Detroit, Michigan (Issuewire.com) - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Community Coalition Demands Public Review, Transparency, and Agency Accountability Before Any Action on Proposed ICE Detention Center in Romulus
Coalition to Shut the Camps sends formal intervention letters to GLWA, Wayne County, the City of Romulus, DTE Energy, and Michigan EGLE regarding the proposed detention facility at 7525 Cogswell Street
ROMULUS, Mich., March 13, 2026 — A coalition of community, immigrant rights, faith, environmental justice, and neighborhood organizations today announced the release of a five-letter administrative intervention package calling for full transparency, public process, and rigorous technical and environmental review before any public agency or regulated utility takes action to facilitate the proposed ICE Detention Processing Center at 7525 Cogswell Street in Romulus.
The letters were sent to the Great Lakes Water Authority (GLWA), Wayne County, the City of Romulus, DTE Energy, and the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) — the public agencies and institutions with critical authority over water, sewer, drainage, utility, environmental, and local administrative actions tied to the proposed facility.
The coalition states that a project of this scale should not move forward through closed-door administrative action. According to the coalition, the public has not been provided the level of disclosure that residents, local officials, and public agencies need to understand the facility’s true design basis, infrastructure demands, environmental implications, or occupancy assumptions.
“We will not allow Donald Trump to build this concentration camp in our backyard and use his secret police to terrorize our community” said Heather Miller, chair of The Coalition to Shut the Camps (CSC) “We will continue to build mass demonstrations and mobilize all across the city of Romulus and the state of Michigan to drive ICE out of our communities for good!”
The coalition’s letters note that ICE has publicly referenced an intended occupancy of 500 detainees, while the underlying warehouse is approximately 473,158 square feet and may present a much larger engineering design capacity than the public-facing figure suggests. The coalition argues that agencies should require disclosure of actual design assumptions rather than relying solely on occupancy statements made in public communications.
Community Aid For Empowerment (CAFE): The members of CAFE are engaging daily with our immigrant neighbors, and we are seeing families torn apart, children separated from their parents, hard-working immigrants with no criminal convictions taken from their jobs and arbitrarily detained in inhumane conditions. This would not be possible on such a massive scale without the detention infrastructure being built right in our own backyards, in contravention to legal regulations, and against the will of the people. We must hold those responsible accountable for their decisions, as well as for their indecision.
Coalition leaders are also raising concerns about the project’s location in a floodplain, near schools, and adjacent to a protected wetland area, arguing that the public deserves access to the engineering studies, environmental documentation, utility analyses, and agency correspondence that would normally inform decisions of this magnitude.
In the letters, the coalition asks agencies to publicly disclose service requests, engineering submittals, permit applications, and project-related correspondence; hold public meetings or hearings in Romulus; coordinate with one another before taking action; and require ICE or DHS representatives to answer technical and community questions in a public setting. The coalition also requests meetings with each recipient agency within 21 days.
Jackson County Immigrant Coalition (JCIC): Our coalition was formed by neighbors coming together to support and protect our community. When detention infrastructure expands, it affects immigrant families and the wellbeing of communities across our state. We call for transparency about what is being proposed and how decisions are being made.
The coalition emphasized that local residents, faith leaders, immigrant advocates, educators, and public officials have already voiced opposition to the project and that agencies should not act as though this is an ordinary warehouse conversion.
The coalition said the coordinated release of the letters is intended to ensure that no agency acts in isolation and that every institution involved understands the depth of community concern and the expectation of full public accountability.
Huron Valley Democratic Socialists of America: Each new detention center constructed intensifies the violence, intimidation, and administrative corruption inflicted on the working-class, violating our collective humanity and exploiting our historic disenfranchisement. The public deserves full transparency from all parties involved and must be empowered as decision-makers in this process to ensure the safety, dignity, and wellbeing of all residents.
