Governor confirms DHS has abandoned plans for Roxbury ICE detention center

Federal officials have confirmed they will not pursue a proposed immigrant detention center at a Roxbury warehouse after months of legal challenges and community opposition.

Gov. Mikie Sherrill and Attorney General Jennifer Davenport said Monday that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has confirmed it will not move forward with plans to convert a Roxbury warehouse into a large immigrant detention center, ending a proposal that sparked months of legal challenges and community protests.

“Today the Department of Homeland Security has confirmed that it is backing down and will not try to establish a mass detention center at an industrial warehouse in Roxbury,” Sherrill and Davenport said in a joint statement. “This is a major victory for the State and for the township of Roxbury.”

The announcement ends one of New Jersey’s highest-profile immigration battles after the Trump administration sought to transform a 470,000-square-foot warehouse off Route 46 into a detention center capable of housing up to 1,500 immigrants awaiting deportation proceedings.

The federal government purchased the vacant warehouse for about $130 million in February as part of a roughly $1 billion nationwide effort to rapidly expand detention capacity for President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. The Roxbury facility was among 11 warehouse properties acquired by the federal government with plans to convert them into detention and processing centers capable of holding thousands of immigrants before they were transferred to larger detention facilities elsewhere in the country.

The proposal immediately drew fierce opposition from activists, Roxbury officials, residents, immigrant rights advocates, and environmental groups, who argued the detention center would transform the township and burden local infrastructure.

Since the plans became public, opponents packed Township Council meetings, organized demonstrations outside the warehouse, and urged local, state, and federal officials to stop the project.

Advocacy groups and residents also argued the warehouse acquisition represented an expensive misuse of taxpayer dollars and credited months of grassroots organizing with helping derail the proposal.

In March, Sherrill, Davenport, and Roxbury Township sued the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, arguing federal officials had failed to complete environmental reviews required under federal law before moving forward with the conversion.

The lawsuit alleged the detention center would increase traffic, strain local water and sewer systems, and threaten environmentally sensitive land in a region that supplies drinking water to millions of New Jersey residents.

In May, ICE agreed to halt most work at the warehouse while conducting an environmental assessment. Under that agreement, the agency was permitted to perform only limited work, including installing fencing, security cameras, and alarm systems, while any conversion work remained on hold.

Sherrill and Davenport said the proposed detention center was unlawful from the outset.

“This has never been a partisan case, because the plan to establish a detention center at the Roxbury warehouse was always unlawful,” they said. “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.”

“That’s why we took the Department to court and forced the Trump administration to abandon its plans,” they said.

The decision follows reports earlier this month that DHS planned to dispose of several warehouse properties purchased for detention expansion, including the Roxbury site.