ICE Bought a Warehouse in a Conservative New Jersey Town. Locals Are Now Fighting Back.

On Christmas Eve, residents of Roxbury, New Jersey, a township 50 miles west of Manhattan, learned from a Washington Post article that the Department of Homeland Security had plans to purchase a vacant warehouse on the outskirts of town and convert it into an ICE detention facility. The news was part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s larger plan to buy up warehouses across the country to house 92,600 new detention beds for expediting deportations, a scheme acting ICE director Todd Lyons likened to “[Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.” 

By mid-January, Roxbury’s Township Council, an elected body of seven people, all Republicans, passed a resolution affirming that it “unequivocally opposes” modifying town warehouses for ICE use. Roxbury Mayor Shawn Potillo, who forms part of the council, stated during the vote that his approval of the resolution did not mean that he opposes the country’s immigration laws. 

The resolution was merely symbolic; it wouldn’t actually stop ICE from buying the warehouse in town and turning it into a detention center. In February, it was announced that DHS had purchased the warehouse for $129 million, double its assessed value. The federal government plans to retrofit it into a processing facility for detainees who will stay three to seven days before being transported to detention centers elsewhere or removed from the country. The federal government initially claimed they intended for the warehouse to hold up to 1,500 detainees but have scaled that estimate back to 542 following public opposition. 

“We must reiterate in the strongest possible terms that this property is not an appropriate location for a facility of this nature in a suburban community,” Potillo and the council wrote in a press release after the feds announced they were moving forward with the plan. 

Roxbury’s reasons for opposing the facility are varied. For one thing, the council estimated that losing the warehouse to ICE would cost the city $85 million in tax revenue over 30 years. Local leaders have also raised concerns about what it will mean for the environment, traffic, and property values. One resident who spoke at the January meeting said she was worried the facility would affect her ability to sell her home. 

Last month, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport joined with Roxbury township to sue to stop the warehouse conversion. They alleged in a federal lawsuit that DHS had ignored federal policies requiring the government to engage with state and local governments and consider their positions, as well as provide proof that a project won’t harm the environment before moving forward. They also said that the agency’s plans require creating additional capacity for water and sewage, which could hurt a protected region of New Jersey where Roxbury is located. That region provides drinking water to 70 percent of the state’s residents and is subject to strict development standards. 

The fight against the facility has brought together an unlikely coalition of immigrant rights advocates and town leadership who have said they support the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant agenda but do not want to host an ICE facility. Small towns across the U.S. caught in clashes with DHS over warehouse conversions have turned to similar arguments in a bid to stop the projects. 

“The town council is unsurprisingly caught in a very difficult position, because they are having to fight efforts from the Trump administration, despite them being very supportive in general, of Donald Trump and the Republicans in power,” William Angus, the co-founder of immigrant advocacy organization Project No Ice North Jersey Alliance, or Project NINJA, told Bolts. 

On Feb. 28, members of Project NINJA organized a public protest against the Roxbury ICE facility in coordination with 22 other cities around the country where similar facilities are being proposed. Still, Angus said, the group’s concerns don’t resonate with everyone in town. 

“I can very vigorously argue about the humanitarian side of why this is wrong … but with some people, that argument has no sway,” said Angus. “So we have to focus on the issues that will speak to those people, because at the end of the day, there are many good reasons—from the environmental to the water and the sewer—that make this a bad fit for the town, regardless of where one sits on the political spectrum.”

Potillo did not respond to a request for comment. 

The warehouse is located in New Jersey’s Highlands region, a bucolic 1,300-square-mile stretch in the northern part of the state that spans from the Delaware River in the west, all the way to the New York border. The area is protected under 2004 legislation that created rules for water and wastewater usage in the area and limited development. Despite this, DHS in a January letter to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP), described extensive plans to transform the warehouse, including upgrading existing water and sewage systems or installing new ones. 

The region is overseen by the New Jersey Highlands Water Protection and Planning Council, a body in charge of reviewing development applications for compliance with the legislation. Ben Spinelli, executive director of the council, told Bolts that the warehouse should have never been built in the first place because of its proximity to vernal pools and forest that are key to maintaining the quality and quantity of water that feeds into the state’s drinking water supply. 

“Because this is a site that contains significant, important natural resources, that should have kept it from ever being developed anything close to the warehouse level, let alone a place where you’re going to house [people]—we have a number of towns in the region that don’t have 1,500 people living in them,” said Spinelli. 

The warehouse’s previous owner, the Texas-based real estate investment firm Dalfen Industrial, bought the building in 2023 as a “last-mile” delivery site, but it has remained vacant since. 

The facility has just four toilets and is approved to supply 12,000 gallons of water each day. But increasing the capacity for 1,500 people would require roughly 187,500 gallons each day and add more than fifteen times the amount of sewage currently processed by the facility, according to the lawsuit. Despite DHS needing approval from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection and the Highlands Council to complete the project, Spinelli said that the agency has not filed plans for changing the water system. The review of the site could happen quickly, he explained, but there would likely be new legal challenges to the final decision filed by the losing side that would stretch on for years. 

“It’s not as easy as just signing off on a permit,” Spinelli told Bolts. “It’s a very complex multi- input system that you’re dealing with here.”

