The Trump administration is moving ahead with plans to convert warehouses into immigration detention centers, NPR's Jasmine Garsd reported, including in Roxbury, New Jersey, where neighbors confronted local leaders a few nights ago and demanded the site be closed.
Earlier this year, Homeland Security purchased 11 warehouses to convert into ICE detention centers across the country. The plan sparked protests from Maryland to Arizona to New Jersey. Lawsuits from state attorneys general led DHS to halt conversions pending environmental impact assessments, Garsd said, and a number of other warehouses are being sold. This week, though, the government signaled it is moving forward with two of the sites. It completed the environmental assessment in Arizona. And in Roxbury, a contract to convert the site was awarded "despite a court order barring DHS from doing that," Garsd told Morning Edition. NPR's account did not name the Arizona community or identify the court that issued the New Jersey order.
Why now, and what happens next
Garsd said she reached out to Homeland Security and was told the department could not respond because of ongoing litigation. The revival came immediately after the midterms, in which New Jersey went from three Republican House members to one. Garsd said the fight in Roxbury "represents the larger power struggle that's to come" and the question Democrats will face when they take office next year: how much they can actually rein in ICE.
In her view, the fact that the administration started working again on the warehouse project within days of the election is an indication that "there's no slowdown for immigration enforcement coming." In Roxbury, Homeland Security still has to present an environmental assessment. Once that happens, local activists and the attorney general could sue if they find it lacking, she said.
Neighbors have accused local officials of serving Homeland Security's interests. Mayor Shawn Potillo, who NPR said left a recent meeting amid heckling, told the network that he is opposed to the project and will continue pursuing legal and political avenues to stop it. The report is about national detention plans, not the Bay Area facility fights already covered in local stories, though the same question — how far ICE's warehouse model can go — is now a live one for the incoming Congress.