(The Center Square) — New Jersey is suing the Trump administration to block plans to convert a warehouse in a tiny Morris County town into a regional immigration detention facility.
In a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court on Friday, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport and lawyers for the Town of Roxbury allege the proposed facility would mean an influx of 1,500 detainees to the community of 23,000 that "would strain beyond capacity the local water and sewage systems, threatening water availability and risking sewage overflows into land and water."
The 50-page complaint also argues that the warehouse — which the Department of Homeland Security purchased recently for $129 million — isn't a proper location for an immigration detention center.
“The Roxbury Warehouse is a logistics center fit for Amazon Prime packages, not people — among other things, it currently has a total of four toilets, despite the planned influx of up to 1,500 detainees and hundreds more ICE employees," the plaintiffs wrote. "The construction required to further establish the site as a detention center would have major environmental impacts to boot."
"It is thus unsurprising that DHS’s decision to establish a mass detention facility at the Roxbury Warehouse has drawn such powerful opposition across the political and ideological spectrum," they wrote.
In February, DHS confirmed that it was planning on purchasing warehouses around the country, including one in Roxbury, to be converted into U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities as part of the Trump administration's mass deportation efforts.
"These will not be warehouses – they will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards," an ICE spokesperson said in a February statement. "Sites will undergo community impact studies and a rigorous due diligence process to make sure there is no hardship on local utilities or infrastructure prior to purchase."
But the proposal has drawn bipartisan pushback from state and local officials, many of whom said they were not briefed on ICE's plans and only learned about the proposed facility through news stories. . Roxbury's all-Republican town council unanimously rejected the proposal.
“This plan won’t make the community or our state safer," Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill said in remarks. "It doesn’t just violate common sense, it violates federal law, not to mention zoning and building codes that any other property owner would have to abide by. The administration may think it’s above the law, but it will soon find out that that is not the case.”
New Jersey already has two ICE facilities where immigrants facing deportation are held by federal authorities: Delaney Hall in Newark, holds more than 1,000 detainees, while a smaller facility in Elizabethtown has capacity for hundreds, according to Homeland Security. The agency also plans to open an ICE detention facility at the U.S. military's Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.
Davenport said New Jersey and Roxbury claim the proposed facility violates the Administrative Procedures Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act, and the Immigration and Nationality Act. They've asked a federal judge to block the plans.
"Federal laws require — and our state and towns deserve — that DHS and ICE consult with the state and the township on major projects in their backyard," Davenport, a Democrat, said in a statement. "Instead, DHS and ICE are ramming through a secretive purchase and rushed renovation. We will not allow these ill-considered plans to happen."
Christen is a regional editor for The Center Square and co-host of Pennsylvania in Focus, a weekly podcast on America's Talking Network. Find her work in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Broad + Liberty, RealClear, and the Washington Examiner.
Commented