The lawsuit faults DHS for not getting the necessary approvals from the Highlands Council and NJDEP, as well as for violating the National Environmental Protection Act (NEPA), which requires federal agencies to work with state and local governments to ensure a project doesn’t harm the environment. That can include an extensive environmental impact report or a shorter assessment. DHS has done neither, according to the lawsuit. 

Roxbury and New Jersey also claim that the Trump administration violated the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act, which stipulates that the federal government consult with state and local leaders about its plans. According to the suit, “DHS accounted for none of these views here, declining to discuss its plans with state and local officials before making its final decision, and failing to affirmatively solicit their views.” 

In response to the lawsuit, the US Department of Justice, which represents DHS, said that it didn’t need to follow such approval policies because the project will have such minimal impact on the area that it qualifies for an exemption.They argue the increase in capacity could possibly require upgrades to the wastewater system but it’s too early to tell whether that will be the case and they’re not legally required to disclose those determinations at this point. DHS did not return requests for comment from Bolts.

DHS also has to contend with New Jersey laws aimed at preserving endangered species and the water supply that either prohibit development altogether or require a mitigation plan and public comment before approval. 

According to a DHS memo on its warehouse conversion plan, the agency intends to open all of the new facilities nationwide by November 30, 2026. The Roxbury warehouse could be converted as early as June, according to the suit, though the lawsuit itself could delay things—on April 7, New Jersey and the town filed a motion for a preliminary injunction to stop work on the site. A hearing on the motion is set for May 12. 

Though Roxbury has pointed to environmental concerns in its arguments against the warehouse conversion, local leadership has continued to support the Trump administration’s ramp up of immigration enforcement. Township Attorney Anthony Bucco, also a state senator, has sponsored the New Jersey Laken Riley Act, which would allow undocumented immigrants charged with crimes such as theft to be detained without bail. Advocates unsuccessfully called for Bucco’s removal as township attorney because of conflict of interest issues related to his support for pro-ICE legislation. 

Representative Tom Kean Jr., a Republican representing Roxbury in Congress, has faced criticism from town leadership for his inaction on the project. Kean “did not engage to the level we had hoped to provide the advocacy our residents deserved,” the town wrote in its February press release announcing the DHS purchase. Since then, Kean has introduced The Local Taxpayer Protection Act, which would create a federal grant program for towns that lose property tax income or experience increased utility costs because of a DHS detention facility. 

Earlier this month, Kean wrote a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin imploring him to “take a deeper look” at the department’s plans for Roxbury. Potillo also extended an invitation to the DHS secretary but had not heard back as of publication. 

Kean in 2022 defeated Democratic incumbent Tom Malinowski for the seat and is up for re-election in the swing district in November. His Democratic opponents have seized on his inaction, with one calling his sponsored legislation, which has not moved, a “bullshit bill.”

Roxbury’s fight against the warehouse mirrors similar battles state and local governments are engaging in as ICE attempts to carry out its plans to convert warehouses across the country into mega prisons. In many areas, local leaders have resorted to novel methods centered around environmental preservation to try to stymie construction.

In Social City, Georgia, a small town outside of Atlanta where ICE planned to incarcerate up to 10,000 detainees, residents put a lock on the water meter because the federal agency did not provide information about how water and sewage usage would impact the community. 

Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown in February sued over plans to create a processing facility in a Williamsport warehouse, citing similar concerns expressed in Roxbury about the facility’s effects on the local environment. Court filings showed the federal government’s environmental review, which determined that any adverse impact would be “minor,” took just a single day to conduct. A judge granted a request for a preliminary injunction earlier this month, ruling that the expedited review violated NEPA and ordering the federal government to conduct a more comprehensive environmental assessment.

Michigan also filed a lawsuit alleging that DHS ignored federal guidelines as it plans to build an ICE detention facility in the small city of Romulus, a suburb of Detroit—which local leaders similarly argue would harm the local water supply, economy, and public safety. Federal officials also completed a one-day environmental review there, finding that the property qualified for a streamlined analysis applicable to projects that “normally do not significantly affect the quality of the human environment.” They claim the detention center wouldn’t increase infrastructure needs, even as they note that it may need to expand the sewer system. The Michigan attorney general filed for a preliminary injunction in late March, with a hearing set for May 18. 

“We’re seeing a lot of different uses—whether it’s through public pressure, economic pressure—the use of local government ordinances to say, ‘this is not the type of thing that’s going to be helpful to our communities,’” said Shayna Kessler, director of the Advancing Universal Representation Initiative at the criminal justice reform organization, Vera Institute of Justice. 

In New Jersey, advocates are now pushing for nearby towns to pass ordinances restricting future warehouse conversions if ICE’s efforts in Roxbury fail and the agency chooses to build there instead. Project NINJA, the immigrant advocacy group opposing the warehouse, has compiled a list of 280 similar warehouses or vacant industrial buildings in the area for sale. The town of Sparta, about 12 miles north of Roxbury, unanimously passed an ordinance in March prohibiting the development of detention facilities. Sparta Mayor Dean Blumetti told Bolts in an email, “I will pass on the opportunity to discuss further. I will just state that we, the governing body, are always proud to have the opportunity to take action that reflects the wishes of our residents.” 

Angus of Project NINJA said it’s been difficult to convince North Jersey Republicans to be proactive about stopping future ICE development in the area. 

“There are things that they can do to protect their residents… but that has not found a very receptive audience, and it’s mainly because Republicans don’t want to criticize the Trump administration,” he said. “They’d rather stay out of it.”