Advocates rally against South County ICE facility before court hearing

A federal judge is set to weigh in on a request to halt work to create an ICE facility in South County until the lawsuit against it is resolved.

The Tuesday hearing — set to be held at 2 p.m. at San Jose’s federal courthouse — is the first court date for the lawsuit brought by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Santa Clara County. At the center of the legal dispute is the federal government’s plan to create an immigration enforcement facility on unincorporated county land just east of Gilroy. The project, which would create new office space and detention facilities, would support the work of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials.

Northern District of California Judge Eumi Lee has indicated she favors granting plaintiffs’ requests for the preliminary injunction. In a tentative ruling issued Friday, Lee said that plaintiffs have demonstrated a “likelihood of success” in making their argument that the project violates federal environmental law.

Federal officials have already agreed to temporarily pause construction and demolition work at the site — first observed in April — until after Tuesday’s hearing. If state and county officials prevail, the block would remain in place until a final ruling is delivered in the court battle, a process that could take years to play out, according to legal experts.

The two-page tentative ruling, while not definitive, has provided optimism to opponents of the facility. Advocates and elected leaders from the South Bay as well as Monterey County staged a rally outside the courthouse just before the hearing began.

“Our voices matter. Our resistance matters, and we will not stop until this project is stopped,” Santa Clara County Supervisor Sylvia Arenas, who represents South County where the ICE facility is planned, said before the hearing. “We are here to declare that our community is not a target, not a zone of fear, not a site for injustice, because we will defend our home. We will do this by combating hate and fear with love and collective action.”

Among the demonstrators who turned out was Sunnyvale resident Will Kaku, who sees parallels between the federal government’s mass immigration sweeps and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, which touched his own family. Kaku said he is encouraged by the demonstration’s turnout at the courthouse.

“I’m very enthusiastic. It’s a weekday, and all these people showed up, and people are very upset,” Kaku told San José Spotlight. “People do not like to see their communities being terrorized by the tactics of this administration. People don’t like to see the loss of civil liberties and loss of due process. There’s a lot of outrage.”

Detention space in the planned facility, located at 7240 Holsclaw Road, would be large enough to hold more than 100 people, according to county officials’ assessment of project blueprints. Revelations about the facility, which first surfaced in May, have stoked fears that the Trump administration is laying the groundwork for more expansive immigration enforcement operations in the Bay Area, amid a nationwide campaign of mass deportation.

The lawsuit, filed in June, argues the federal government has failed to conduct environmental reviews or consult with state and local authorities as required by federal mandates laid out in the National Environmental Policy Act and the Administrative Procedure Act. Plaintiffs also contend the facility violates zoning rules that reserve the property exclusively for agricultural uses.

The 25-acre parcel likely contains hazardous materials due to its history of use for agricultural research, according to the complaint outlining the state and county’s case.

In their own filings, federal attorneys have asserted the detention facilities will be far less expansive than portrayed in the lawsuit. They claim the space will be used only to hold and process about 10 people on a temporary basis as they await immigration proceedings.

Federal officials have also pushed back against the environmental concerns. They argue the project should be exempt from federal environmental review requirements because the site already houses an office building, and the proposed ICE facility will not significantly change how the land has been used.

This story will be updated.

Contact Keith Menconi at [email protected] or @KeithMenconi on X.