Orange County Executive Steve Neuhaus warned on Feb. 20 that Donald Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) could target another community in Orange County or the Hudson Valley for a detention center site after apparently deciding to drop its plan to take over a warehouse in the Orange County Town of Chester.
ICE was planning to purchase the former PepBoys warehouse at 29 Elizabeth Drive in Chester for use in the network of detention prisons it is building across the country to hold an estimated 100,000 people. When word got out about the plan, waves of opposition were generated by the public, community leaders and elected officials.
ICE told Westfair’s Westchester County Business Journal that it had not purchased the Chester property despite previously issuing a statement saying that it had done so. Property records in the Orange County Clerk’s Office did not show that a deed was filed for a new transfer of the property.
As of late afternoon on Feb. 20, ICE had not responded to a number follow-up efforts by the Business Journal to find out whether it has now permanently dropped the Chester plan or would go back to it at some time in the future.
However, New York State Assemblyman Brian Maher who is from Walden in Orange County said on Feb. 20 that he had spoken to a senior advisor to the director of ICE in a virtual meeting. Maher said that during the meeting he made clear the widespread bipartisan opposition to the Chester plan.
Maher said that following the meeting, he received confirmation from ICE that its review process had concluded and that the agency would not be moving forward with the Chester site at this time. “At this time,” of course, does not preclude ICE from returning to the Chester plan at some point in the future.
Neuhaus said on Feb. 20, “I don’t think we’re out of the woods by any means. We had the Association of Town Supervisors meeting earlier this week. I did attend it and talk to many municipal attorneys. They’re all united, on board, and coming up with different creative ways to fight collectively.”
Neuhaus said that ICE has been buying properties east of the Mississippi like crazy for the last two weeks.
“We’re trying to make sure that doesn’t happen here in Orange County,” Neuhaus said. “We are on this. Our attorneys are working on this pretty much day and night. I don’t think we’re 100% out of the woods. They could be going to a different site. They could be going to another county in the Hudson Valley. We’re going to continue to work on this together and address this as a team.”
