’t over yet appeared first on Charlottesville Tomorrow.