Opponents of a planned U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center marched through San Antonio’s East Side Saturday morning, taking their calls for local officials to challenge the facility directly to the warehouse where it is expected to open later this year.
Hundreds of people gathered at Davis Middle School on the East Side for the roughly 2.5-mile march along East Houston Street and Loop 410 where the nearly 640,000-square-foot warehouse is located at 542 S.E. Loop 410.
The demonstration comes as local elected officials have shifted from requesting information and opportunities for public input from the Department of Homeland Security toward potential legal pushback.
On Friday evening, Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones announced that she would support legal action to halt work converting the warehouse into an immigration processing center after a Sept. 30 deadline for ICE to respond to the city’s questions passed without a response.
Jones says the city attorney is now reviewing San Antonio’s legal options.
On Saturday, Bexar County Precinct 4 Commissioner Tommy Calvert, who helped organize the march and whose Eastside precinct houses the proposed ICE facility, said he plans to ask the county to follow the city’s lead at the next commissioners court meeting.
“Last night, I was so heartened to hear Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones announce her support for the city of San Antonio to sue,” Calvert told marchers before they stepped off. “And on October 13, I’m asking the district attorney and the commissioners court to do the same thing.”
Potential legal challenges to ICE facility
The city and county’s opportunities to challenge the facility may be limited.
Officials have previously warned council members that the federal Supremacy Clause — which generally gives federal law and lawful federal actions priority over conflicting state or local rules — and Texas state law both constrain how far San Antonio and Bexar County can go in resisting federal actions.
ICE purchased the nearly 640,000-square-foot warehouse for $66.1 million in January, with plans to convert it into a processing facility capable of holding between 1,000 and 1,500 people per day.
In August, the federal agency awarded GardaWorld Federal Services a $17.3 million contract to renovate the property and provide services for its operation. ICE has said it expects the facility to open this winter.
Since the facility was announced, Calvert has argued local governments should examine whether the federal government complied with environmental review requirements before moving forward with the facility.
He pointed to jurisdictions across the country where detention facility projects had been delayed due to similar legal challenges, including in Maryland.
City Council members are also pushing for independent reviews of the facility’s potential effects on local infrastructure. Members formally requested a special City Council session in two separate memos Friday evening to discuss policy requests for an independent assessment detailing potential impacts of the facility on local municipal utilities.
The special session would review and take action on a Aug. 20 council consideration request filed by Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez (D2), whose district also contains the proposed facility. In it, McKee-Rodriguez called for an independent assessment and public presentation of the of the potential demand on the power grid, water and wastewater systems as well as potential impacts on current and future utility rates for the San Antonio Water System and CPS Energy.
Five other council members — Sukh Kaur, Phyllis Viagran, Teri Castillo, Marina Alderete Gavito and Ivalis Meza Gonzalez — separately also called for the city to do “everything in its power” to prevent the facility from opening.
“The time for all of City Council to unite against the placement of this atrocity exhibition in our backyard is now,” the memo read. “We Councilmembers fully support the City doing everything in its power — up to and including filing suit — to preserve our city’s humanity and compassion towards all people.”
A neighborhood concern
For many marchers Saturday, opposition to the facility is more than a broader fight over federal immigration policy. The proposed detention center would sit in the same part of San Antonio where they live, work, worship and raise their families.
Sharon Lundy was born and raised on the East Side of San Antonio, in the Denver Heights neighborhood. She now works as a teacher at Wagner High School. On Saturday, alongside her two sons, she marched toward the ICE facility in a show of solidarity with her Hispanic neighbors.
Lundy said while immigration enforcement does not directly affect her family, she did not see that as a reason to stay out of the fight.
“Sometimes we have a tendency to think if something’s not affecting us directly, then it’s not my problem. It’s not my fight,” Lundy said. “But this is everyone’s fight. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’”
Lundy expressed frustration that the facility would be located not just in the neighborhood where she lives and works but in a community where families are raising their children.
“It’s unacceptable anywhere. Not just because it’s my neighborhood, but this is a community,” she said. “There are families here. There are children here.
“It’s got to go.”
Jessica Kemp, assistant pastor at Antioch Missionary Baptist Church on the East Side, shared that concern about what the facility’s presence could mean for the surrounding community.
“It feels like a scare tactic for our community,” Kemp said. “It feels like it’s an attack on the beloved community that we have been building here in years past.”
Kemp said she joined Saturday’s march in solidarity with immigrant families and the large Hispanic community in San Antonio while living by her faith, which she said teaches her to “love the stranger.”
“This is our act of loving our neighbor, showing up for them and standing in solidarity,” she said.
The road ahead
Saturday’s march drew immigration advocates, faith groups, residents and elected officials, including U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, who joined Calvert in calling for the facility not to open.
The demonstration also came days before President Donald Trump is scheduled to visit San Antonio for a campaign event Wednesday at the Freeman Coliseum, also on the East Side. Trump is expected to campaign alongside Republican 35th Congressional District nominee Carlos De La Cruz and Republican U.S. Senate nominee Ken Paxton.
Castro used his remarks before Saturday’s march to invite Trump to tour the Dilley detention facility, where immigrant families are detained outside San Antonio. He also tied the fight over immigration enforcement to the Nov. 3 election and called for a change in state leadership.
“You all feel the change coming in Texas. You see what’s coming, and it’s long overdue,” Castro said. “The leaders of this state have abused the people of Texas for too long, and people have had enough, and they’re ready for a change.”
Father Jimmy Drennan of St. Margaret Mary Catholic Church and COPS/Metro Alliance, which helped organize the march, said opposing the facility was part of a broader effort to root out what he described as hate in the country — one that would have to continue regardless of changes in political leadership.
“Remember that this march will not end today. It will not end tomorrow. It will not end in two years when we see changes in the highest office,” Drennan said. “This march must continue for the years to come until the hate that is governing our country is brought to an end.”
This story first appeared in the San Antonio Report.
