Advocates Urge Demolition of FCI Dublin, Raising Worries It Could Become ICE Jail

Advocates who have been pushing for the demolition of a former East Bay prison site doubled down on their calls Tuesday, citing escalating concerns that it could be repurposed into an immigration detention facility.

The fate of FCI Dublin has been in question since the correctional facility, which operated as a women’s prison for decades, was shuttered in 2024 over widespread sexual abuse and unsafe living conditions. Now, as the Federal Bureau of Prisons prepares to transfer ownership of the site, a group of residents, faith leaders and community organizations representing formerly incarcerated women and immigrants is speaking out.

“The ICE detention system is plagued by the very same kinds of abuses and neglect that folks survived at FCI Dublin,” Susan Beaty, an attorney with the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice, said during a press conference held by the ICE Out of Dublin Coalition. “Demolishing the facility is the only way to mitigate the really serious environmental dangers that are present and ensure that these unsafe buildings [and this] property isn’t used to incarcerate people in the future.”

On Friday, the Bureau of Prisons issued an environmental assessment of the site, marking the first step in transferring it to the General Services Administration, a federal agency that manages government-owned assets. The GSA will make a final determination on what to do with the Dublin site — including whether to hand it over to another interested federal agency.

While there’s no firm timeline on when the transfer might happen, Beaty said last week’s report kicked off a minimum 30-day period for public comments. BOP will be required to publish and review that feedback before making its final decision.

For months, the ICE Out of Dublin Coalition has expressed concerns that the GSA might transfer the property to the Department of Homeland Security as part of its efforts to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention capacity across the U.S.

An ICE spokesperson told KQED on Tuesday that the agency does not have plans to convert Dublin into a detention facility. Advocates, however, said the Bureau of Prisons has not disavowed the possibility.

The advocates believe the site should not be used for any carceral use, citing unsafe conditions and infrastructure hazards. The environmental assessment cited a range of environmental hazards, including a leaking sewer system, diesel fuel contamination, asbestos and mold.

Aimee Chavira, who was previously incarcerated at FCI Dublin, said that when she worked in the prison’s safety department, she and other women were told to paint over mold ahead of facility inspections, and that brown water sometimes came out of spigots meant for drinking.

“This prison is not livable for anyone, not ICE detention, not immigrants,” she said during Tuesday’s press conference. “Girls started getting sick, I got sick.”

Dublin’s correctional facility was shut down in April 2024 amid a major sexual abuse scandal, in which at least eight former staffers, including the former warden and chaplain, have been sentenced.

“For the government to say ‘We want another facility or an ICE facility,’ that would mean more issues at hand,” Chavira said. “If our rights were violated under these circumstances, what gives anybody the thought [that] it’s going to change?”

Since Trump took office in January 2025, ICE has opened two detention centers in California — the Central Valley Annex and California City Detention Facility —  both on former state prison sites. The president’s landmark “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” last summer provided $45 billion to expand ICE detention, in order to “help ICE law enforcement carry out the largest deportation effort in American history,” an ICE spokesperson said via email.

Beaty said GSA is actively pursuing additional properties for ICE and has created an “ICE Surge Team.”

She said the Dublin site is vulnerable because CCIJ believes the agency is specifically targeting Northern California, where there aren’t any active detention centers — the farthest north of California’s eight ICE detention centers is in Bakersfield.

“ICE is specifically eyeing Northern California because thanks to many years of successful community organizing, the ICE contracts in the region were ended,” Beaty said.

“This limits ICE’s ability to conduct mass enforcement in the region, and it’s part of why we here in the Bay Area have not seen the level of ICE terror that other parts of California have seen,” she continued.

In February, California Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, along with East Bay Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, sent a letter to then-Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem urging her not to repurpose the Dublin facility as an immigration jail, and asking questions about whether there were plans to do so in the works.

At the time, Padilla told KQED he found conditions at the new California City facility, where he’d just visited, “deplorable.”

Dublin’s City Council and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors have also both passed resolutions opposing reopening or repurposing the site for any detention or correctional use in the future, citing staff misconduct and dangerous infrastructure issues.

“There can be no doubt about the will of the people. We do not want an ICE detention facility in our community,” said the Rev. Kelly Miller-Sanchez, the pastor of Resurrection Lutheran Church in Dublin. “FCI Dublin is a site where horrific human rights abuses occurred. It is stained with the blood of its survivors, and it is a blot upon the history of our beautiful city. Turning this site into an ICE detention facility would compound the injuries, both physical and moral, that this site has already caused.”