DUBLIN, Calif. (KGO) — This week, Alameda County will vote on a resolution to prevent the former Dublin women’s prison from becoming an ICE detention facility.
It comes a year after the Dublin City Council passed a resolution seeking to do the same.
“Build it and ICE will fill it.” That’s one of the slogans used by those who want to keep ICE out of Dublin.
“It is not just immigrants that will be harmed. 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,” said Seema Bader, an elected delegate to the Alameda County Democratic Central Committee.
MORE: Hundreds protest proposal to reopen Dublin women’s prison as ICE detention center
The organization is part of a larger coalition fighting to keep the former women’s prison in Dublin from becoming an U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility.
On Tuesday, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors will vote on a resolution to oppose reopening or repurposing of the former Federal Correctional Institute in Dublin, or FCI Dublin. The resolution cites “credible reports and public speculation” that the Trump Administration is considering converting Dublin into an ICE facility.
“I think we need to be very strong and vocal. That Alameda County does not support county resources to be used, in any way, shape or form, for (an)… ICE detention center or correctional facility for immigrants,” Bader said.
FCI Dublin was closed by the Federal Bureau of Prisons in December 2024 because systematic sexual abuse by staff and the prison chaplain against female inmates.
MORE: ICE may turn shuttered Dublin women’s prison into detention center: report
Several Bay Area lawmakers, including East Bay Congressman Eric Swalwell, blasted any proposal to reopen FCI Dublin for ICE.
“The madness must stop. This disgraced facility behind me should not be further disgraced by having ICE in our community. It is closed because people who worked there violated their oaths and committed sexual assault,” Swalwell told a crowd at an event at FCI Dublin in February.
In late 2025, the Dublin City Council voted unanimously to oppose the repurposing the former prison. In January, the Alameda County Board of Supervisors passed a policy prohibiting ICE from using county-owned property for operations.
In February, California’s U.S. Senators Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, along with Congressman Mark DeSaulnier, sent a letter to the Department of Homeland Security citing “strong opposition” to using FCI Dublin as a detention facility.
MORE: Former Dublin FCI prison inmates reach historic settlement, call for Biden to pardon abuse victims
The Department of Homeland Security has repeatedly stated that there is no plan to reopen FCI Dubin. But Dan Morley with the group Indivisible Tri-Valley says that’s not enough.
“It was the Bureau of Prisons that operated that facility. They were just lying and deceiving all the time in their public statement. So, we really cannot trust the words that are coming out from the federal agencies,” Morley said.
Morley adds that there is also concern that detainees housed at such a facility would likely face health and safety risks, based on the treatment of inmates at other ICE detention centers.
“We would see a rushed, hastily opened facility,” Morley said. “And it would strike fear into the community because they would then, you know, just be trying to fill quotas. And trying to get people, the easiest targets they could, by targeting, racially profiling our neighbors.”
The resolution is expected to pass.
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