Judge Lee Grants Preliminary Injunction Freezing Gilroy ICE Facility Construction on NEPA Grounds

U.S. District Judge Eumi K. Lee (N.D. Cal.) signed the order granting a preliminary injunction on September 11, 2026, freezing construction of the planned ICE detention facility on the 24.5-acre Holsclaw Road property outside Gilroy; press coverage followed on September 12-13. The court heard argument on the underlying motion at a hearing held September 8, 2026, per the order’s own text. Construction, demolition and development are halted except for immediate safety work; the parties have until September 30, 2026 to meet and confer and file a joint proposed injunction order (or, failing agreement, a joint status report) on the exact scope, with the provisional injunction in the meantime running on the terms of the parties’ own stipulated stay (Dkt. 41). Plaintiffs must post a $1,000 bond under Fed. R. Civ. P. 65(c), due September 18, 2026. The suit — County of Santa Clara v. ICE, N.D. Cal. 5:26-cv-05604-EKL, brought by the State of California (AG Rob Bonta) and Santa Clara County — argues the federal government broke ground without the environmental review NEPA requires.

This is a distinct ruling from the July halt, and the difference is the point. On July 13 the same judge approved a consent agreement pausing construction — an arrangement the government agreed to. This is a contested preliminary injunction, which requires the court to find a likelihood of success on the merits. The pause is now the court’s order rather than the defendants’ concession, and it rests on a judicial finding that the agencies failed to study potential environmental contamination at a site previously used as an agricultural resource center.

The contamination question is what gives the NEPA claim traction here. The parcel housed agricultural research labs; the plaintiffs’ argument is not that environmental review is a formality the government skipped, but that it was skipped on land where there is a specific, foreseeable reason to look. That is the difference between a procedural objection and one a court can find likely to succeed.

Read against the wider record, Gilroy joins a pattern of NEPA becoming the operative constraint on detention buildout where zoning cannot reach: Williamsport, Maryland halted in April over sewage; the Surprise, Arizona warehouse where DHS agreed to environmental review; and the Romulus, Michigan warehouse where ICE abandoned the conversion entirely in June rather than face a preliminary-injunction hearing. Federal facilities are exempt from local zoning; they are not exempt from NEPA. The statute is doing the work the zoning code cannot.

Sourcing note. The 24.5-acre Holsclaw Road parcel and the safety-work carve-out are confirmed across KQED, Palo Alto Online and SFist. The order’s own text — Order Granting Preliminary Injunction, Dkt. 66, filed 2026-09-11 — was retrieved directly (mirrored by the California DOJ at oag.ca.gov/system/files/attachments/press-docs/pi-order_0.pdf; saved to documents/sources/files/santa-clara-v-ice-order-granting-preliminary-injunction-66-2026-09-11.pdf in cascade-research) and confirms the September 11 filing date, the September 8 hearing, the September 30 meet-and-confer/scope deadline, the $1,000 bond due September 18, and that the order runs provisionally on the terms of the parties’ stipulated stay (Dkt. 41) pending the parties’ joint proposal. The complaint pleads NEPA, INA § 1231(g)(1)-(2), the Intergovernmental Cooperation Act (31 U.S.C. § 6506(c)), and the California Williamson Act; the preliminary-injunction motion was brought on NEPA and ICA only, and the court granted on NEPA alone, expressly declining to reach ICA (citing Museum of Handcar Tech. LLC v. Transp. Agency for Monterey Cnty., 778 F. Supp. 3d 1065, 1079 n.8 (N.D. Cal. 2025)). The case number and Judge Lee’s assignment are carried from the existing canon entry 2026-08-26–gilroy-ice-lawsuit-docket-posture-reply-brief-hearing-date-discrepancy. The California AG press release cited in the original capture ledger returned HTTP 404 and was not read; the order’s own text supersedes it.