by Freeda Cathcart
Hanover, VA – Wednesday, January 28, 2026, there was a protest against a proposed concentration camp at the Hanover Board of Supervisors meeting.
It was an impressive turnout with thousands making their way on hazardous roads. Many people parked far from the center and walked over solid fields of ice to reach the protest. Passion and determination united people who gathered to protect their neighbors and community. People are determined to stand up to tyranny and stop the concentration camps.
Virginia 50501 Movement, RVA Indivisible, Central Indivisible and New Virginia Majority did an excellent job spreading the word about the dangers of the proposed concentration camp and people showed up in the bitter cold.
The meeting room and building were filled to capacity creating a large mass of people outside shivering. Several speakers shared their personal stories about how they felt ICE was threatening their families and community.
Shortly after the meeting started, people started cheering. It took a few moments for the entire crowd to learn that the Hanover Board of Supervisors had rejected the Department of Homeland Department’s (DHS) proposal to buy the warehouse. Then people started chanting: “We’re not leaving!”
The public comments during the Board of Supervisors’ meeting lasted for hours. They only allowed people who lived in Hanover to comment. The people from Hanover showed up and spoke out. They made it clear that a concentration camp didn’t belong in their community or anywhere in America.
While people outside were celebrating and chanting, people handed out sheets of follow up actions for people to take. One was to contact billionaire Jim Pattison’s Canadian company, Jim Pattison Developments, who owns the warehouse to demand that they not sell it to DHS.
Word quickly spread to Canadians who launched boycotts against the company. The company’s workers threatened to strike if the company sold the warehouse to DHS. By Friday, Jim Pattison Development’s issued a statement saying that they would not be selling the warehouse to DHS.
The number of prisoners with criminal convictions has dropped from around 62% in early 2025 to roughly 30% by November, while the number of people with no criminal records has increased, according to analysis from the Cato Institute and TRAC reports. Of those with records, many are for minor offenses such as traffic violations, with a small fraction (roughly 5-7%) having convictions for violent crimes, according to the Cato Institute and a New York Times analysis.
Instead of protecting public safety by deporting the “worse of the worse,” it appears that the ICE operations and concentration camps are a scam. The OBBBA that passed last summer obligated $45 billion to expand concentration camps and then the reconciliation package added an additional $11.25 billion for even more concentration camps. A concentration camp is defined as imprisoning people that have not had a court hearing or access to due process.
American taxpayers are paying for the disgusting conditions in these concentration camps that human rights watchers have declared amount to torture. Reports of worms in food, undrinkable water and sewage backing up into the facility are some of the stories coming out as people including U.S. citizens are being released after court orders. These disturbing conditions have been reported at the concentration camp in Farmville, Virginia.
Where is the money going? A private prison industry owned by publicly traded companies like CoreCivic. Major institutional investors, including BlackRock, Inc., Vanguard Group Inc, and River Road Asset Management LLC, hold the largest shares of CoreCivic. Check your 401Ks and IRAs to see if you are profiting off the suffering of people being held in concentration camps. If you are, contact the companies and demand they sell their shares of CoreCivic.
At the end of the Hanover protest, the Founder of Indivisible Virginia climbed up to a platform to address the crowd. She told them how their tax money was being used to hurt people. She encouraged them to continue to peacefully fight to close the for-profit concentration camp and deportation industry in our country. Then the crowd erupted in chants of “Shut it down. SHUT IT DOWN!”
Video of protest https://tinyurl.com/HanoverProtest
