Elected leaders in Monterey County have taken the first step to thwart any effort to bring federal immigration centers to the county by altering land use policies to deter them from being built locally.
The Monterey County Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday expressing opposition to what many local officials believe is a planned immigrant detention center in Santa Clara County that Board members said would create fear in neighboring Monterey County.
A contract was awarded by the Government Services Administration for an 18,700 square foot facility east of the city of Gilroy to be leased for 20 years for $26.5 million.
Construction on the building began within the past two weeks, according to the Monterey County Board of Supervisors and Santa Clara County Counsel’s Office.
The resolution also directed Monterey County to join any litigation that is filed to stop the detention center by Santa Clara County or the state Department of Justice.
Board members also directed county staff to examine Monterey County’s zoning laws to try to prevent what they say happened in Santa Clara County, where officials said they were caught unaware of the planned project and cast doubts on whether it complied with local zoning laws.
Public support for resolution
Dozens of public commenters spoke in support of the resolution and some asked the Board of Supervisors to do more, including further restricting cooperation between the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A report in January revealed the Sheriff’s Office complied with 21 requests from ICE in 2025 to transfer an inmate or detainee at the jail, drawing criticism from many public commenters.
The follow-up report from the Sheriff’s Office in April said that ICE made 295 requests for transfers in 2025 and that over 90% of those requests were denied. The requests granted met criteria under the California Values Act for cooperating with federal immigration authorities. That state law outlines restrictions on cooperation and allowable exceptions, most of which relate to convictions for violent crimes, which the 21 transfers were for, according to the Sheriff’s Office.
The report also noted that the sheriff, as an elected position, has discretion to decide when to comply, if the request meets the criteria under state law. While the Board of Supervisors has the authority to direct the Sheriff’s Office to make reports about its actions, it does not have the ability to restrict the sheriff’s cooperation.
The reported detention facility in Santa Clara County became known to Santa Clara County officials last week, as demolition on the property at 7240 Holdsclaw Road started the previous week.
The Government Services Administration, or GSA, shows that the contract was awarded in the waning days of the administration of then-President Joe Biden, on Jan. 8, 2025.
Purpose of facility unknown
Federal immigration officials have not confirmed that they are building the facility and did not respond to a request for comment on the reaction from Santa Clara County and Monterey County officials.
The contract for the site was awarded to Beverly Hills-based Elmwood Capital Group. The company did not respond to an inquiry sent Tuesday asking for reaction to the Monterey County resolution of opposition to the site, it’s financial outlook for the investment, or a statement on the reported abuses of detainees that have plagued the federal immigration system for years, according to audits from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
A report last year from U.S. Sen. John Ossoff, D-Georgia, found there were over 1,000 instances of human rights abuses in the federal immigrant detention system in the year since Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, 2025. That included at least 88 credible reports of physical or sexual abuse and 44 family separations, including taking breastfeeding infants from their mothers, according to the report.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said that there were six deaths of detainees in the state between September 2025 and March 2026 — the highest number since the state DOJ started conducting reviews in 2017.
Forty people have died in ICE custody nationally since the Trump administration began its purge, including 17 in 2026 as of late April, which is an unprecedented number of detainee deaths, according to the ACLU.
Alejo: Proposed site too close to Monterey County
Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo said that even though the detention center won’t be in the county, its presence about 8 miles away would be unacceptable.
“This issue extends beyond the boundaries of Santa Clara County,” Alejo said during the Board of Supervisors meeting. “A detention center facility in our area has a wide-ranging magnitude felt throughout the entire Central Coast.”
Alejo cited the substantial number of immigrant families that make up the county’s largely agricultural-driven economy.
He said residents including farmworkers, essential workers, students and parents had expressed fear over the federal government’s increasingly cruel immigration policies, which have seen mostly non-violent immigrants without criminal records detained, according to multiple reports from immigration rights advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union.
“Let’s be honest about the purpose and effect of these facilities. They are designed to detain, intimidate, and send a chilling message to immigrant communities. …”
Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo
“The proposal to build a major immigration detention center in our region only intensifies that fear,” Alejo said. “And let’s be honest about the purpose and effect of these facilities. They are designed to detain, intimidate, and send a chilling message to immigrant communities. They create trauma for children and families, they discourage people from reporting crimes, seeking health care, or even taking their children to school.”
Santa Clara County Counsel Tony LoPresti said in a statement that the county was in communication with the state’s DOJ and was looking into possible ways to stop the construction of the detention center through litigation.
“We oppose any effort to build an immigration detention facility anywhere in our county or across the Bay Area,” LoPresti said. “The County of Monterey’s resolution rightly recognizes that this new detention center has a sweeping regional impact. Our County Counsel’s Office has a long track record of protecting our immigrant community against unlawful attacks by the federal government.”
The federal government had over 60,000 immigrants in its custody as of early April. About 70%, or over 42,000, had no criminal record. Some were detained for issues as minor as traffic violations, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, known as TRAC, an organization that collects and analyzes data from the federal government.