Any Roanoke resident with a smartphone and a curiosity about news saw ample footage of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swarming larger historically Democratic cities throughout 2025. Citizens made videos of ICE agents on their streets. Throughout the year, in contrast, Roanoke’s streets remained seemingly quiet. But in the places smartphones don’t reach and record — the cells and beds of the Roanoke jail — more than three times the number of ICE detainees were checked in last year than were the previous year, in a city that has historically been welcoming to immigrants. The Roanoke jail likely held about 206 ICE detainees in 2025, compared to 59 in 2024 and 16 in 2023, according to Cardinal News’ analysis of the Roanoke City Adult Detention Center’s invoices to the Department of Homeland Security. Determining an exact number for 2025 was complicated by discrepancies on several of the billing statements, and by the fact that detainee names were redacted from all documents. … Tameka Paige, spokesperson for the Roanoke Sheriff’s Office, said that the agency does not have on hand the breakdown of how many arrests were made by local police, versus how many were made by local ICE agents. That information is expected back to Cardinal News on April 1, which is the deadline set by the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

The Arlington School Board is poised to adopt more comprehensive conflict-of-interest rules, while also authorizing a hotline for staff to report suspected financial impropriety. Assuming the pair of new policies is adopted at the March 26 School Board meeting, the new hotline for waste, fraud and abuse will be in operation “in the coming weeks,” said Steven Marku, the school system’s director of policy and legislative affairs, at a March 12 meeting. The school system has engaged a contractor to oversee the ethics hotline. The vendor requires that formal policies be put in place before the system goes live. While APS currently has an ethics policy, it is “very bare-bones” and merely references adherence to the State and Local Government Conflict of Interests Act, Marku said.

The Winchester Planning Commission met this week for the first time since the panel got swept into a dustup last month regarding the Pledge of Allegiance. As a body, the commission on Tuesday did not address the controversy that was stirred at its Feb. 17 meeting after Chairman Beau Correll sought to have the commissioners recite the pledge at the beginning of every meeting. However, one member of the commission, Brandon Pifer, left his seat during the public comment portion of Tuesday’s meeting, stood at the speakers’ podium and recited the pledge. … Pifer, who is midway through his second and final four-year term on the Planning Commission, never recited the pledge at previous commission meetings or work sessions, nor had he ever left his seat during a meeting to address the panel as a citizen. … A video clip from the commission’s Feb. 17 meeting surfaced on social media the next day and showed members voting on the pledge proposal. However, the video was edited to make it look like Mayfield, Bloom, Jimenez-Torres and Dyck had decided to end the practice of reciting the pledge at the start of its meetings, even though the pledge had never been a part of the panel’s sessions. As a result, Mayfield, who made the motion to not add the Pledge of Allegiance to Planning Commission meetings, found herself the target of attacks and threats of violence that were posted online and texted to her personal cellphone.

Constituents of the Staunton River District in Pittsylvania County will have additional chances to sign a petition asking for the removal of the district’s current supervisor, Timothy Dudley, in the wake of a shoplifting charge. Those who started the petition several weeks ago will make it available at least twice next week more for fellow constituents to sign, if they feel Dudley should be relieved of his position as their district supervisor. … Dudley was censured by the Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors in February for violating the board’s Code of Ethics — a document all members signed, and pledged to abide by — but Robert Tucker, board chair, said the board itself cannot force a member to step down.

A recently introduced piece of legislation would expand Connecticut’s vexatious requester statute, which allows public agencies to petition the Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC) to temporarily ignore Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests from “nuisance” requesters. The bill would expand the grounds on which a requester could be found to be a nuisance to include threatening or harassing conduct, even if it was not related to a request. Connecticut is one of a handful of states where government officials can be allowed to temporarily ignore nuisance requests from people who use FOIA requests not primarily to obtain information but to harass public officials. So-called vexatious requesters often file large numbers of requests, often filed within a short period of time and each seeking numerous lists of similar records, and repeatedly contact public officials about the status of those requests.