Coalition Calls For:
- Public release of engineering studies, utility submittals, permit applications, and agency correspondence related to the proposed facility
- Disclosure of the project’s actual design occupancy assumptions and infrastructure demand
- Public meetings and comment opportunities before any service commitments, permits, or major administrative decisions
- Rigorous environmental and technical review by all relevant agencies
- Inter-agency coordination before approvals, commitments, or service determinations are made
Media Contact
Heather Miller
Chair, Coalition to Shut the Camps
313.645.9360 | ICEOutDetroit@gmail.com
Organizations signing the letter
- Community Unitarian Universalists of Brighton
- 50501 Veterans
- American Opposition
- CAFE - Community Aid For Empowerment
- Central Methodist Church, Detroit
- Clean Water Action—Michigan
- Concerned Citizens Oak Park Area
- Detroit Committee to Stop ICE
- Detroit National Lawyers Guild
- Episcopal Diocese of Michigan
- Fight Against Fascism Organization
- General Strike U.S. Detroit/Downriver
- Huron Valley Democratic Socialists
- Ice Out Detroit
- Jackson County Immigrant Coalition
- Kent County I-Bond
- Macomb Defenders Rising, Indivisible
- Macomb Immigrant Services Center
- March 4 Democracy
- Mass Blackout Coalition
- Metro Detroit DSA
- Michigan Unitarian Universalist Social Justice Network
- Movement for Immigrant Rights Action (MIRA)
- No Detention Centers in Michigan
- OF/BY/FOR
- Our People's Coalition
- Protectors of Equality in Government (PEG
- Removal Coalition
- Strangers No Longer
- Sugar Law Center
- Third Act MI
- We The People Dissent
- West Michigan Coalition
Additional Quotes from Signatories
“Let’s stop sanitizing it. What DHS is proposing in Romulus is effectively a modern-day concentration camp. Across this country, these facilities have become synonymous with horrific human rights violations, sexual abuse, deaths in custody, and a deeply broken system that cages human beings. Now they want to quietly drop one into this community without consultation, transparency, or even basic reviews. OF/BY/FOR refuses to treat that as normal, and we proudly stand with the people of Romulus and communities across the country in saying clearly: our communities should not be forced to host the infrastructure of the Trump regime’s cruelty.”
Sean Schaefer, Co-Founder, OF/BY/FOR
“These concentration camps exist to warehouse human beings and normalize cruelty—families separated, people held in cages, and lives treated as disposable. Cruelty is not immigration policy, and building more of these facilities is a moral stain on our country.”
Carlos Álvarez-Aranyos, Founder, American Opposition
Daii, Organizer, General Strike U.S. Detroit/Downriver:
"The proposed ICE detention center in Romulus is not about safety at all. It is a tool of neo-colonial control, designed to terrorize, cage, and dominate our communities. General Strike U.S. Detroit is in solidarity with local organizers and residents opposing this expansion of state-imposed violence. This struggle is part of a broader fight to extricate ourselves from systems that reproduce harm and reinforce oppression here in Metro Detroit and across the states. We refuse a future built on cages, deportations, and state terror. Our fight is for liberation."
Jasmine Johnson, Executive Director, Fight Against Fascism Organization (FAFO): “History has already shown us where policies of mass detention lead. We should not have to learn that lesson again. Migrants and people seeking a better life should not be treated like something to be warehoused and hidden away. We object to Detroit—or any other city in this country—being used to detain human beings instead of treating them with the dignity every person deserves.”
Krista Salmon, Co-Founder, Mass Blackout Coalition: “The Mass Blackout stands firmly with Attorney General Nessel, the Romulus City Council, and every resident who has spoken out.”
Alaink Kemple, Director of Operations, Mass Blackout Coalition: “ICE does not merely have a compliance problem. It has a documented record of killing people in custody, sexually abusing children, detaining and deporting American citizens, and defying federal courts. We will not stand in silence as this government builds new, illegal concentration camps to continue what its own judiciary has repeatedly ruled unlawful.”
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Media Contact
Coalition to Shut the Camps iceoutdetroit@gmail.com 313.645.9360
