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Construction of a planned Northern California U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility that has been the subject of intense scrutiny is likely to be halted, a federal judge in San Jose has indicated.
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But U.S. District Court Judge Eumi K. Lee on Monday said she would take time before making her final decision, and might give the Trump administration a few days to work out details of a proposed injunction with state and local officials.
The proposed facility on a bok choy farm near Gilroy has drawn intense opposition from local communities, and in June officials from Santa Clara County and the state of California sued to stop it. Their case was soon joined by several environmental groups, who said the government had not fully considered the environmental impact of the project, which is located near habitat for several protected species.
The government says the new location will be used for offices and to hold detained immigrants for up to 12 hours, before they are released or sent to a facility for longer-term incarceration. The project is part of a broader expansion of ICE’s footprint in California, as the federal government ramps up immigration enforcement and detention efforts across the country.
In court on Monday, attorneys for the Trump administration said the furor over the planned campus was an overblown reaction to a mere change of offices by ICE employees, whose lease was ending on a building in Morgan Hill, about 17 miles away.
But Santa Clara Deputy County Counsel Rajiv Narayan said blueprints indicated the new facility would be substantially different from the agency’s old offices because it would contain holding cells for up to 150 people, an armory and a fitness center.
The government and the contractor building the campus for ICE had not conducted proper environmental studies or considered whether the plumbing system on site was big enough to accommodate the number of people likely to use it every day, Narayan said.
Because the site itself was previously used as a laboratory for a company researching seeds for agriculture, chemicals were used that could leach into the ground and damage nearby creeks and streams, the county said in court documents. Neither the federal government nor its contractor and landlord, Beverly Hills real estate investment firm ECG 6, would allow county officials on site to inspect it or check for possible environmental damage, Narayan said in court.
But Krystal-Rose Perez, an attorney with the environmental division of the U.S. Department of Justice, pushed back, saying that the county showed little interest in inspecting the property during the three years it had lain vacant after the seed laboratory closed.
Had state and local officials really cared about possible contamination of sensitive sites, they could have checked nearby streams on their own to see if chemicals had leached out — without needing to go on to the property, she said.
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Using the property for ICE offices was little different from using it as a seed laboratory, and therefore shouldn’t require additional environmental studies or precautions, Perez said. The government did conduct an environmental review, which determined the project to be appropriate, she said.
Lee questioned the government’s attorneys intensely, seeming skeptical of their arguments.
“It’s not simply an office building, correct?” she asked Perez. “If you’re expanding it’s not simply (going from) one office to the other.”
She asked whether the Morgan Hill facility had holding cells for detainees. Perez replied that it did not.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Roman Swoopes argued that adding the holding cells would make the facility more convenient for families, who could bring medications to loved ones in custody or send attorneys to meet with them.
On Friday, Lee issued a tentative order saying she was inclined to grant a request by the state and county for a preliminary injunction halting the project while the lawsuit plays out.
After hearing oral arguments on Monday, Lee said she would take the matter under advisement and would issue a ruling in coming days. She told attorneys for both sides to be prepared to negotiate details of a possible injunction, including the types of work that would be prohibited on the property.
Construction on the project was paused in July under a voluntary agreement that initially was set to expire after Monday’s hearing. Lee extended that order for another week.
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