With construction actively underway on a 24.5-acre site outside Gilroy, California's Attorney General and Santa Clara County filed an emergency motion Thursday asking a federal judge to halt work on a planned ICE holding facility — invoking, among other laws, a state farmland protection act that has shielded the land from development since the 1960s.

The motion for a preliminary injunction escalates a lawsuit filed by Attorney General Rob Bonta and Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti on June 11, which argued the Trump administration violated five federal and state laws in leasing and developing the unincorporated site near Gilroy. What's new: construction is now happening while the case is pending, and officials say the window to stop irreversible damage to agricultural land, local ecosystems, and a septic system never designed for mass occupancy is closing fast.

The site — about 24.5 acres of unincorporated Santa Clara County land leased by a private developer to the federal government in January 2025 — sits on property that California has protected under the Williamson Act for agricultural use since the 1960s. That state law, designed to preserve farmland from suburban encroachment, forms one of five legal violations Bonta and LoPresti allege the Trump administration committed in proceeding with the project.

The others are the National Environmental Policy Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act. Officials say no environmental review was conducted before development began, and neither the county nor the state were consulted — or even told — about the federal government's plans when the lease was signed.

"This motion demonstrates that, with public health and the environment at stake, the federal government chose secrecy over transparency and speed over deliberation," County Counsel LoPresti said in a statement Thursday. "We're confident the court will hold the federal government accountable to the clear legal requirements that apply to this project — requirements that the federal government has so far completely ignored."

Attorney General Bonta was blunt about the stakes: "The law isn't written in disappearing ink, and it's time for the Trump Administration to take a step back and read it clearly."

The facility is believed to be an Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) holding site — a category of ICE facility designed for short-term administrative processing that has drawn repeated legal challenges during the Trump administration. Investigative reporting has documented frequent overcrowding and extended confinement at ERO facilities far beyond their intended short-term function.

The motion filed Thursday asks the court to block any action that physically alters the Gilroy property, including designing, procuring, renovating, retrofitting, demolishing, or constructing structures on the site. That scope is significant: it would freeze the project in place rather than simply slow it down.

State and county officials say construction poses immediate and concrete threats. The site's septic infrastructure was built for what they describe as "much smaller use" — echoing concerns raised in the original lawsuit that a system designed for modest daytime activity cannot handle a 24-hour detention population. Officials also warn that construction risks releasing hazardous materials into the soil and disrupting the local ecosystem and agricultural character of land that has been continuously farmed in the region for generations.

The Gilroy area is a major agricultural hub — long known as the garlic capital of the world — and the Williamson Act exists precisely to prevent exactly this kind of conversion. The Trump administration's position, implicit in proceeding without complying with the Act, is that federal land use supersedes the state's 60-year-old agricultural preservation framework. That claim is now before a federal judge.

The Dissent covered the original lawsuit when it was filed on June 11, focusing on the site's documented history of chemical contamination and the infrastructure mismatches that would affect any detained population. The preliminary injunction is a legal escalation: rather than waiting for the lawsuit to be decided on the merits, Bonta and LoPresti are asking the court to freeze the status quo now, before more ground is broken.

Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor ICE responded to requests for comment by press time. A court date on the motion has not yet been publicly announced.