First, Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County sued the U.S. Department of Homeland Security over Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s plan to convert a west side warehouse into a detention center. And now, Uproar Utah, a committee of the Refugee Justice League, plans to file a similar suit.
Brent Ward, one of the advocacy group’s attorneys, said this isn’t a NIMBY issue.
“We're not claiming that we just don't want this in our backyard,” he said. “This is insane. Period. No matter what.”
The proposed 7,500 to 10,000-person detention center would be more than twice the size of the Utah State Correctional Facility. Ward is concerned about impacts to the Great Salt Lake, public health and migratory birds.
In the city and county’s lawsuit, they raise concerns about drastic environmental, economic and public safety impacts beyond city limits. They estimate the warehouse would use one to two million gallons of water a day, up from 5,600 in its previous use, and they argue it would worsen Utah’s air quality and measles outbreak.
The city and county claim the federal government’s conversion plan violates three federal laws: the Administrative Procedure Act, the National Environmental Policy Act and the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act.
Uproar Utah also plans to cite the first two laws in its suit. They may also include the Endangered Species Act.
Above all, however, Ward worries about the people who would be kept inside the detention center — many of whom likely would not be the “worst of the worst.”
While crossing the United States border without authorization is a crime, Ward stressed that being in the country without legal status is a civil matter, not a criminal offense. Seventy-one percent of those currently in immigration detention nationwide have no criminal record, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, which obtains federal government records through Freedom of Information Act requests.
“The deeper reason is that cramming thousands of immigrants in an overcrowded warehouse denies them the dignity they are due as human beings,” Ward said.
Utah’s large immigration court backlog, plus a ruling that immigration judges cannot hear bond requests for immigrants who entered the country illegally, means people could wait years in detention before their hearings.
Lawsuits citing the National Environmental Policy Act are playing out around the country, from a small town in Georgia to states like Maryland, Arizona and Michigan.
The detention center proposed for Hagerstown, Maryland, is on hold after a federal judge blocked the warehouse conversion due to the lack of environmental review. Homeland Security is now conducting an environmental review and accepting public comment.
The Maryland lawsuit doesn’t apply to other parts of the country in different court circuits, but Ward said it sets a valuable precedent.
“I think it is that decision, more than any other, so far, has given ICE and DHS pause. Like, ‘What, do we want to go through this 11 times, and what are we going to do to avoid it?’”
So Uproar Utah plans to ruffle ICE’s feathers enough that it abandons its Utah facility, Ward said.
“If we can make ourselves enough of an aggravation, enough of a provocation to the DHS and ICE with our lawsuit, whatever else we might do to lawfully obstruct this, then we may get dropped.”
Seema Kakade, a professor at the University of Maryland’s law school, said the National Environmental Policy Act is often referred to as the Magna Carta of environmental law. Kakade served at the White House Council on Environmental Quality under the Biden administration.
“NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act, is really the statute that requires federal agencies to take a look at the environmental impacts of major federal actions,” she said.
Unlike the Clean Air Act or Safe Drinking Water Act, the National Environmental Policy Act considers various environmental factors altogether, such as air, water and public health.
The law also requires agencies to consider alternatives for a project — for instance, where a pipeline would be best suited.
“If you don't even look, if you don't even analyze, how are you supposed to know, right, whether you're making a good choice or whether maybe a different location in the pipeline example would be better,” she said.
Both NEPA and the Administrative Procedure Act deal, in part, with how transparent federal agencies are and how involved the public is, Kakade said. So it makes sense that these laws are being cited in lawsuits against ICE’s detention warehouse plans.
“You can see why they're being cited to, because we don't know what's happening with respect to building of ICE detention centers,” she said.
While NEPA requires an environmental review, it doesn’t specify what happens next. There are many potential outcomes once a review is finished. An agency could cancel a project, choose a different location, proceed with mitigating measures or continue as planned, despite potential environmental consequences.
“They can absolutely do that, assuming, right, that they have complied with NEPA,” Kakade said.
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
