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The future of the shuttered federal women’s prison in Dublin remains unclear more than a year after rumors began circulating over its potential resurrection as an ICE detention facility.
The prison’s closure in 2024 made national headlines for findings of widespread sexual abuse and mistreatment of women incarcerated there.
U.S. Rep. Mark DeSaulnier (D-Concord) and U.S. Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff were still awaiting answers this week to a series of lingering questions about the federal government’s plans for the former FCI Dublin site at 5701 8th St., having requested responses by Feb. 27 in a letter sent to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem 10 days earlier.
“In light of the facility’s state of disrepair and the inexcusable systemic failures highlighted by its history, we are concerned and alarmed that ICE officials are reportedly considering the use of this facility for immigration detention,” California lawmakers wrote in their Feb. 17 letter to Noem. “Local reporting confirms that ICE officials toured FCI Dublin last year amid the increased use of BOP facilities as immigration detention centers.”
While Federal Bureau of Prisons Director William Marshall has provided assurance that there are currently no plans to transfer the site to ICE, DeSaulnier and the two senators said the agency’s reported interest in the site last year, along with the effects of increasingly aggressive tactics by ICE locally and nationally since then, have left them “deeply concerned.”
Among their questions to Noem were whether or not the facility had ever been formally considered for use by ICE, whether any DHS agency has toured the facility, conducted a cost analysis, or received briefings about using the site for immigration detention, how the agency had evaluated the impacts of a detention facility on the local community, and whether there would be opportunities for community feedback and engagement.
The Dublin City Council passed a resolution in December formally opposing the reopening of the facility for any purpose. But while that measure sent an important message to the community according to the council, and served as a major victory for the coalition of numerous activist groups and concerned residents that has spoken out against the prison site’s use by ICE, the city government isn’t able to do much else.
The facility sits on federally owned land as part of the Parks Reserve Forces Training Area. Federal authorities said last year that the site was not set to be transferred to DHS or any other federal agency, with BOP set to “permanently deactivate, close, and dispose of FCI Dublin, and to divest itself of the facility”, according to a letter to the Dublin City Council in December.
That means transferring the property to the U.S. General Services Administration, which disposes of unwanted government property by public sales and auctions, negotiated sales, or transfers to other government agencies – the latter of which could include DHS.
In the resolution passed last year, the Dublin City Council asked for “open and transparent communication” from federal agencies including the GSA about any decisions regarding the site.
