The Roxbury Ice Detention Center — The Full Story
⚠ THE PLAN: DHS purchased a 470,000-square-foot vacant industrial warehouse at 1879 Route 46 in Roxbury Township, Morris County, NJ on February 19, 2026 for $129.3 million — from a Goldman Sachs-backed real estate fund. The plan: retrofit it into an immigration detention center with approximately 1,500 beds, making it New Jersey's largest detention facility and part of a national DHS strategy to rapidly expand detention capacity using warehouses.
⚠ THE SCALE NATIONALLY: The Washington Post investigation (January 30, 2026) revealed that DHS was acquiring warehouses across the country to create a network of rapid-expansion detention facilities. Roxbury was one of 23+ sites targeted nationally as part of the Trump administration's mass detention and deportation infrastructure.
⚠ THE COMMUNITY OPPOSITION: Roxbury Township's Republican mayor and GOP-majority council — in a town that supported Donald Trump — immediately opposed the plan. The council stated: “Our town of 22,000 people, with 42 police officers and a volunteer fire department, is not equipped to house a detention center of this size.” The bipartisan opposition became a national story.
✅ YESTERDAY'S WIN: On May 12, 2026, the Trump administration agreed — in a joint court stipulation filed before a scheduled hearing on New Jersey's preliminary injunction — to conduct a full environmental assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act before proceeding with construction. ICE may only install temporary fencing and security cameras during the review. The environmental assessment can take months. Once complete, both sides have 7 days to confer before next steps. NJ Attorney General Davenport, Governor Sherrill, and Mayor Potillo called it a win. Dave Broderick: “The best we could have hoped for.”
✅ THE MARYLAND PRECEDENT: A federal judge in Maryland last month granted a preliminary injunction halting the conversion of a warehouse in Williamsport into an ICE detention center, siding with state officials who claimed environmental violations. The Roxbury agreement mirrors this pressure.
✅ LEGISLATIVE ACTION: Senators Andy Kim and Cory Booker introduced the End Warehouse Detention Act — which would prohibit DHS from using taxpayer funds to purchase warehouses for detention. Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R) introduced a bill to protect local taxpayers from financial burden of federal detention facilities in their communities.
⚠ WHAT STAYS TRUE: This is a pause, not a permanent victory. If DHS completes the environmental review and decides to proceed, litigation resumes. The fight is not over for Roxbury — or for any of the 22+ other communities facing the same plans across the country.
Wednesday's Protest — Larry Hamm / Pop
⚠ WHEN/WHERE: May 13, 2026 — Martin Luther King Federal Courthouse, 50 Walnut Street, Newark, NJ — 11:00 AM
⚠ ORGANIZED BY: People's Organization for Progress (POP) — Larry Hamm, Chairman
⚠ DEMANDS: (1) Restoration of the Voting Rights Act; (2) Passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act; (3) Vote against Trump's SAVE Act; (4) Supreme Court reform: term limits, binding ethics, expand to 13 justices
⚠ CONNECTION: The gutting of the VRA and the ICE detention expansion are the same project: the systematic elimination of political and physical power from communities of color and immigrant communities. Hamm understands both fights as one.
Guest Profiles
William Angus
Co-Founder & Spokesperson, No ICE North Jersey Alliance (Project NINJA) | Warren County, New Jersey
William Angus is the co-founder and public face of the No ICE North Jersey Alliance — also known as Project NINJA — a volunteer-led civil liberties organization based in Warren County, New Jersey, formed specifically to oppose the Trump administration's plan to convert a 470,000-square-foot warehouse in Roxbury Township into an immigration detention center.
When DHS announced in late 2025 that it was targeting the Route 46 warehouse in Roxbury as part of a nationwide strategy to rapidly expand immigration detention capacity using retrofitted industrial warehouses, most people assumed nothing could stop the federal government. William Angus was not one of those people. “A lot of people were like: listen, it's the federal government, there's nothing you can do,” he told The Jersey Vindicator. “And I was like: the hell with that.”
Since January 2026, Angus has organized hundreds of protesters — 500 at a single rally in February alone — coordinated with 22 other cities across the country facing similar warehouse detention proposals, built a bipartisan local coalition including the Republican mayor and town council of Roxbury, testified before elected officials, and worked with the state of New Jersey and the township in their legal fight against the facility.
Yesterday — May 12, 2026 — that fight produced a significant win. The Trump administration agreed, in a joint court stipulation filed before a judge could hear the preliminary injunction argument, to conduct a full environmental assessment under the National Environmental Policy Act before proceeding. The environmental review can take months. David Broderick, who works with the Alliance, called it “the best we could have hoped for.” Angus is clear that this is a pause, not a victory. “This is so much bigger than just Roxbury,” he has said. “You have 22 other cities across the country in the same position. If ICE doesn't go here, they're going to go somewhere else. So we'll have to take the fight to them.”
Lawrence (Larry) Hamm
Chairman & Founder, People's Organization for Progress (POP) | Newark, NJ | njpop.org
Lawrence Hamm is one of the most consequential and enduring grassroots civil rights organizers in the United States — a man who has been on the frontline of the movement since he was seventeen years old and has never left. He organized his first major action at Newark Arts High School in 1971, was appointed to the Newark Board of Education by Mayor Kenneth Gibson at age 17 — the youngest voting school board member in U.S. history — and graduated cum laude from Princeton in 1978.
In 1982, he founded the People's Organization for Progress, which has operated continuously for 44 years, holding weekly protests against police brutality and organizing major campaigns for racial, social, and economic justice.
Yesterday — Wednesday, May 13, 2026 — Larry Hamm led a POP-organized protest at the Martin Luther King Federal Courthouse in Newark demanding restoration of the Voting Rights Act in response to the Supreme Court's Callais decision. He is on Frontline Voices today the morning after that action, with the full fire still burning.
Hamm has also been an outspoken opponent of the ICE detention center expansion — understanding that the attack on immigrant communities and the attack on Black voting rights are the same authoritarian project.
His autobiography has just been published: npl.org/hammbooklaunch/
David (Dave) Broderick
Retired Attorney | Activist, No ICE North Jersey Alliance | Morris County, New Jersey
David Broderick is a retired attorney who has brought his legal expertise to bear in the fight to stop the Roxbury ICE detention center. Working with the No ICE North Jersey Alliance, Broderick has been a key legal voice in the community's resistance — helping activists and organizers understand the legal landscape, participating in hearings and court proceedings, and interpreting the legal filings for a community that needs both factual clarity and strategic guidance.
After yesterday's court agreement, it was David Broderick who stepped outside the Newark federal courthouse and told reporters that the Trump administration's agreement to conduct an environmental review before proceeding was “the best we could have hoped for.” His framing was precise: a pause, with conditions that could take months, won by a community that refused to accept inevitability.
Broderick represents a critical model: the retired professional who takes their expertise back into community service, applying legal knowledge to movements that cannot always afford representation. His perspective today bridges the legal strategy of the fight and its meaning for the people most directly affected.
