ICE scraps plans for Romulus detention center, AG says

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Thursday that ICE has scrapped its plans to repurpose a Romulus warehouse into a large detention facility in the metro Detroit city. Those plans were first reported by the New York Times, which noted that purchased warehouses in Michigan and New Jersey would specifically be “offloaded” — sold or given away.

“Romulus simply was not – and never would be – the appropriate place for a large-scale detention center,” Nessel said in a press release from her office. “The decision to sell the facility is a victory not just for the residents of Romulus whose day-to-day life would have been negatively impacted by its presence, but for the entire metro region. The ICE warehouse proposal was every bit as ill-conceived as it was cruel and unnecessary, and I am relieved that this chapter is coming to a close.”

Romulus Mayor Robert McCraight thanked Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin for listening to the city in its opposition to the detention facility. 

“The City’s position should not be confused with opposition to responsible enforcement of our country’s laws. Instead, the facility’s proximity to residential neighborhoods, schools, and wetlands made it the wrong location. Locating a facility like this in our community would have been an incredible burden on our already limited public safety resources and a violation of our zoning ordinance,” McCraight said.

DHS and ICE spokespeople did not respond to specific questions asking for confirmation of the plans to offload the facility. 

“From day one, DHS has remained singularly focused on removing the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from the United States and is always evaluating the best methods to do so,” a DHS spokesperson wrote in a statement. “These heinous criminals, once arrested, should be removed at lightning speed, not housed on American soil at the taxpayer’s expense. DHS is moving swiftly to utilize EXISTING detention space with our state and county partners.”

Nessel and the city of Romulus filed a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security in March, which alleged that DHS violated the National Environmental Policy Act by failing to conduct an environmental review of the area, as well as the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act by failing to consult with local and state officials when making decisions about the detention center. 

The press release from her office noted that instead of going to a preliminary injunction hearing, ICE and the Department of Homeland Security had delayed construction repeatedly, first until June and then until the end of July. The office added that “the case will remain active unless and until the parties reach a written agreement, committing that DHS and ICE will never use the Romulus warehouse as a detention center and will list the property for sale.”

The detention facility garnered widespread public opposition to the plan, as well as local government pushback — Romulus City Council unanimously passed a resolution in February formally opposing it. Rep. Dylan Wegela (D-Garden City) whose district includes the warehouse, said the news was a vindication for all those who stood up and opposed the plan.

“First, thank you to the working class organizers who have been leading efforts for months to reject this facility,” Wegela said. “Their message has been clear: we will not accept a detention center in our community. Furthermore, I could not be more grateful to Romulus Mayor, Robert McCraight, and every member of the city council who all have unanimously opposed this project from the very start. Thank you, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who helped challenge the reckless plans the Trump administration presented for their facility.”

Activists were also clear that Thursday’s news was not a final victory, as they wait to see the actual terms of the facility’s sale. Anna Fisher, a representative of No Detention Centers in Michigan, also noted that they disagreed with Nessel’s framing that Romulus is the wrong city for a detention center, and that they would fight against the opening of any such facility in Michigan.

“We already know why the federal government has reached this point. Authoritarian projects run on the appearance of inevitability; they win when people believe resistance is pointless. Romulus is showing the opposite,” wrote Chris Boyd, the strategy committee chair for the Coalition to Shut the Camps, an advocacy organization specifically formed to oppose the facility in Romulus. “This project was not stalled by luck or by anyone’s change of heart — it was stalled by a community that applied constant, strategically directed pressure to every weak point it had: legal, political, environmental, and infrastructural. That is the method. And the method is working.”

Also vowing to continue opposition to any ICE detention facilities was Heather Miller of the Detroit Committee to Stop ICE.

“The hundreds of metro Detroiters and others who joined our protests week after week at the ICE camp gate in Romulus have sent a thundering message to every corner of the country,” Miller said. “And that message is: If people mobilize in the streets now they can drive out ICE. And if we can drive out ICE, we can defeat Donald Trump.”

Despite opposition to the detention facility, the path for local and state lawmakers to slow or stop the process and fight back against federal agency plans seemed to be an uphill battle. 

Spokespeople for the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy and for Wayne County both told the Michigan Advance in recent weeks that they had not received any relevant permit requests for the proposed facility — including related to the floodplain on which the warehouse sits, which was an argument made against using this specific location for a detention facility, as well as related to utility capacity.

Such permits would likely have been required to convert the warehouse, meaning that progress towards actually turning the structure into a detention facility appears to have been minimal, if any.  

ICE reportedly spent $34.7 million for the facility — 57% more than the last time the property was sold. It was also reported that an auto manufacturer had been bidding on the property before it was sold to ICE, which some opponents to the detention facility said would have created jobs in the area.

The Romulus facility was part of a broader push by ICE to expand its presence and its detention capacity — a push that led to lawsuits and an investigation by the DHS inspector general. The New York Times reported that the agency appears to still be moving forward with four of the 11 warehouses that were purchased around the country for detention purposes. 

State and federal legislators had also expressed repeated opposition to the detention facility. 

“We knew from the start that this ICE facility was unwanted and unwarranted in our community,” state Sen. Darrin Camilleri (D-Trenton), who had been vocally opposed to the detention facility since it was first announced, said in a press release. “We organized and coordinated with local and state partners to fight back, and we won. The administration’s heavy-handed tactics were unconstitutional, unpopular, and aimed to bulldoze over local opposition.” 

Other elected officials were also quick to celebrate the decision to scrap the detention facility, with Gov. Gretchen Whitmer thanking Nessel for her lawsuit. 

“The proposed ICE detention center in Romulus was widely opposed by the local communities,” Whitmer said. “I commend the efforts of Attorney General Nessel, Romulus Mayor McCraight, and our state and federal lawmakers for putting a stop to this facility and ensuring Michiganders have a say in what happens in their own backyards.”

Whitmer had been heavily criticized for her relative silence on the issue of the detention center.