County Fight Contested

Monterey County CA — Opposition to Proposed Federal Detention Center Near Gilroy

Monterey, CA FIPS 06053

Current status: On May 19, 2026 the Monterey County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution opposing a suspected federal ICE detention center under construction ~8 miles away at 7240 Holsclaw Road in unincorporated Santa Clara County, east of Gilroy. The county will send opposition letters to state/federal lawmakers, join any litigation by Santa Clara County or the CA DOJ, and review its own zoning laws. Construction (greenhouse demolition, fencing) began in early May 2026; the site is not zoned for a detention center.

The Fight

A federal immigration detention center is being quietly built at 7240 Holsclaw Road, an unincorporated parcel in southern Santa Clara County just east of Highway 101 and the Gilroy city limits — roughly 8 miles from the Monterey County line. The federal government leased the land in January 2025 but the project was not publicly known until April 2026, when community members spotted activity and alerted Santa Clara County. By mid-May 2026, construction crews had begun demolishing the property’s existing greenhouses and erecting privacy fencing.

On May 19, 2026, the Monterey County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution opposing the facility, becoming the second county to formally line up against it. This is a preemptive cross-county opposition fight: the detention center is not in Monterey County, but supervisors concluded that a facility built to “detain, intimidate, and send a chilling message to immigrant communities” (Supervisor Luis Alejo) just over the county line is unacceptable given Monterey’s large agricultural-worker population.

The Monterey resolution directs the county to:

Send letters of opposition to state and federal lawmakers
Join any litigation filed by Santa Clara County or the California Department of Justice to halt the facility
Review and modify its own zoning laws to prevent similar projects in Monterey County

Key Details

Site: 7240 Holsclaw Road, unincorporated Santa Clara County, ~11 miles south of the ICE field office in Morgan Hill; ~8 miles from Monterey County
Parcel: ~24.5 acres (reported variously as a 25-acre parcel), just east of Hwy 101 / north of Hwy 152
Lease/contract: GSA-awarded lease, $26.5 million over 20 years; contract awarded January 8, 2025, carrying the same solicitation ID number as a 2020 GSA detention-center solicitation that sought Santa Clara County property
Facility footprint: Described as an ~18,700–20,000 sq ft project; earlier reporting cited a building “as large as 4,000 square feet with a sally port”
Contractor/landlord: ECG 6 LLC, a Beverly Hills entity sharing an address with Elmwood Capital Group — a real-estate firm (founded 2020) that acquires industrial facilities and procures GSA leases, and which is tied to another immigration-detention proposal in Texas. Elmwood took ownership of the Holsclaw Road property weeks after the federal contract award.
Zoning conflict: Santa Clara County zoning ordinances do not permit detention centers or any facility that holds/imprisons people on the site. County Executive James Williams said the county will “seek to prevent any effort to disregard or flout any applicable law.”
DHS posture: DHS declined to confirm the project — “We have no new detention centers to announce at this time… ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S. and is actively working to expand detention space” — the familiar deny-then-build pattern.

The Coalition

Monterey County Board of Supervisors — unanimous opposition resolution, May 19, 2026; Supervisor Luis Alejo lead advocate
Santa Clara County — Supervisors Sylvia Arenas (D1) and Susan Ellenberg (D4) and County Executive James Williams vowed to fight; County Counsel coordinating; rally at the County Government Center in San José on May 14, 2026
CA Attorney General Rob Bonta — office “actively coordinating” with county officials on potential litigation
Assembly Speaker Robert Rivas — whose district covers South County/Gilroy — issued a “Not Here. Not Ever.” statement opposing the facility (May 15, 2026)
State Sen. and local officials across the South Valley vowed opposition
SIREN (Services, Immigrant Rights & Education Network) — organizer Kimberly Woo leading community mobilization against both the Gilroy site and the FCI Dublin conversion; community briefing/organizing call planned for May 22, 2026

Why This Fight Matters

This is the freshest siting fight in California and a textbook case of the federal-lease end-run around local control. By leasing unincorporated land through a GSA real-estate intermediary (Elmwood/ECG) rather than going through any local land-use process, DHS attempted to establish a detention site with zero public notice — the contract sat unknown for 16 months. The fight now tests:

Whether local zoning can block a federal lessee when the parcel is not zoned for detention and the federal government may assert preemption.
California’s 180-day-notice law (the same statute apparently bypassed at McFarland’s Central Valley Annex) — whether it reaches a privately-built, federally-leased greenfield facility.
Cross-county coalition-building — Monterey joining a fight outside its own borders signals the regional alarm in the agricultural Central Coast, and broadens the litigation base alongside Bonta’s DOJ.
The Elmwood/ECG GSA-lease model — the same real-estate-intermediary playbook is reportedly being used in Texas, making this a node in a national detention-expansion procurement pattern worth tracking.

Sources

This research is published at The RAMM — investigative reporting on the detention pipeline.

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