Federal officials drop proposed ICE detention facility in Romulus

Federal officials said June 18 that they were no longer pursuing plans to convert a Romulus warehouse near Detroit Metropolitan Airport into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility, ending the immediate push for a project that had drawn a lawsuit from the city and the State of Michigan.

The proposed site was the warehouse at 7525 Cogswell in Romulus. The building is approximately 249,000 square feet, and the federal government purchased the property for $34.7 million, according to Associated Press reporting.

Earlier plans described an approximately 500-bed detention facility. The proposed conversion would have brought a large federal detention operation into the airport-area community, affecting the development outlook considered by residents, nearby schools, airport-area workers and local officials.

A project delayed as the lawsuit moved forward

Romulus and Michigan filed a federal lawsuit in March 2026 challenging the proposed conversion. The city’s official facility-update page links to the lawsuit filed March 24 against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE.

The legal challenge was fully briefed in April, according to local reporting, but construction did not move ahead on the original timeline. Federal officials first postponed construction until late June and later delayed it through the end of July.

The dispute involved questions about zoning, floodplain review, infrastructure and the extent of local oversight over the proposed use. Those issues put the warehouse at the center of one of Romulus’ most consequential recent development and legal fights.

What changes now

The June 18 announcement removes the proposed detention use from Romulus’ immediate development outlook. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said the warehouse would not be transformed into an immigrant detention facility as planned.

The decision does not establish what will happen to the warehouse next. Its future use, sale or other disposition remains unsettled. The public accounts also do not identify a final federal court ruling issued before officials stopped pursuing the project, so the lawsuit’s final procedural status is not clear.

For Romulus, the development is therefore a reversal of the proposed federal detention plan, but not a final answer about the property at 7525 Cogswell. Federal officials have said they are no longer pursuing this facility; the next publicly established step for the warehouse or the litigation has not been identified.