As has been presumed since June, federal officials have abandoned their plans to build a new immigration detention center in Salt Lake City, according to a federal court filing Wednesday.
In the joint filing by Salt Lake City, Salt Lake County and U.S. Department of Homeland Security officials in the federal lawsuit, the sides acknowledge as much.
“On July 17, 2026, defendants, through counsel, informed plaintiffs that they no longer intend to convert the Salt Lake warehouse into an immigration detention facility and instead intend to designate the Salt Lake facility as excess property for disposition by the General Services Administration (‘GSA),” reads the filing. The document was filed as part of the litigants’ efforts to get the judge to stay the case, or temporarily pause it.
Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County, the plaintiffs, filed suit in U.S. District Court on June 8 against U.S. Department of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin and other immigration officials, the defendants, to stop the plans. The Salt Lake city and county officials had charged that federal officials didn’t follow proper federal procedures in designating the proposed site at 6020 W. 300 South as a detention center.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, purchased the empty warehouse on 300 South for $145.44 million last March for conversion into an immigrant detention center, part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. The plans sparked an uproar among immigrant advocates and protesting. Then news emerged late in June in a New York Times report that federal officials planned to offload the Salt Lake City site and abandon plans to convert the warehouse into an immigrant detention center.
At the time, DHS didn’t directly say the plans in Utah had been abandoned, but hinted at it. “DHS is moving swiftly to utilize EXISTING detention space with our state and county partners,” the agency said in a statement last June.
Reps for Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson and Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall declined comment Wednesday as the issue remains in litigation. In response to a KSL query, reps from the Department of Homeland Security issued the same statement the agency provided last June to media outlets when the New York Times report came out.
“From day one, DHS has remained singularly focused on removing the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from the United States and is always evaluating the best methods to do so. These heinous criminals, once arrested, should be removed at lightning speed, not housed on American soil at the taxpayer’s expense,” reads the rehashed statement. The reissued statement also included the line about using “existing” detention center space.
‘Hallelujah’
Brent Ward, an attorney who had been involved in separate efforts with a new nonprofit group, Uproar Utah, to sue to halt the plans, welcomed the news.
“All I can say is hallelujah,” Ward said. “That’s the culmination of the efforts of a lot of people ... behind the scenes, but also the city attorney, the mayor and everybody who applied political pressure in any way, shape or form.”
The plans had garnered support from some, including Gov. Spencer Cox, but the foes spoke more loudly, at least publicly, in expressing their displeasure with the plans. The critics had variously feared detainees would be mistreated, that the site couldn’t adequately house a detention center capable of holding up to 10,000 people, as proposed, and that such a facility didn’t fit in the industrial area where it was proposed.
Federal officials never formally responded to the lawsuit. According to the language of the proposed stay, also filed Wednesday, those involved would craft a report more specifically spelling out what happens with the site. The judge in the matter has yet to rule on the request for a stay. The proposed report, if the judge agrees to the language of the stay, would be filed within 60 days.
City and county officials probably don’t want the case dismissed “until the property is actually disposed of and the use of the facility as a jail is foreclosed beyond peradventure,” Ward said. “So the city wants the court to retain jurisdiction until the door has been completely shut. That is a prudent position.”
The Utah Democratic Party issued a statement calling federal officials’ plans to abandon the proposal “a retreat” and charging that the process federal officials followed lacked transparency.
“Credit belongs to Democratic leaders like Mayor Erin Mendenhall and Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson, who stood their ground and made DHS answer for this plan in court instead of behind closed doors,” reads the statement. “Complaints of violent incidents, misconduct and wrongful arrests keep piling up against ICE and its response isn’t accountability. It’s avoidance. That’s not an agency we should trust anywhere near our neighbors, our families or our streets.”