New Jersey officials seek injunction to halt planned ICE detention camp in Roxbury
The filing argues the proposed warehouse conversion would overwhelm local infrastructure and bypass required reviews.
Local and state officials have asked a federal judge to block the Department of Homeland Security’s plan to convert a vacant Morris County warehouse into an immigrant detention camp, citing the “profound burdens” the facility would place on local infrastructure.
New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, and Roxbury Township officials argued in an April 7 court filing that a judge should grant the preliminary injunction because the feds ignored laws that required them to assess the project’s impact on the environment and local resources.
Should the work move forward, it would place “profound burdens” upon the systems and services that keep the staunchly Republican town of 23,000 running, officials said in a news release.
“The Trump Administration has ignored state and local officials in pushing its ill-conceived plan forward because it knows the local impacts are indefensible, and this facility will not make the community safer,” Sherrill said in a statement. “We are standing up for New Jerseyans in a bipartisan manner to ensure their drinking water, public safety, and pocketbooks are protected.”
Local and state officials filed a bipartisan lawsuit last month to stop the proposed detention center, which could house as many as 1,500 detainees and employ around 1,000 people, after ICE bought the 470,000-square-foot warehouse for nearly $130 million in February.
The feds’ plan calls to convert the building into a holding facility for newly collared undocumented immigrants, who would reportedly stay for a few weeks before ICE shuttled them to one of seven massive warehouse camps in Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, Georgia, and Missouri.
This feeder system of smaller satellite sites and mammoth primary camps would let ICE hold more than 80,000 people at a time, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.
In a statement accompanying the initial lawsuit, Sherrill said such facilities have a “long track record of abuse, mistreatment, and unsafe conditions.” She also noted that the anger isn’t relegated to one side of the aisle.
“This is not a partisan issue,” she said. “Republican leaders in the community are similarly against this facility.”
A federal court had already found unlawful a similar plan to convert a Maryland warehouse into a detention center, and the agency shouldn’t be allowed to spend “even more taxpayer dollars on construction given that the lawsuit is likely to succeed on the merits,” the release said.
“We need swift relief to ensure we can enforce the law and protect New Jerseyans,” Davenport said in a statement. “DHS cannot transform local neighborhoods into detention outposts without considering the impacts on local resources and consulting with the state and local governments. The court needs to step in before the damage is done, not after a lengthy case renders it too late.”
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The lawsuit claims DHS and ICE violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act, and the Immigration and Nationality Act.
The filing added that the agencies never bothered to tell Roxbury about their plan, even though town officials tried to reach out several times.
“DHS ignored them for two months, waiting until after the warehouse purchase was consummated before finally responding,” the filing said. “And when DHS did respond, it did not ask for input on environmental or other local impacts, but simply confirmed its plans to plow ahead with the detention facility.”
Beyond that, the complaint said the single-room, concrete-floored building is not meant for human occupation. It has just four toilets and doesn’t have the necessary access to the water and sewer lines it would need to support 2,500 people.
The detention center’s wastewater needs would be about 15 times the approved limit, and the local sewer system would be swamped under such a sweeping increase, the lawsuit added.
The ICE camp would also strain an already stressed water system, snarl traffic, hurt the economy, displace housing development, and bog down emergency services, among other things.
It would also strip the town of about $1.8 million in annual tax revenue, the complaint said.
“The harms to the state and township are significant and urgent,” the filing said. “Converting the Roxbury warehouse into a mass detention facility would overwhelm local infrastructure.”
ICE did not respond to requests for comment on Wednesday.
But the agency had previously dismissed the concerns, claiming it had “carefully evaluated the use of existing facilities to help minimize environmental impacts, including potential impacts to protected species, sensitive natural resources, and valued cultural resources.”
An agency spokesperson ignored follow-up questions about what sort of environmental studies it commissioned, if any, before it bought the site.
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Steve Janoski is a multi-award-winning journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Post, USA Today, the Associated Press, The Bergen Record and the Asbury Park Press. His reporting has exposed corruption, government malfeasance and police misconduct
