Gilroy and Williamsport ICE-Facility Injunctions Rest on the Same Legal Theory: a NEPA Categorical Exclusion Invoked Then Found Arbitrary and Capricious

The preliminary injunctions freezing ICE detention-facility construction at Gilroy, California (Judge Eumi K. Lee, N.D. Cal., 5:26-cv-05604-EKL, order filed 2026-09-11) and Williamsport, Maryland (Judge Brendan A. Hurson, D. Md., 1:26-cv-00733-BAH, memorandum opinion 2026-04-15/17) rest on the same narrow legal theory, not merely the same statute. In both cases the federal government invoked a one-page NEPA categorical exclusion to avoid preparing an environmental assessment or impact statement before construction, and the court held — under Administrative Procedure Act arbitrary-and-capricious review, 5 U.S.C. § 706(2)(A) — that the categorical-exclusion determination itself did not survive scrutiny.

The shared mechanism, read from the courts’ own reasoning

Gilroy (read directly from the order, Dkt. 66): GSA completed “GSA Form 4002 (Automatic Categorical Exclusion NEPA Memo to File)” to invoke an exclusion covering “acquisition of space within an existing structure … where no change in the general type of use and only minimal change from previous occupancy level is proposed.” Judge Lee found this “facially implausible” on three grounds — the project is substantial demolition/construction, not mere acquisition; converting a 30-year agricultural-research/hazardous-waste site to detention use is a change in general type of use; and a threefold occupancy increase (40 staff to an estimated 120 people/day) is not “minimal.” Independently, the court found “extraordinary circumstances” (unaddressed hazardous-contamination risk from demolition at a former Syngenta Seeds hazmat site) would defeat the exclusion even if its literal terms were met. Holding, quoted: “Plaintiffs will likely succeed on their NEPA claim because the Federal Defendants invoked an inapposite categorical exclusion and failed to consider whether extraordinary circumstances required a more robust environmental review.”

Williamsport: per the Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse’s digest of Judge Hurson’s April 15-17, 2026 memorandum opinion, DHS/GSA likewise invoked a categorical exclusion for the Williamsport warehouse conversion, and the court found that determination “likely arbitrary and capricious,” holding defendants were “likely required under NEPA to issue an environmental impact statement or conduct an environmental assessment” once the exclusion fell — describing the case as a “crystal-clear example” of NEPA noncompliance.

Why this is a stronger finding than “both cases cite NEPA”

Existing canon entries (2026-04-15–judge-halts-williamsport-ice-construction-nepa, 2026-04-15–hurson-maryland-nepa-precedent-bexar-tx-warehouse-pause) describe Williamsport’s outcome as ICE having “failed to conduct environmental assessments,” which reads as an EA/EIS-skipped theory rather than a categorical-exclusion theory. Both framings are compatible — the categorical exclusion was the device that let DHS skip the EA/EIS — but the categorical-exclusion mechanism is the more precise and more replicable finding, because it identifies a specific, checkable agency artifact (a short standardized exclusion memo) rather than a generic absence of paperwork. Neither case is a segmentation theory, and neither is a bare “no review occurred at all” theory with no exclusion claimed — both are targeted invalidations of the specific instrument (the categorical exclusion) the agency used to avoid an EA/EIS.

The replicable template

For any WEXMAC-TITUS-program site: (1) check whether GSA filed a short categorical-exclusion memo of the kind named in the Gilroy order; (2) test the exclusion’s own conditions (existing-space acquisition, no change in use, minimal occupancy change) against the facts — both confirmed cases show a change of use (non-detention to detention) and a large occupancy multiplier; (3) plead “extraordinary circumstances” (hazardous-materials history, public-health/safety risk) as an independent, sufficient second ground; (4) frame this as an APA arbitrary-and-capricious challenge to the agency’s paper record, not a demand that plaintiffs independently prove environmental harm from scratch — both courts leaned on the thinness of the agency’s own decisionmaking record.

What remains unconfirmed

The Williamsport finding here rests on a legal-database digest (Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse) of Judge Hurson’s opinion, not the opinion’s own text (ECF 43), which was not independently located in this pass — a materially weaker sourcing tier than the Gilroy finding, which is drawn from the order’s full text. A follow-up should retrieve ECF 43 directly and confirm the “arbitrary and capricious” quote verbatim. Whether other WEXMAC-TITUS sites’ agency paperwork uses the identical GSA Form 4002 categorical exclusion is untested and is the natural next research question — if the same one-page form recurs across the eleven-site census, the template’s replicability increases considerably. No shared counsel or amici were confirmed between the two specific cases (different state AG offices, as expected); this was checked but not exhaustively.

Related

• wexmac-titus-warehouse-census — full 11-site census this template could be tested against
• test-whether-gilroy-and-williamsport-nepa-injunctions-share-one-legal-theory (cascade-research task) — full work log, sourcing, and research gaps