Trump administration reverses course again on Roxbury ICE detention center

DHS told a federal court it planned to sell the $129 million New Jersey warehouse. Nine days later, the agency said it had reconsidered.

The Trump administration has reversed course yet again on a controversial plan to turn a massive Roxbury warehouse into an immigrant detention center, telling a federal court it is once more considering the $129.3 million property for the project.

The stunning reversal came just nine days after Justice Department lawyers told the same court that the Department of Homeland Security no longer intended to convert the warehouse into a detention facility and planned to sell it.

In a notice filed Friday, federal attorneys said DHS officials had “reconsidered” their position and now intend “to move forward with plans to consider the retrofitting of the Roxbury Township warehouse facility for use as a detention facility.”

The filing offered no explanation for the reversal.

“DHS officials further informed counsel that as of July 10, agency deliberations remain ongoing,” Justice Department attorneys wrote.

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The whiplash drew a blistering response from David Broderick, a board member of NJ Appleseed and legal counsel for Project No ICE North Jersey Alliance, or Project NINJA, a volunteer coalition of community, religious, environmental, civil rights, and activist groups fighting ICE detention facilities in North Jersey.

“The DHS reversal is yet another example of the chaos that seems to engulf the Trump administration at every turn,” Broderick said. “Nine days after lawyers from the Department of Justice submitted a legally binding document to the court that indicated that DHS intended to sell the Roxbury warehouse, those same lawyers have now been forced to provide the court with an embarrassing reversal.”

Gov. Mikie Sherrill and Attorney General Jennifer Davenport announced June 29 that DHS had confirmed it was abandoning plans for the Roxbury detention center.

Their announcement was backed by a joint status report filed in federal court stating: “Defendants no longer intend to convert the Roxbury Warehouse into an immigration detention facility and intend to sell the warehouse.”

But hours later, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin publicly contradicted the filing submitted by his own administration’s lawyers.

“DHS will NEVER back down,” Mullin wrote on X. “We will be keeping this site for a detention center. Illegal aliens have a choice: LEAVE NOW. If you don’t, we will find you, arrest you, and deport you.”

DHS and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement ignored several inquiries from The Jersey Vindicator over the last two weeks seeking clarification about Mullin’s post and whether the federal government still intended to use the Roxbury property as a detention center.

The Justice Department’s latest filing says the attorneys who told the court the warehouse would be sold had been specifically authorized to make that representation by DHS officials.

Then, on July 8, DHS officials informed the lawyers that the agency had reconsidered.

“No new facts or other information are cited as the reason for this, only a statement that DHS has ‘reconsidered’ its position,” Broderick said. “In an effort to maintain a shred of credibility before the court, the DOJ indicated that both the original filing and the new one were authorized by DHS, in effect saying, ‘Don’t blame us, Judge. We have a crazy client.’”

“There is no timeline given for this ‘reconsideration’ process,” Broderick added.

Project NINJA denounced what it called the federal government’s “vaguely worded notice and mixed signals” as an apparent attempt to save face after Sherrill and Davenport declared victory in the fight to stop the detention center.

The federal government purchased the 470,000-square-foot warehouse at 1879 Route 46 for $129.3 million in February, as The Jersey Vindicator first reported.

The property was sold to DHS by DG Roxbury Property Owner LP, a Delaware limited partnership tied to Dallas-based industrial developer Dalfen Industrial and a Goldman Sachs asset management fund.

ICE planned to convert the sprawling warehouse into a processing center for newly detained immigrants as part of a nationwide system designed to dramatically increase detention capacity for President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

Federal planning documents indicated the Roxbury facility could hold as many as 1,500 people before they were transferred to larger detention complexes elsewhere in the country. Federal officials later disputed that figure in court, saying the facility would house about 542 detainees.

Activists organized large protests against the proposal and packed government meetings to voice their opposition and press officials to intervene, helping drive bipartisan resistance in Roxbury, a Republican-leaning Morris County township of about 23,000 residents.

According to court filings, the massive, single-room, concrete-floored building has just four toilets and lacks adequate access to the water and sewer infrastructure needed to support thousands of people.

The detention center’s wastewater needs would be about 15 times the site’s approved limit, and the project could cost Roxbury Township, Morris County, and the local school district about $1.8 million a year in lost tax revenue because the federally owned property is tax-exempt.

“In the meantime, taxpayer money is being wasted securing a $129 million white elephant and the Township of Roxbury is being deprived of sorely needed tax revenue,” Broderick said.

The proposed detention center also sits in the New Jersey Highlands, a protected region that supplies drinking water to millions of New Jersey residents.

Environmental groups have warned the project could increase pollution, intensify traffic, and threaten environmentally sensitive land in a region protected because of its importance to the state’s drinking water, farms, and wildlife.

In March, Sherrill, Davenport, and Roxbury Township sued DHS and ICE, accusing federal officials of ignoring laws requiring environmental reviews and consultation with state and local governments.

According to court filings, DHS ignored Roxbury officials for two months and did not respond until after the warehouse purchase had been completed.

“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,” attorneys for the state and township wrote.

In May, ICE agreed to halt most work at the property while conducting an environmental assessment. Under the consent order, ICE can install fencing, security cameras, and alarms, and perform basic property maintenance, but broader conversion work remains on hold.

“Legally, DHS remains subject to the consent order that prevents it from doing any construction on the site unless and until an environmental assessment is completed,” Broderick said.

The Roxbury warehouse was one of 11 industrial properties DHS acquired for roughly $1 billion as part of an effort to rapidly expand immigrant detention capacity.

Recent national reporting indicated the administration has been retreating from much of that strategy after the projects encountered lawsuits, community opposition, and significant infrastructure problems.

But DHS’s latest Roxbury filing leaves the future of the New Jersey property uncertain.

Broderick questioned whether the reversal was driven by practical considerations or politics.

“Given the impracticality of converting the warehouse into a detention facility, which presumably led to DHS’s original decision, one can’t help but suspect that this is nothing more than a political charade designed to embarrass state and local leaders, who declared victory at the time of the DOJ’s original filing,” he said. “In any event, DHS can be sure that this action has even further enraged and motivated their opponents,” Broderick said.

Sherrill and Davenport had publicly celebrated the June 29 court filing as a victory.

“This has never been a partisan case, because the plan to establish a detention center at the Roxbury warehouse was always unlawful,” they said at the time. “Converting a warehouse for packages into a detention center for thousands of people would not only be inhumane but also have devastating local and environmental impacts, and it would not make New Jersey any safer.”

The state, Roxbury, and federal government will submit another joint status report by July 17.