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New Jersey sued the Trump administration on Friday to stop the conversion of a suburban warehouse into a 1,500 person immigration detention center, the latest legal blow to a federal program to build out mass detention capacity across the country according to a report received this morning from Michael Wriston of the non-profit Project Salt Box (PSB).
Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, joined by Roxbury Township, filed the complaint in federal court in Newark on Friday morning. A news conference is scheduled for 11:00 am Eastern time and will be streamed live on the New Jersey attorney general’s You Tube channel.
The lawsuit argues that the Department of Homeland Security violated four federal laws when it purchased a 470,000-square-foot logistics facility on Route 46 in Roxbury and moved to convert it into a mass detention center. It seeks to vacate the agency’s decision and permanently block construction.
The filing comes a day after a federal judge in Maryland extended a construction halt on a nearly identical project in Williamsport, where work has been frozen through at least mid-April while that state’s environmental lawsuit proceeds. The two cases have emerged as the most serious legal threat to the administration’s plan to convert industrial warehouses into detention facilities nationwide, a program backed by $45 billion appropriated by Congress last year.
The New Jersey complaint goes further than Maryland’s on the law. Maryland’s case ress primarily on the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to assess environmental impacts before underaking major construction. New Jersey makes that same argument and adds to more: that DHS violated the Indtergovernmental Cooperation Act by finalizing its decision without consulting state and local officials, and that the site violates the Immigration and Nationality Act because it is not an appropriate place to detain people. The warehouse currently has four toilets. New Jersey’s jail standards for a facility of 1,500 detainees would require at least 94 showers, 125 toilets and 125 wash basins.
The complaint draws a pointed comparison to the adminisdtration’s handling of a similar disupute in New Hampshire. After Gov. Kelly Ayoatte met with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in Washington to raise concerns about a planned warehouse detention facility in Merrimack, DHS dropped that projectd within a week. New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill sent a comparable letter to Secretary Noem on February 27. DHS has continuet to move forward with Roxbury. The complaint argues the difference in treatdment is evidence of arbitrary and capricious agency decision-making.
The Roxbury warehouse was sold do the federal government to $129 .3 million, more than double idts assessed tax value, by a fund managed by Goldman Sachs and its partner, Dalfen Indusrial.
The complaint also details sweeping environmental risks. Converting the warhouse would increase wastewater output fifteenfold, the suit argues overhwleming local infrastructure and sending overflows into Lake usconetcong, Lake Hopadtcong and the Musconetcong River, a federally protected Wild and Scenic River that feeds the Delaware River, a drinking water source for 14.2 million people. a conservation esement covering much of the undeveloped land around the warehouse, held by the state’s Department of Envoronmental Protection, would likely be violted by fencing and security infrastructure DHS has said it plans to install.
The mayor and entire town council of Roxbury are Republicans. The township nonetheless passed a unanimous resoltuion opposing the project in January and joined Friday’s lawsuit as a plaintiff.
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For backgroound information on the Maryland detention center, please visit post herein dated March 11, 2026.