Carleigh’s Response to the State Documents Unveiling ICE’s Site Plans for Merrimack

 The documents released yesterday by the ACLU of New Hampshire confirm what many of us have feared: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been actively planning to build a detention facility in Merrimack while avoiding transparency and public input.

This is not about public safety or deporting criminals. Allowing ICE to expand its footprint here, whether by using our county jails or a new detention center, would implicate state and local governments in a system that violates due process and strips people of basic human rights. 

What’s more, the property ICE is seeking to develop is owned by the Trammel Crow Company, whose former chairman and CEO is Republican megadonor and Club for Growth founder, Harlan Crow. Lawlessness, corruption, and self-dealing is the name of the game for the Trump administration.

In the first month of this year, six people died in ICE custody. Last year, 32 people died in ICE custody. Families are being torn apart, parents are being taken from their children, and people are being detained and deported without due process. This is state-sanctioned violence and it has no place in New Hampshire.

Governor Ayotte has said repeatedly that she had no knowledge of any plans by ICE to obtain warehouse space anywhere in NH. This news means she was either willfully ignorant of what state agencies under her authority were doing or actively misleading the public about what and when she knew about the plans. Neither is acceptable.

ICE has a history of operating with impunity and without transparency. New Hampshire must not emulate it. I call on Governor Ayotte and our state and local leaders to oppose any efforts to build or expand federal detention infrastructure in our communities and to refuse to collaborate with ICE. New Hampshire should not be complicit in violence or systems that terrorize families and undermine rights and justice.