California Lawyer. Gen. Rob Bonta and Santa Clara County officials announced a new lawsuit against the Trump administration that aims to block a planned immigration facility near Gilroy.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in San Jose, alleges that the leased land is zoned exclusively for agricultural use and that the federal government violated laws requiring notification to the state and county, as well as required procedural steps before beginning construction.
The agency told the San José Spotlight that the project is an ICE office and denied that it would be a detention center. But state and local officials believe the facilities will be used for short-term detentions of up to 150 people at a time.
“The administration is trying to impose a new facility on a community that doesn't want it, sweeping laws, hiding its plans in secrecy and ignoring community calls to stop,” Bonta said during a news conference in San Jose, adding that this is the 71st lawsuit filed by his office against the Trump administration.
The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The lawsuit also argues that the property is in an area known to be home to several threatened and endangered species and that a facility there would overburden limited drinking water and waste disposal infrastructure.
Santa Clara County officials said they were not notified last year when the federal government, intending to build a facility for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leased nearly 25 acres of unincorporated land outside Gilroy. The plot includes three buildings, greenhouses and a large agricultural field, according to the lawsuit.
Community members alerted the county about the upcoming facilities earlier this year and protested the plans. Construction began early last month, according to the lawsuit.
The land is three miles southeast of Gilroy Premium Outlets, at 7240 Holsclaw Road, federal acquisition records show. The Department of Homeland Security obtained a 20-year, $26.5 million lease from a subsidiary of Beverly Hills-based Elmwood Capital Group, a real estate investment firm.
ICE also has a processing facility in nearby Morgan Hill.
According to the lawsuit, agricultural research companies that previously occupied the property generated hazardous waste that was not properly disposed of.
“The federal government's apparent failure to address, much less mitigate, these risks endangers the construction workers constructing the site, the detainees and employees who will be located at the site, and the environment beneath and around the site,” the lawsuit says.
According to the lawsuit, the federal government's only formal communication with the county regarding the project was a one-paragraph letter dated June 21, 2023, and sent by a representative of Elmwood Capital. The letter said the federal government was planning “office and operational space” there and that it should be exempt from local planning and zoning review.
“Part of the problem here is that they are trying to move forward with this project with as little transparency as possible and hoping that no one notices, that no one notices the details,” said Santa Clara County Attorney Tony LoPresti. “So part of what our lawsuit will do is force that transparency to occur.”
ICE detention facilities have been the subject of multiple lawsuits since the start of the Trump administration for alleged overcrowding, poor conditions and confinement that lasted for days and weeks.
Bonta and LoPresti said the construction of an ICE facility in Gilroy signals the federal government's desire to increase surveillance in the area.
Advocates and local leaders have raised similar concerns in Dublin, another Bay Area city where federal officials are working to transfer ownership of a former prison. Congressional Democrats sent a letter earlier this month opposing the possibility that it could be reopened as an immigration detention center.
