The Department of Homeland Security has confirmed that it has purchased a warehouse in Roxbury, New Jersey for use as a new immigrant detention facility, capping off a week of confusing mixed signals regarding the Trump administration’s plans in the suburban Morris County township.
Roxbury’s all-Republican mayor and council quickly condemned the purchase, saying that the property “is not an appropriate location for a facility of this nature in a suburban community and is an unapproved use.” The township’s statement also called out local Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-Westfield) by name, saying he had been little help in stopping the plans from moving ahead.
“Throughout this process, Roxbury officials communicated our legitimate concerns to every level of government,” the township’s statement says. “Despite repeated outreach, our federal representative, Congressman Tom Kean Jr., did not engage to the level we had hoped to provide the advocacy our residents deserved.”
Back in December, the Washington Post reported that DHS was planning on buying and converting a number of warehouses around the country, including one in Roxbury, for the purpose of expanding their immigrant detention capacity. Earlier this week, Gothamist reported that DHS said it had gone forward with the Roxbury site, only for DHS to later backtrack and say its earlier statement had been sent by mistake.
Tonight, however, both Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Roxbury officials confirmed that the purchase from Dalfen Industrial had indeed been made. ICE’s statement said that the project will “bring 1,300 jobs to the area and would contribute $161.2 million to GDP,” but it included few details about when development on the facility will begin or how many detainees it will be expected to hold; an ICE spokesperson did not immediately respond to follow-up questions on those details.
“These will not be warehouses – they will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards,” the ICE spokesperson said. “Sites will undergo community impact studies and a rigorous due diligence process to make sure there is no hardship on local utilities or infrastructure prior to purchase.”
Ever since the original Washington Post report, local and state elected officials in Roxbury – all of them Republicans – have made it clear they do not believe their town or the property in question is capable of hosting a detention facility. The council unanimously passed a resolution last month opposing DHS’s plans, and their opposition has been matched by a groundswell of protest among the town’s residents.
Tonight’s statement from Roxbury Mayor Shawn Potillo and the township council said that over the course of the months-long debate over the property, DHS never engaged with the town’s leaders or responded to their requests for more information.
“It is also inconceivable and frankly stunning that all of our communications to DHS on issues related to this selection as a detention center were never answered,” the statement said. “This community is the most impacted by this facility, yet we received absolutely no feedback from DHS.”
The town’s officials also said they would begin to pursue “all available legal remedies” to prevent the opening of a detention center in Roxbury.
The state’s Democratic members of Congress, too, have presented a united front against the DHS’s plans, signing onto a letter last month strongly opposing the development of a new facility. Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City), who spearheaded many of those efforts, said tonight that Democrats won’t halt their fight against DHS’s “abhorrent plan.”
Kean, however, never signed onto or commented on any of those efforts despite representing Roxbury in the House; he did not immediately respond to a request for comment on tonight’s news.
New Jersey already has two immigrant detention facilities: the Elizabeth Detention Center, which has been operating for years, and the Delaney Hall facility in Newark, which reopened last year under a cloud of controversy. DHS is also working to expand into Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in Burlington and Ocean Counties; as has been the case in Roxbury, they’ve provided sporadic details on their plans, leaving local officials largely in the dark on what that facility will look like and when it will begin operations.
Zach Blackburn contributed reporting.
