Environmental advocates urge judge to halt Roxbury detention project

Filing cites pollution, sewage, and traffic concerns in protected Highlands region

A coalition of environmental groups wants a federal judge to block the controversial ICE detention camp planned for Roxbury, warning it would increase pollution, intensify traffic, and threaten a protected region that supplies drinking water to much of New Jersey.

A brief filed Tuesday, April 14, in U.S. District Court supports a lawsuit brought by local and state officials that seeks a temporary halt to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement project, which could bring as many as 1,500 detainees and 1,000 staff to a vacant warehouse off Route 46.

The groups argue the facility would be catastrophic for the New Jersey Highlands, a protected region in the northwestern corner of the state that’s already exceptionally sensitive to environmental stressors.

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Federal and state law both recognize the area’s vulnerability, as well as its importance to the Garden State’s farms, wildlife, drinking water supply, and quality of life, the brief added.

“New Jersey’s Highlands are not an expendable backdrop for federal mismanagement; they are the source of drinking water for millions of New Jerseyans and a protected environmental treasure,” Allison McLeod, interim executive director of the New Jersey League of Conservation Voters, said in a statement.

“Moving forward with the conversion of this facility into a mass detention center without fully accounting for the environmental and infrastructure impacts is reckless,” she continued. “We stand with New Jersey and Roxbury Township in supporting the request for an injunction to stop this project before irreversible harm is done to our water, our communities, and our public trust.”

Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the agency, responded to a request for comment on Wednesday.

The proposed Roxbury facility is part of a wider ICE plan to create a feeder system of smaller satellite sites and mammoth primary camps that could house as many as 80,000 immigrant detainees at a time, according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post.

The smaller processing facilities, such as the one slated for Roxbury, would reportedly hold newly collared undocumented immigrants for several weeks before ICE transferred them to one of seven big warehouse camps in Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, Georgia, and Missouri.

The government’s plan became all too real for Roxbury in February when ICE bought a 470,000-square-foot warehouse at 1879 Route 46 for nearly $130 million and began to inch forward on the work.

Local and state officials sued in federal court to halt the project, which sparked anger in the Morris County town despite its GOP leanings and overwhelming support for Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election.

“This is not a partisan issue,” Gov. Mikie Sherrill said in a statement accompanying the suit. “Republican leaders in the community are similarly against this facility.”

“People who live here didn’t choose to be at the center of this fight, but here we are,” Ann Mauro, a 29-year Roxbury resident and member of the Concerned Citizens of the Roxbury Community group, said in a statement. “This facility would affect our water, our air, our roads, our schools, our property values, and our emergency services. The experts filing this brief are saying what Roxbury residents have known since the beginning: This is wrong, and its impacts would be real.”

In the lawsuit, local and state officials claimed DHS and ICE violated the Administrative Procedure Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act, and the Immigration and Nationality Act.

They also said the feds ignored laws requiring them to assess the project’s impact on the environment and local resources.

The coalition, which includes 10 different groups, buttressed this in its own filing, which said the agency has rushed the plans “without meaningful consideration of the project’s environmental impact and without meaningful consultation with local and state authorities, as required by federal law.”

This is particularly significant given Roxbury’s location in the Highlands, which provides some or all of the drinking water for more than 70% of New Jerseyans, the brief said.

But the region’s limited ability to naturally filter pollutants means the surface and groundwater that so many rely on is vulnerable to degradation.

“DHS’s proposed detention center will tax this environmentally essential and delicate area,” the brief said, noting that a 1,500-bed facility could create more than 187,000 gallons per day of sewage.

The warehouse is also surrounded by about 74 acres of undisturbed habitat, including wetlands and vernal pools, that are protected by a conservation easement.

The filing also said the feds’ plan will lead to soaring traffic, which will “substantially increase the community’s existing air pollution, which poses significant dangers for the residents of Roxbury and the surrounding area.”

“Without the transparent and credible environmental review process that federal law requires, there is no indication that DHS has adequately considered and addressed these risks,” the brief said.

The coalition also worried about outbreaks of disease, given the plan to cram together hundreds and hundreds of people in a converted warehouse with poor ventilation and minimal infrastructure.

“The Roxbury community is not simply a blank slate on which DHS can make decisions without consideration of the existing context,” the filing said. “The community is already overburdened, and any significant change to its traffic, water, and sewage is likely to exacerbate its existing vulnerabilities even as it imposes new and serious dangers.”