ICE officials visit FCI Dublin amid fears it may be used as detention center: union source
ICE officials visited the now-closed FCI Dublin prison on Thursday and Friday to possibly turn the facility into an ICE detention center.
OAKLAND, Calif. – The Department of Homeland Security and the Bureau of Prisons signed a contract to turn five federal prisons into ICE detention centers, a leaked memo obtained by KTVU shows.
The memo, signed on Feb. 6, shows that two units at the Federal Detention Center in Atlanta, up to 1 unit at the Federal Correctional Institute Leavenworth in Kansas, up to 1 unit at FDC Philadelphia and up to four units at FCI Berlin in New Hampshire and up to four units at FCI Miami will be used to house ICE detainees.
The memo has a caveat that FCI Berlin is not currently available because there is not enough staffing, food, clothing and training at this site.
The memo also states that because there isn’t enough space, only men will be housed at these sites.
FCI Dublin in California – which is currently empty after it was closed in April 2024 after a high-profile sex abuse scandal – was not mentioned in this memo, but a source told KTVU that this was the first round of memos and more will likely be coming.
However, ICE officials visited FCI Dublin on Thursday and Friday, according to John Kostelnik, the Western region vice president of the American Federation of Government Employees Council of Prison Locals No. 33, which represents federal prison workers.
“We don’t know the questions that are being asked,” he said on Friday. “We don’t know the exact specifics, but they’re most certainly touring as an assessment to potentially utilizing this facility.”
The memo was signed by Kenneth Genalo, acting deputy director of ICE and William Lothrop, who was named head of the BOP after Colette Peters left on the day Donald Trump was sworn in as president.
But Lothrop announced his resignation on Friday, according to an internal staff statement, also obtained by KTVU.
Lothrop said that he finds himself in “unprecedented times as an agency, and thus, it is with mixed emotions” that he is retiring Feb. 28 after 33 years with the BOP. He also named five other members of the BOP team who are leaving office.
Trump has vowed to deport millions of the estimated 11.7 million people in the U.S. illegally. ICE currently has the budget to detain only about 41,000 people and the administration has not said how many detention beds it needs to achieve its goals.
One source told KTVU that many BOP employees are upset about the change.
The source said that it’s not fair to put immigrants in federal prisons because they have not been charged or convicted of crimes. The conditions of confinement in prison are much different than in an ICE detention center, the source said.
The last time federal prisons were turned into ICE detention centers occurred during Trump’s first administration in 2018.
The BOP reached an agreement with ICE and Customs and Border Protection back then to detain up to 1,600 immigrants at federal prison facilities in Arizona, California, Oregon, Washington and Texas.
The source said that in some cases, staff assaulted detainees, and some detainees also died by suicide.
Kendra Drysdale, who was once incarcerated at FCI Dublin, doesn’t think immigrants should be housed in a federal prison.
“To put people who are not even criminals into a prison environment is absolutely horrific and a huge violation of human rights.”
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