Jalen McKee-Rodriguez made the call to action in a social media video. Credit: Jade Esteban Estrada
District 2 City Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez is calling on the public to help stop Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) reported plan to open a massive detention center on San Antonio’s East Side.
In a Sunday Instagram video, McKee-Rodriguez urged residents to call and email Oakmont Industrial Group, the owners of a warehouse ICE is reportedly eyeing for purchase, and ask the company to put a halt to the deal. The firm is close to selling the 639,595-square-foot facility at 542 SE Loop 420 to federal immigration officials, according to people familiar with the transaction.
“ICE detention centers are sites of documented atrocities,” said McKee-Rodriguez, whose East Side district includes the warehouse. “Families are torn apart. People are denied medical care. Human dignity is routinely violated. These facilities do not belong anywhere in our communities … . They certainly don’t belong in diverse neighborhoods built around schools, parks and families.”
McKee-Rodriguez continued: “If this property is sold to the federal government, local communities lose almost all power to stop it because the federal government does not go through our zoning, land use, or permitting processes.”
San Antonio Councilman Jalen McKee-Rodriguez is encouraging folks to call and email Oakmont Industrial Group. Credit: Facebook / Jalen McKee-Rodriguez
To that end, San Antonio Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones, in a statement to the Current, said ICE didn’t notify city staff of the potential purchase. However, the city is largely powerless to stop the creation of a detention center after the sale goes through because it can’t impose zoning restrictions on the federal government.
Even so, the city council in Kansas City last week passed an ordinance that bans municipal officials from granting local permits, licensing or other approvals for ICE detention facilities. That ordinance was passed after the council learned that ICE planned to buy and convert a warehouse there into a detention center, the Kansas City Star reports.
However, Republican KC Councilman Nathan Willet told the Star that the ordinance is likely more symbolic than enforceable.
“Upon further legal counsel, I learned the ordinance itself cannot be enforced due to the Supremacy Clause,” he said. “The city would lose in court.”
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