- Federal government abandoning plans to turn a Romulus warehouse into detention center, Attorney General Dana Nessel said Thursday
- Department of Homeland Security plans to offload seven warehouses around the country, including Romulus, the New York Times reports
- Federal officials did not specify plans for offloading the Romulus facility, saying only that they’re prioritizing “EXISTING detention space”
The Trump administration is expected to offload a Romulus warehouse it had planned as the future site of an immigrant detention center, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said Thursday.
The news comes after a Thursday New York Times report detailing the US Department of Homeland Security’s planned offloading of seven warehouses across the country, including the Romulus facility — a reversal of former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s aggressive plans to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s national footprint.
A February federal regulatory assessment notice showed the department originally planned to retrofit a 473,158‑square‑foot warehouse and establish a “secure operational area” on about 19 acres in Romulus. The plans called for 3,800 linear feet of new perimeter security fencing and wastewater upgrades, among other things.
Local and state officials opposed the project, arguing that they’d been kept in the dark as the federal government violated administrative procedure and both state and federal environmental requirements. Protests against the plans have continued to spring up in Romulus and the metro Detroit region for months.
“Romulus simply was not — and never would be — the appropriate place for a large-scale detention center,” Nessel said Thursday, calling the decision to sell a “victory” for Romulus and metro Detroit residents.
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In March, Nessel and city officials sued both the Department of Homeland Security and ICE on grounds that the Romulus facility is unsuitable for a detention center, citing its location in a floodplain, lack of adequate infrastructure and its proximity to schools and neighborhoods.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson did not provide additional details on the future of the Romulus facility to Bridge Michigan Thursday, saying in a statement that the department is “moving swiftly to utilize EXISTING detention space with our state and county partners.”
“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,” the statement read. “These heinous criminals, once arrested, should be removed at lightning speed, not housed on American soil at the taxpayer’s expense.”
An ICE spokesperson referred Bridge to the DHS statement.
State Sen. Darrin Camilleri, D-Trenton, applauded the news that the federal government appears to be backing away from its original plans.
“We knew from the start that this ICE facility was unwanted and unwarranted in our community,” he said. “We organized and coordinated with local and state partners to fight back, and we won.”
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in a statement thanked Nessel and other local leaders for “putting a stop to this facility and ensuring Michiganders have a say in what happens in their own backyards.”
The federal lawsuit filed in March will remain active absent a written agreement that the government will “never use the Romulus warehouse as a detention center and will list the property for sale,” according to the Attorney General’s Office.
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