The Briefing:
- State and township lawyers told a federal judge on September 15 that they are investigating whether ICE broke a court order by holding immigrants inside a warehouse spanning roughly 470,000 square feet, and will ask the court to step in if that is confirmed.
- The claim traces to a September 4 immigration sweep in Dover, New Jersey, where a detained man told relatives he was driven to what looked like a jail before being moved to the Elizabeth Detention Center. Activists believe the first stop was the Roxbury site.
- Federal officials have yet to settle on a final answer for the warehouse's future, contradicting an earlier claim that the plan had been dropped.
- DHS declined to directly address the detention claim, citing the pending lawsuit. The state's next court update is due November 16.
A Court Filing Raises the Stakes
Roxbury Township and state officials told a federal judge this week that they are examining whether ICE broke a court order by holding detained immigrants inside a long-disputed warehouse on Route 46, and that they are ready to go back to court if the review backs that up. The disclosure showed up in paperwork both sides filed jointly on September 15, part of a lawsuit filed against the Trump administration back in March. State attorneys wrote that if they find the agency fell short of what was agreed, they will seek relief from the court, according to reporting from The Jersey Vindicator, which broke the filing's details. Judge Jamel Semper is overseeing the case, and both sides owe the court another update by November 16.
What Activists Say They Documented
The court disclosure follows a letter that a coalition calling itself Project NINJA — the name stands for No ICE North Jersey Alliance — sent to Jennifer Davenport, New Jersey's attorney general, on September 11. Organizers say a man ICE swept up in nearby Dover on September 4 told relatives he had been driven west and left at a building that resembled a jail. The group believes that stop was the Roxbury site; the man was later moved to the Elizabeth Detention Center, according to Project NINJA. Volunteers told Gothamist, which first surfaced the group's letter, that they logged plate numbers and vehicle descriptions during the Dover arrests, then watched matching vehicles pull into and out of the Roxbury property soon afterward. The coalition's attorney, David Broderick, argued the timing leaves little room for another explanation. "It's not perfect evidence. But it's the best evidence we've had so far," he said.
The Order That Was Meant to Keep the Site Empty
DHS paid $129.3 million in February for the building, sized at close to half a million square feet, buying it from a partnership tied to Dallas-based developer Dalfen Industrial and a Goldman Sachs real estate fund, with an eye toward making it a processing hub for newly arrested immigrants. Early planning documents described room for some 1,500 occupants, though government lawyers later told the court the true figure would land under 550. Months of protest from Roxbury's all-Republican township council, plus a lawsuit joined by Governor Mikie Sherrill's administration, pushed both sides into a May agreement: crews could handle basic upkeep — fencing, cameras, locks, plumbing — but nothing that moved the building toward becoming a detention site while an environmental review was pending.
From "Abandoned" to Still Undecided
In late June, state officials said DHS had walked away from the Roxbury project for good and intended to sell the property. Weeks later, Justice Department lawyers told the court the opposite: the agency was still weighing whether to move forward. That back-and-forth carried straight into this week's paperwork, where federal attorneys said there is still no timeline for a final call.
Officials Speak Up, DHS Stays Quiet
Sherrill said the pattern shows the administration running an operation inside a building she calls unfit for people. "This is one bad decision after another to chase their illegal plan," she wrote in a public statement. Representative Analilia Mejia, whose district borders Roxbury, said she is pressing federal officials for answers. Roxbury's Republican mayor, Shawn Potillo, has said only that township officials are watching developments but cannot discuss specifics while litigation continues. A DHS spokesperson offered a similarly narrow line this week: "Due to ongoing litigation, DHS has no further comment at this time." Neither ICE nor DHS has directly addressed whether anyone was held inside the warehouse.
Part of a Bigger National Push
Roxbury is one of roughly a dozen former warehouses DHS has purchased nationwide, for close to a billion dollars combined, as the agency races to add detention capacity — including sites in Texas, Georgia, Maryland and Pennsylvania that have drawn similar local pushback and, in Maryland's case, a separate lawsuit from that state's own attorney general. New Jersey's own arrest numbers have climbed alongside that buildout: statewide ICE arrests rose 147.6% from May through July, per federal enforcement data that researchers from UCLA and UC Berkeley have been analyzing, as reported by El Nuevo Diario. Should the claims about Roxbury hold up, the site would become New Jersey's third immigration detention facility, joining Delaney Hall in Newark and the Elizabeth Detention Center — the very facility where Project NINJA says the Dover detainee ultimately ended up.
