The federal government’s plan to convert an East San Antonio warehouse into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center is on pause after multiple U.S. cities and states filed lawsuits halting similar plans in their backyards.
The suits accuse the White House of moving ahead with plans to covert warehouse facilities nationwide into immigrant prisons without conducting federally required environmental reviews.
“And because of that, the planned project here in San Antonio is on pause along with several others nationwide,” Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, whose district contains the warehouse, said in an Instagram video. “That’s because the federal government is required to complete an environmental impact assessment before moving forward with projects like this.”
Environmental impact assessments are a requirement of the National Environment Policy Act, a 1969 law requiring federal agencies to consider the economic, social and ecological impact of any major project.
ICE purchased the San Antonio warehouse in February to convert it into a 1,500-bed immigrant processing center. DHS bought 11 similar warehouses throughout the country at a total cost of roughly $1 billion, the New York Times reports.
The slew of warehouse purchases was intended to help the Trump administration meet its ambition of filling 100,000 beds in immigrant detention facilities throughout the country by the end of 2025.
However, so far, the administration has only gotten halfway to that goal, filling 58,000 beds, the Times reports.
The administration met significant community pushback as it increased the frequency of its ICE raids and tried to grow its detention infrastructure.
Critics argue the government-purchased warehouses aren’t designed to handle the strain on plumbing that would be caused by retrofitting the facilities to house up to several thousand people.
In court filings, ICE officials argue the warehouse renovations are exempt from reviews required under the National Environmental Policy Act. However, that doesn’t appear to be holding up in court.
Earlier this month, a federal judge in Maryland blocked an ICE warehouse conversion project citing the lack of environmental review. Legal challenges targeting environmental issues have also been filed against warehouse projects in New Jersey, Michigan and Arizona, according to the Times’ reporting.
Now, the agency looks to be biting the bullet and putting a number of the projects on hold to conduct environmental reviews — a process that could take months, according to the Times.
“So things have slowed down while they work through that process,” McKee added in his video. “Now, if and when that assessment occurs here in San Antonio, we will make sure you know, because that process includes public input. That means town halls, community meetings and opportunities for residents to speak on the economic, environmental and social impact that this would have.”
The councilman added: “And just to be clear, if they move forward without that assessment, we are ready, we have retained legal council and we will take action if necessary.”
However, Bexar County Precinct 4 Commissioner Tommy Calvert, a vocal critic of the ICE warehouse, said there were always more options on the table for San Antonio authorities to push back against the project.
“The resolution that I originally drafted said exactly what the AG in Maryland sued on — that the National Environment Policy Act was not utilized as it must be,” Calvert told the Current. “It was never true that there was nothing we could do about these detention centers. We must use the courts to ensure all shortcuts the Trump administration tries to do to bypass the law are not allowed to continue.“
Depending on how many months the environmental assessment takes, San Antonio-area officials could also be looking at another political landscape after the November midterms.
“It could be radically different,” said Jon Taylor, head of the political science department at UT-San Antonio. “You could have a Democratic Congress, which would definitely change things politically.”
If Democrats regain control of Congress, they will likely try to pump the brakes on Trump’s mass-deportation program. However, with President Donald Trump still at the helm in the executive branch, Taylor added that it’s anyone’s guess how things might play out.
“The only question is whether or not the Trump administration would still go forward with policies that are obviously over Democratic objections,” Taylor said. “You’ve got the courts that are involved. That could slow things down as well. You got a Supreme Court, which, let’s be blunt, is moving backwards rather than forwards politically. So […] it could take forever.”
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