New Jersey’s top law enforcement official has filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump administration, escalating a battle over a cavernous warehouse in Roxbury that the feds want to convert to an immigration detention facility.
Jennifer Davenport, Gov. Mikie Sherrill’s new attorney general, is seeking to block the Trump administration from moving forward with the project. Davenport argues in the suit that the plan violates federal law and raises serious public safety and environmental concerns.
The lawsuit names both the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and its subsidiary U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as defendants. Former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who was recently fired by Trump, is also named as a defendant.
The Trump administration purchased the 470,000-square-foot warehouse in Roxbury Township last month for roughly $129 million, more than twice its assessed value, according to recent tax records. DHS said it plans to convert the facility to hold up to 1,500 detainees. The project is part of Trump’s wider effort to rapidly expand immigration detention around the country.
“The DHS plan will not make New Jersey safer,” Sherrill said at a press conference on Friday. “It would strain water, sewer and road infrastructure. It would divert emergency resources. It would displace potential housing and disrupt growth.
“It's the kind of poorly thought-out, chaotic idea that all too often comes from the Trump administration,” she added.
Davenport’s office alleges that DHS' decision to purchase, convert and operate a detention facility in the Roxbury warehouse is unlawful for several reasons.
The complaint notes the currently vacant warehouse located on Route 46 consists largely of a single large room with concrete floors and only four toilets. The lawsuit says the property lacks adequate water or sewage access to accommodate up to 1,500 detainees and 400 ICE staff, adding that converting the warehouse into a detention center would multiply the gallons of wastewater per day by more than 15 times the current approved limit.
The town of Roxbury sits in an environmentally sensitive area due to its proximity to a protected watershed area in New Jersey’s Highlands that serves roughly 700,000 people.
The White House and federal agencies named in the case did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
New Jersey joins Maryland in taking legal action to counter the Trump administration’s efforts to open local detention centers. The cases are testing states’ power to resist the White House’s use of the federal supremacy principle to pursue its agenda.
On March 11, a federal judge in Maryland issued a 14-day temporary restraining order pausing construction of an ICE facility so the court could review the case. Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown’s office argued DHS failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act and Administrative Procedure Act, which require federal agencies to conduct environmental impact reviews and allow for public input before undertaking major projects.
According to New Jersey’s complaint, DHS moved forward without consulting state or local authorities or studying the project’s environmental consequences. Like the Maryland lawsuit, Davenport’s lawsuit seeks to halt the Roxbury project from moving forward.
“Federal laws require — and our State and towns deserve — that DHS and ICE consult with the State and the Township on major projects in their backyard. Instead, DHS and ICE are ramming through a secretive purchase and rushed renovation,” Davenport said in a statement. “We will not allow these ill-considered plans to happen.”
Local and state government opposition to the planned Roxbury detention center has been growing for months. The all-Republican Roxbury Township Council has repeatedly voiced its unanimous opposition to the project.
Township attorney Anthony Bucco, a Republican state senator, has said he has maintained close contact with the state attorney general’s office to try to find a way to block the detention center.
The project has also led to scrutiny of global investment bank Goldman Sachs, which was a partner in the warehouse’s sale to ICE, though the bank has said it had a “fiduciary” duty to offload the vacant property.
“The Council and I commend the Governor and the Attorney General for their swift and decisive action to help prevent the placement of an ICE detention center within our suburban community,” Roxbury Mayor Shawn Potillo said. “We remain confident that, through this process, it will be clearly demonstrated that this location is not appropriate for a facility of this nature, given the significant impacts it would have on our residents, local resources, and the surrounding environment.”
Opposition within New Jersey to the Roxbury project is bipartisan, but it is far from unified. Democrats in the state have criticized local Republican officials for supporting the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement while waging what critics say is a “not-in-my-backyard” opposition to the Roxbury deal.
