DHS Says 470K SF Warehouse It Planned To Sell Will Become Immigrant Jail After All
The Department of Homeland Security has reversed course on its plan to sell a New Jersey warehouse and will go back to its original intention of converting it into a detention facility.
A federal judge was notified July 10 of the agency’s decision to start the project, according to Bloomberg. It was the same judge who was told in June about DHS’ plan to sell.
Lawyers for Roxbury township, where the facility is located, and DHS will submit a joint status report regarding the warehouse on July 17.
Roxbury's 470K SF warehouse is 40 miles west of New York City. It was purchased from DG Roxbury Property Owner LP for $129M in February, according to The Jersey Vindicator. The limited partnership is tied to Dalfen Industrial and a Goldman Sachs asset management fund.
The property is one of 11 purchased for a sum of $700M over the past year. It is also one of seven the agency announced plans to sell or give away in June.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement originally intended for the property to become a processing center, as part of the Trump administration's aggressive immigration policy.
That proposal received backlash from residents and environmental groups, as the warehouse is in a part of the state that supplies drinking water to millions. Environmentalists warned that the conversion would increase pollution and traffic as well as threaten land vital to the state’s farms, wildlife and drinking water.
ICE and DHS were sued in March by Roxbury Township, New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport and Gov. Mikie Sherrill, stating that the decision would put the health and well-being of the community and those detained at risk.
Conversion work at the Roxbury property was stopped by ICE in May while the Department of Homeland Security was conducting an environmental review.
Sherrill and Davenport said in June that DHS was pulling back on the Roxbury detention center plan. DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin responded on social media, saying the agency "will NEVER back down. We will be keeping this site for a detention center.”
DHS paused its national push to buy and convert industrial assets in April about a week after Mullin took over as secretary, though it said it would move forward with redeveloping the warehouses it already acquired.
The program was designed to expand ICE’s capacity to 92,600 beds by the end of November and was launched by Secretary Kristi Noem, who was fired and replaced by Mullin. The DHS inspector general launched a probe into if existing facilities were meeting standards and the process for awarding contracts during Noem’s tenure.
The agency switched course in June away from converting warehouses and into buying existing, privately owned detention facilities from companies the government already has relationships with. Last week, two California detention centers were purchased from CoreCivic for $1.3B. CoreCivic is talking to ICE about further transactions.
