ICE must pause construction of Gilroy detention center, judge rules

A federal judge has ordered U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to halt construction on a planned detention facility in Gilroy after attorneys for the state of California and Santa Clara County sued to block it on environmental grounds.

Judge Eumi K. Lee of the U.S. District Court Northern District of California, who was nominated for the post by former President Joe Biden, sided with the county and state Attorney General’s office Friday by issuing a preliminary injunction against the planned detention center. The order pauses work on the project until the lawsuit is resolved.

In her ruling, Lee wrote that the federal agency failed to study potential environmental pollution at the planned detention center, which, if built, would occupy property that used to be an agricultural resource center. That research “resulted in known hazardous waste violations,” Lee wrote.

This is a map showing the location of a planned U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility just outside of the eastern boundary of Gilroy, Calif.

ICE had offered no proof that a “meaningful environmental analysis” was conducted before starting construction, the judge wrote. Evidence submitted to the court suggests that construction and demolition work on-site “increases the risk of releasing hazardous materials into the environment,” Lee wrote.

“We’re hopeful the court’s ruling sends a clear message that this is the wrong process and the wrong place for this facility,” Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti said in a statement Friday. “The federal government’s legal violations concealed fundamental flaws with this project — you can’t plop a facility like this onto sensitive land that lacks basic infrastructure to support the detention of individuals.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat who has filed lawsuits relentlessly against the Republican Trump administration, celebrated the ruling in a statement on Friday.

“The Trump Administration tried to rush construction of this facility in secret, ignoring environmental safeguards and shutting out the communities that would bear the consequences,” he said.

A spokesperson for ICE did not immediately comment.

The state and county have sought a court order permanently shutting down the project. If built, the Gilroy Holding Facility would allow for the detention of at least 120 people per day, ICE wrote in court filings. However, Lee said the actual capacity of the center could be larger than the agency’s estimates.

The parcel of land occupies 25 acres, just east of Highway 101 and Gilroy city limits and just north of Highway 152.

Lawyers for the county had argued that construction could release hazardous materials, and that the facility’s operations would overload its septic system — posing risk to nearby communities and wildlife.

From 1993 to 2023, the site housed several agricultural research companies, which had received permits from Santa Clara County to operate as “hazardous waste generator facilities” because of their use of pesticides as well as solvents, acids, alkaline cleaners and other chemicals, Lee wrote. County inspections had found “multiple” violations of actual or possible releases of chemicals.

Federal attorneys disputed those claims, arguing that the county already knew hazardous materials might be present at the site and that the expected increase in occupancy was not significant.

Activists and local politicians had rallied Tuesday outside of the federal courthouse in San Jose on Tuesday, where they condemned ICE and vowed to oppose the project.