On Christmas Eve, residents of Roxbury were shaken from their holiday routines by a national news report that name-dropped their small Morris County town.
The report, published by The Washington Post, said that Roxbury was among a small group of communities under consideration for new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities.
The plan, according to documents drafted by ICE and reviewed by the Post, would involve converting existing warehouses into facilities where as many as 1,500 people would be held pending deportation. The center would become the largest in New Jersey by detainee population.
Local officials were blindsided.
“So far, we only know what was in the Post report,” Brian Considine, the chair of the Roxbury Dems, said on Thursday.
“You have to wonder if the feds are just messing with you,” he added, giving a grim laugh.
The report spread across town “very quickly,” according to William Angus, a community organizer who lived in Roxbury for a decade before moving to neighboring Hackettstown two years ago.
“Our first thought was, we need to go to the town council,” he said. “Our second thought was, we need to get a protest going.”
Within days, the normally tranquil municipality of 23,000 people found itself in the eye of a fast-moving political and emotional maelstrom.
Residents flocked to a Dec. 30 township council meeting then flooded a major intersection the following weekend to protest a facility that local officials say they themselves learned about only through the press — and that the federal government has yet to confirm.
The Post report described a draft of Department of Homeland Security planning documents outlining a nationwide expansion of immigration detention capacity through the conversion of large industrial warehouses.
Roxbury was listed among roughly 16 potential sites of similar size, though the newspaper cautioned the documents were preliminary and subject to change.
That caveat has done little to calm nerves, especially in the wake of the fatal shooting of a woman in Minnesota by a federal immigration officer Wednesday.
“No one wants to see that play out in Roxbury,” said Darcy Draeger, chair of the Morris County Democratic Committee.
‘Operating in a vacuum’
Local leaders say they have received no communication from ICE or DHS about any proposed project.
At the Dec. 30 meeting, Mayor Shawn Potillo said that township officials had learned about the alleged plan the same way as other residents.
“To the best of this council’s knowledge, no officials in the Township of Roxbury have been contacted by the federal government, nor do we have any information from them at this time regarding the validity of the Washington Post’s report,” he told the crowd.
Reached by email on Friday, Potillo declined to comment further. But Draeger said that officials were still in the dark.
“Everyone is operating in a vacuum of information right now,” she said.
Spokespeople for ICE and DHS did not respond to requests for comment.
Roxbury Township’s welcome signNJ Advance Media file photo
Draeger said the county Democratic committee contacted the office of U.S. Rep. Tom Kean, Jr., whose congressional district includes Roxbury, seeking any information. They were told Kean had no comment, she said.
A spokesperson for Kean did not return inquiries from NJ Advance Media.
The federal government has remained silent, even as state lawmakers in Trenton move on the issue.
This week, New Jersey Democrats advanced a package of immigration‑related bills supporters say would bolster protections for immigrant communities by limiting state and local cooperation with federal enforcement.
Adam McGovern, a legislative strategist at Wind of the Spirit Immigrant Resource Center, said in a statement that he was confident the bills were “all but assured of passage” next week.
“It is a powerful sign of how much New Jersey doesn’t want outsiders in masks terrorizing our neighborhoods, and how much we can depend on each other to care,” he said.
‘This is not acceptable’
The first public test of Roxbury’s reaction came at the township council meeting’s year-end meeting, normally a sleepy affair.
Instead, about 65 residents showed up and roughly 20 spoke, according to organizers and attendees.
Many voiced fear, anger and uncertainty about what an ICE facility would mean for their families and their town.
“The humanity that was on display was very, very moving,” said Justin Strickland, a Chatham Borough councilman and a Democrat running in the Feb. 5 special election to fill Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill’s vacated seat.
Strickland said the meeting reinforced his view that ICE has drifted far from its original mission.
“ICE was created to protect American citizens from terrorist attacks, not to terrorize American communities,” he said. “It clearly does not serve the purpose that it was intended.”
Days later, more than 150 people gathered in freezing temperatures at the intersection of Routes 10 and 46, chanting, dancing in inflatable costumes and waving signs opposing the potential facility. Another protest is planned for Sunday morning at the same intersection, Angus said.
Attendees described the demonstration, which was supervised by local police and Morris County sheriff’s deputies, as peaceful but urgent.
“It was very energized,” said Brian Varela, a Democrat running to unseat Kean, who brought a bullhorn to take part in chanting.
“People wanted to make clear that this is not acceptable,” he said.
‘Not who Roxbury is’
Concerns about an ICE warehouse in Roxbury extend beyond civil liberties. Angus cited fears about depressed property values, increased demands on police and fire services and rising property taxes.
“Any town that becomes a prison town changes,” he said. “That’s not who Roxbury is.”
Several speakers at the council meeting shared deeply personal stories, including one woman whose husband self-deported earlier this year and another who said she fears being detained without her children knowing where she is.
“A number of people were crying and had to fight back tears,” said Angus, who also testified. “Every single person had a different reason for opposing it.”
Opposition has drawn from across the political spectrum, organizers said, with Angus pointing to State Senate Minority Leader Anthony Bucco (R-Morris), who serves as Roxbury’s municipal attorney.
“No one will ever accuse him of being liberal, but he has been very outspoken about how he does not want this,” Angus said. “And if he can feel that way, I know that there are other Republicans who do, too.”
Bucco, who did not immediately return a request for comment, told NJ Spotlight News earlier this week that he was opposed to the idea.
Delaney Hall in Newark, NJ on Monday, December 22, 2025John Jones | For NJ Advance Media
“I don’t think that an ICE facility in the middle of a town like Roxbury is something that the federal government should consider,” he said.
Internal DHS criteria cited in the Washington Post report suggest a detention center holding 1,500 people would require a warehouse of roughly 400,000 to 500,000 square feet — a scale that residents say would transform the face of the township.
If built, it would also more than double the size of New Jersey’s current immigration detention infrastructure, which constitutes two smaller holding facilities.
Less than 50 miles east of Roxbury, Delaney Hall in Newark is operating with a maximum capacity of 1,000 beds. A town over, the Elizabeth Contract Detention Center holds another 300 detainees.
But even that expansion is dwarfed by the most expansive components of the federal plan.
According to the Post, ICE’s draft plan envisions an additional seven “large-scale” warehouse detention hubs across the country, each capable of holding between 5,000 and 10,000 people.
Those mega-sites would be located close to major logistics hubs in Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, Georgia and Missouri, according to the report.
‘Frightening’
Despite the growing protests, local leaders acknowledge they may have limited legal authority if the federal government ultimately moves forward.
“My understanding is there are very few tools that could potentially prevent this,” Draeger said. “That’s frightening.”
Nationwide, immigration detention has been scaling up rapidly under the Trump administration. Federal data shows that ICE held more than 68,000 people in detention by mid-December 2025, the highest number on record, according to the Post.
The Trump administration deported more than 605,000 people in 2025, the Department of Homeland Security announced in December.
A further 1.9 million people left the U.S. voluntarily, or “self-deported,” the government said.
There were 685,000 total deportations in fiscal year 2024 under former President Joe Biden, according to a report published last year by the Migration Policy Institute.
Still, Draeger said, the rapid mobilization in Roxbury has revealed something about how New Jerseyans might respond to further expansion.
“Morris County has a very strong grassroots community,” she said. “People are putting their bodies where their values are.”