DUBLIN — Twice in five months, Dublin's elected leaders have told the federal government in plain language to keep ICE out of their city. The City Council voted unanimously in December.
The Alameda County Board of Supervisors followed unanimously in April. Neither vote slowed Washington down.
On May 1, 2026 the Federal Bureau of Prisons released an Environmental Assessment of the former Federal Correctional Institution Dublin and opened a 30-day public comment window.
That window closes June 1, 2026
The assessment is the first concrete federal step toward transferring the property, the same property both the city and the county have asked the federal government not to repurpose.
For the residents, survivors, faith leaders and immigrant-rights organizers who make up the ICE Out of Dublin Coalition, the message from the federal process is hard to miss: Dublin's vote was symbolic. The federal government's next move will not be.
"Build it and ICE will fill it." That's the slogan the coalition is taking to the streets of Dublin this month.
What the federal government's own report admits
The Environmental Assessment, written by the Bureau of Prisons itself, does not read like a document about a healthy piece of land.
According to the report, FCI Dublin sits on a property with a leaking sewage system that may be contaminating groundwater. It carries decades of contamination from its earlier use as a military base. It is designated an active clean-up site. There is diesel fuel contamination on the grounds.
BOP Acting Director William Lothrop has previously said it would take tens of millions of dollars to renovate the 50-year-old facility.
What the assessment does not do, coalition members say, is consider the two outcomes Dublin residents actually want it to consider: a full demolition, or the prospect that the site is handed off and quietly converted into an immigration detention center.
"This notorious prison was closed for good reason and should be demolished," said Susan Beaty, an attorney with the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice. "The environmental assessment confirms what we already know and what Dublin survivors have been saying for years — the facility is unsafe and uninhabitable with serious infrastructural deficits that would cost tens of millions of dollars to repair."
The women who were inside still live with what happened there
The Bureau of Prisons did not close FCI Dublin because of the sewage or the diesel. It closed FCI Dublin in April 2024 because of what staff did to the women locked inside.
Nine former officers have been convicted of sex crimes connected to the facility. A tenth is being prosecuted. Survivors gave the prison a name that has stuck in federal court filings and news reports across the country: the rape club.
"FCI Dublin represents one of the darkest human rights scandals in California's history," said Kendra Drysdale, a survivor and member of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. "We as survivors want to be honored by seeing this facility demolished and repurposed for something that serves its community in a meaningful way. Let Dublin's legacy not be remembered for housing the rape club, but for standing with survivors and keeping its doors closed."
Aimee Chavira, another survivor of FCI Dublin, spoke at the coalition's May 5 press conference.
"Being incarcerated at FCI Dublin caused me the kind of certain trauma you cannot get rid of," Chavira said. "There is going to be trauma no matter how people see it. Trauma that will not go away."
Dublin faith leaders: tear it down, build something that serves the city
Inside Dublin's churches, the conversation has shifted from what the prison was to what the land could become.
"The history of FCI Dublin is a source of shame and sadness to all who love this city," said Rev. Dr. Kelly Miller-Sanchez of Resurrection Lutheran Church in Dublin. "This land could be used in much more productive ways — as a library, a park, a community recreation center, a hospital. The best use of this site would be to demolish it and turn it into something that serves the community — including a monument to the survivors of FCI Dublin, so that their stories are never forgotten, and the sins of the past never repeated."
Sophie Sarkar, an organizer with Tsuru for Solidarity — a group founded by descendants of Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II — drew the line between Dublin's present and California's past.
"As Japanese Americans, we know that separating families and holding human beings in inhumane carceral conditions causes deep harm that is passed down from generation to generation," Sarkar said.
Rev. Deborah Lee of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity put it in five words at the Board of Supervisors hearing last month: "We're being tested morally as a country."
The federal denial, and the reason Dublin isn't buying it
ICE has said publicly, repeatedly, that it is not planning to convert FCI Dublin into an immigration detention center. ICE spokesperson James Sweeney told reporters last month the agency is not considering it.
Coalition members do not accept the denial at face value. They point to the General Services Administration, the federal agency that will take possession of the property once the BOP transfers it, and to GSA's ongoing work scouting federal properties for immigration enforcement use under the current administration.
Their argument is simple. The federal government is not asking Dublin's permission. The federal government did not ask Dublin's permission when it ran FCI Dublin into the ground as a women's prison. And the federal government does not need Dublin's permission to hand the keys to ICE.
"It is not just immigrants that will be harmed," said Seema Bader, an elected delegate to the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee. "The community will be harmed. It creates an environment where families are separated, where people are denied their basic human rights, and that is not what Alameda County stands for."
Image Credit: Waging Nonviolence
What Dublin's elected officials have already said
On December 16, 2025, the Dublin City Council voted unanimously to oppose any reopening or repurposing of FCI Dublin as an ICE detention site.
On April 7, 2026, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on a parallel resolution, co-sponsored by Board President David Haubert — whose district includes Dublin — and Supervisor Elisa Márquez.
"We will not stand by the tactics of this federal administration," Márquez said.
Haubert was blunter about the limits of what local government can do. "The federal government can do what the federal government might want to do," he said.
Both bodies acknowledged the votes were symbolic. The land is federally owned. It sits next door to the county's own Santa Rita Jail. Neither the city of Dublin nor Alameda County has the authority to stop the transfer.
That is precisely why the coalition is pushing residents to use the one mechanism the federal process does give them: the public comment.
Twelve days
The public comment period closes June 1. Federal officials are required to read what comes in. The coalition's argument to Dublin residents is that the record of public opposition is the only Dublin-controlled lever left.
"Fights over environmental impact reports have been crucial in stopping the opening of warehouse detention centers around the country," the coalition wrote in its outreach to Dublin residents earlier this month.
The closing message was direct: "Together, we can keep ICE Out of Dublin."
HOW CAN YOU COMMENT
Deadline: End of day, Monday, June 1, 2026
Email to: bop-adm-facilities-s@bop.gov
Subject line: FCI Dublin Environmental Assessment
Sample comment & toolkit: tinyurl.com/IOD-EA-Toolkit
The ICE Out of Dublin Coalition is also holding free virtual training sessions for residents who want help drafting a comment.
Sign-ups are available through the coalition's toolkit link.
Thumbnail Credit: https://therealnews.com/ice-wants-to-reopen-a-notoriously-abusive-prison-this-community-is-trying-to-stop-them
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