California, Santa Clara County sue Trump administration to block Gilroy ICE facility
The state of California and Santa Clara County Counsel filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration on Wednesday to block the development of an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility near Gilroy.
In January 2025, a private developer leased the property to the federal government for use by ICE, according to a Wednesday press release by the Attorney General's Office. In a complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti asked the court to permanently prohibit construction of the facility.
The lawsuit claims that the project violates the National Environmental Policy Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act, the Administrative Procedure Act, and California's Williamson Act. The Attorney General's Office also claimed that the plan will threaten the local ecosystem, which it said has been protected by the state for exclusive agricultural use since the 1960s.
"President Trump's mass detention and deportation campaign has led to cruel, inhumane, and unacceptable conditions at immigration holding and detention facilities across California," said Bonta in a press release. "But instead of working to improve conditions at these facilities, instead of enforcing ICE's own detention standards, the Trump Administration is trying to jam through a new facility on a community that doesn't want it."
Last month, Bonta released a report on the conditions at immigration detention facilities operating in California, which he called "cruel, inhumane, and unacceptable." The lawsuit alleged that the use of the facility could include immigration detention and repeated a 2025 statement by former Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, where he said, "We need to get better at treating this like a business," describing his ideal deportation system as "like (Amazon) Prime, but with human beings."
The quote was first reported by the Arizona Mirror when Lyons spoke at the 2025 Border Security Expo in Phoenix, Arizona.
The lawsuit is the latest by Santa Clara County against President Donald Trump's immigration policies. In 2017 and 2025, the county, along with San Francisco County, led a group of local governments that succeeded in challenging Trump's plans to defund "sanctuary jurisdictions." These include cities and counties that prohibit the use of local resources to assist in federal immigration enforcement efforts.
"Since President Trump took office, the County of Santa Clara has made clear that we won't tolerate a federal government that abuses the law and jeopardizes the rights and well-being of our immigrant communities," said LoPresti in a statement
Santa Clara County currently has 11 active cases against the Trump administration, including this latest filing, according to the press release.
CBS News Bay Area has reached out to U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment.
