The silence with which it occurred is almost unsettling. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency bought a warehouse at 7525 Cogswell Street in Romulus, Michigan, in February of this year without informing the city, the state, or the public. There was no press release. No gathering of the community. Later on, it became evident that the facility would be transformed into a sizable immigration detention facility that could house 500 inmates and employees.
It’s difficult to ignore the surroundings of that address. A middle school and an elementary school are both within a mile. Residential areas where families reside and kids play are located on its boundaries. And literally, a floodplain that flooded as recently as last year lies beneath it. According to court documents, the infrastructure was unable to accommodate the anticipated headcount. The number of restrooms was insufficient. It wasn’t intended for the sewer system.
Dana Nessel, the attorney general of Michigan, seems to have had enough. She and the City of Romulus filed a lawsuit against ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on March 24th, claiming the warehouse was just the wrong location for what the federal government was trying to construct, both practically and legally. The lawsuit claimed that agencies had violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to take into account alternatives such as current jails, prisons, or detention centers. Additionally, it claimed that ICE and DHS had completely avoided working with state and local authorities and had circumvented the National Environmental Policy Act’s environmental review requirements.
Nessel went one week further and filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, effectively requesting that the court stop any construction while the case was pending. By April, the motion had been thoroughly briefed. Then an intriguing development occurred: DHS and ICE started agreeing to postpone construction rather than appear in court for a hearing. from the beginning to the end of June. After that, until the end of July. In legal circles, this type of procedural retreat frequently conveys more information than any argument made in court.
The agencies seem to have completely given up on the plan less than three months after the lawsuit was filed. Instead of converting the warehouse, ICE now plans to sell it. Until a formal written agreement is signed, which would formally commit DHS and ICE to never using the Romulus facility as a detention center, the case is still considered active.
It’s worth sitting with what this episode reveals. There are more than just real estate disputes involved in the ICE warehouse detention lawsuits that are currently surfacing across the nation. They are exposing the flaws in the way federal agencies make decisions, such as the lack of openness, the omission of consultations, and the expediency of environmental review. These gaps served as the basis for a legal case in Romulus that seems to have succeeded, at least for the time being.
It’s genuinely unclear if ICE warehouse detention lawsuits like this one will establish a more general precedent. Future attempts at quick facility conversion might be more difficult to oppose if federal agencies just proceed more cautiously through the necessary procedures. Federal agencies still have considerable control over immigration enforcement. That’s probably an honest thought, but it’s not a consoling one.
However, the result has significant implications for Romulus, a working-class city that did not request any of this. The construction of a facility that would have altered the neighborhood’s character, put a sizable detention population close to schools, and put undue strain on infrastructure is not taking place. That is important. This is not how all legal disputes pertaining to federal immigration policy conclude.
