Plans by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to convert a massive warehouse on San Antonio’s East Side into an immigrant detention center are moving forward as planned, the Washington Post reports.
The news comes two weeks after District 2 Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez said in an Instagram video that the site’s construction was paused indefinitely due to litigation that halted work on a similar ICE warehouse in Maryland over environmental concerns.
In April, a federal judge in Maryland blocked an ICE warehouse conversion project citing the lack of environmental review, a requirement of the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA.
However, by current appearances, the San Antonio warehouse is still going ahead, due to a 2025 ruling by the Supreme Court. In Trump v. CASA, the high court ruled that such cases are now jurisdictional, meaning the Maryland ruling doesn’t apply to facilities planned for El Paso and San Antonio.
“We’re in a different jurisdiction than Maryland, so we have to be ready for our own legal due diligence and making sure that our legal teams not only use NEPA but other things that are federal statutes that they’re supposed to be following,” Bexar County Precinct 4 Commissioner Tommy Calvert told the Current.
The landmark Trump v. CASA decision stripped lower courts of the power to block policies nationwide through injunctions, holding instead that federal courts possess only jurisdictional authority.
Maryland falls under the Fourth Circuit, a federal jurisdiction it shares with Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Texas falls under the notoriously conservative Fifth Circuit, which it shares with Louisiana and Mississippi.
Texas, Mississippi or Louisiana officials would have to file their own lawsuit to pause the construction of facilities within this federal jurisdiction.
Nonetheless, some in the Alamo City interpreted the Maryland ruling as a call for celebration, even though it didn’t apply.
“And because of that, the planned project here in San Antonio is on pause along with several others nationwide,” McKee-Rodriguez, whose district contains the warehouse, said in his Instagram video at the time. “That’s because the federal government is required to complete an environmental impact assessment before moving forward with projects like this.”
It’s unclear where the councilman got the information that the warehouse had been put on pause. His office didn’t respond to the Current’s request for more information and neither did a spokesman for the City of San Antonio.
The Current also reached out to D.C. law firm Kaplin Kirsch, which provided outside legal consultation to the City of San Antonio. Again, we received no response by press time.
Legal challenges targeting environmental issues have also been filed against similar federal projects in New Jersey, Michigan and Arizona, according to the New York Times.
NEPA is a 1969 law requiring federal agencies to consider the economic, social and ecological impact of any major project. However, Calvert said the Trump administration has attempted to skirt NEPA requirements, including in San Antonio, which could still present an opportunity for local officials to resist the project.
“So there is optimism that the Attorney General of Maryland’s ruling has been affirmed by the courts that we need to use the NEPA process,” said Calvert, who drafted a resolution offering additional solutions to resist the facility locally. “I always had NEPA as something that the Trump administration has shortcutted. When other elected officials incorrectly said ‘there’s nothing we can do,’ I knew that not to be the case.”
ICE still plans to conduct an environmental assessment at the San Antonio facility, a source with knowledge of the agency’s inner workings told the Washington Post. The agency also plans to have the site operational by early 2027, according to the news outlet.
ICE purchased the San Antonio warehouse in February to convert it into a 1,500-bed immigrant processing center. The San Antonio warehouse is one of 11 such facilities throughout the country, which cost the Trump administration roughly $1 billion, according to the New York Times.
“This facility would have a significant negative impact on our community, including the parks, schools, and neighborhoods immediately nearby,” Councilmember Jalen McKee-Rodriguez told the Post.
In cities around the country the White House has targeted for ICE detention sites, critics argue the storage warehouses aren’t designed to handle plumbing strain that would result from packing thousands of people inside.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told the Washington Post that new DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin intends to work with community leaders on the initiative, including those organizing against it.
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