Call it a February surprise.
Last month, the Trump administration purchased a giant warehouse in rural Roxbury Township, New Jersey, for $129.3 million with plans to convert it into one of the largest immigration detention centers in the country. The plan is not only unpopular among a bipartisan swath of residents, but it’s also roiling what was already shaping up to be a gripping and crowded Democratic primary in the state’s 7th Congressional District, where the proposed facility is located.
Half a dozen Democrats are vying to unseat incumbent Rep. Tom Kean Jr. He was already widely viewed as one of the most at-risk Republicans in November’s midterm elections. The detention center likely makes him more vulnerable. Even his fellow Republicans in Roxbury have criticized him for not doing enough to fight it.
The announcement that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is coming to town has also fueled calls from some quarters for a candidate willing to abolish the agency if they reach Congress. That platform helped propel left-wing progressive Analilia Mejia to an upset victory in a neighboring congressional primary in February, where she trounced a wide field of better-known moderate Democrats unwilling to get rid of ICE altogether.
But many of the Democrats running for Kean's seat have been far more timid than Mejia.
“There are parts of the district that absolutely wanna abolish ICE. But the district stretches out to the west and there's some pretty rural areas,” said Matt Hale, a politics professor at Seton Hall University. “ Abolish ICE, it's inflammatory to people. I think most people would say they want to reform ICE.”
Democratic nominee for Congress in New Jersey's 11th Congressional District Analilia Mejia addresses the crowd at a protest against an ICE detention facility in Roxbury Township, New Jersey.
New Jersey’s 7th District is an amoeba-shaped swing district west of New York City that sprawls from the dense, Democratic suburbs south of Newark and Elizabeth to the rural, largely Republican areas on the border with Pennsylvania.
The primary is still three months away, but political experts already see Rebecca Bennett as the early favorite based on campaign contributions. The parallels between Bennett, a mom and a former Navy helicopter pilot, and Gov. Mikie Sherrill are impossible to ignore. She’s raised nearly $2 million thus far, making her the top fundraiser in the field, and she’s secured the kind of local Democratic endorsements that have typically mattered in past New Jersey elections.
Bennett has called for reforming ICE and reining in its tactics under President Donald Trump, but she told Gothamist that abolishing the agency was a step too far.
“ We need to make sure that ICE is operating within the rule of law like any other federal law enforcement agency,” Bennett said. “We need to have border patrol. We need to have strong borders.”
Brian Varela, another candidate pegged as a top contender by politics watchdogs around the state, also warned other Democrats against similar rhetoric.
”When we go out there and we say something like ‘abolish ice,’ we need to understand how that's being interpreted by voters,” he said. “That's just like ‘defund the police.’ No one wants their local police department gone. I think when it comes to abolishing ICE people are going to think that we just want completely open borders and, and we want zero enforcement."
‘There's no Montclair in NJ-7’
Their wariness contrasts sharply with Mejia’s campaign platform just one district over.
Mejia clinched the nomination to replace Sherrill’s vacated congressional seat with a left-wing message that included abolishing ICE. It brought out droves of voters in liberal enclaves like Montclair and Maplewood.
“We talk about abolishing ICE. This is actually what we’re talking about. We have to turn off the spigot. We cannot continue to fund an entity that is completely, wildly out of control,” Mejia said at a victory rally in Montclair last month. Her spokesperson said she was not available for an interview.
But the two districts have their differences. Dan Cassino, a government and politics professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, said Mejia is running in a far less competitive race than Democrats face in the 7th District.
“There just isn't as much of a progressive base. There's no Montclair in NJ-7,” he said, adding that when New Jersey redrew its districts in 2020, more Republican voters were added to the 7th District, turning it into a moderate candidates’ battleground.
The past two election cycles show the challenges that Democrats face. Trump carried the district by about 2 points in 2024. That same election cycle, Kean won re-election by roughly 5 points. In the 2025 governor race, the district swung back with Sherrill winning it — but only by a single point.
Protestors in Roxbury Township, New Jersey.
Even the activists who have mobilized against the detention facility in Roxbury are split on whether there is political space in the district for abolishing ICE.
Jenny Garcia, an organizer in Morris County with American Friends Service Committee Immigrant Rights Program, a group that provides support and legal services for immigrant detainees and their families in New Jersey, said eliminating the agency is not that radical.
“It's the just thing to do. I think everybody's on their own political education journey. There's a lot of us who have been abolitionists for a long time, given that this is not the first immigration detention center that ICE is trying to open up in New Jersey, and there are folks — because of how publicly violent and in your face ICE abuses have been — who are starting to wake up,” she said.
But David Broderick, an attorney representing activist group No Ice Jails in Northern NJ, said he understands why candidates in the district are treading carefully.
“This is a Republican district. I won't say heavily Republican, but it is a Republican district,” he said. “I would think that the most successful Democratic candidate for Tom Kean’s seat would be somebody who would be from the more moderate wing of the Democratic Party.”
Republicans opposed to their own party
Many local Republicans also oppose the Trump administration’s plans for the ICE detention facility in Roxbury Township, despite saying they broadly support detention centers as a means of immigration enforcement, just not in their backyard.
Roxbury’s all-Republican township council voted 7-0 on a resolution against the opening of the detention facility, and they have vowed to continue fighting.
A warehouse in Roxbury Township, New Jersey that was purchased by the Department of Homeland Security. The agency plans to convert the facility into one of the largest immigration detention centers in the country.
Both Republicans and Democrats have also expressed their frustration with Kean. Roxbury Mayor Shawn Potillo issued a statement after he learned of the warehouse’s sale to the Department of Homeland Security, criticizing his fellow Republican for ignoring the township’s requests for help in dealing with the situation.
“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,” Potillo wrote.
Harrison Neely, a Republican strategist working with Kean, said the congressmember declined to comment on Potillo’s letter or on the race in general.
Democrats vying to unseat Kean clearly see him as particularly vulnerable on the issue. Dr. Tina Shah, another candidate in the race, called his failure to meet with Roxbury officials “cowardice.”
“He has to be replaced,” Shah said, but she stopped short of saying the same about ICE.
“ I think the correct word is to say we need to overhaul ICE,” she said. “We know that we need to protect our borders. But what's happening right now is that Trump has completely twisted the function of ICE.”
