The Trump administration’s plan to hold thousands of immigrants at a converted Salt Lake City warehouse is being thrown out the window.

Attorneys for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acknowledged in a court filing Wednesday for the first time that the agency no longer intends to build the detention center.

ICE lawyers and attorneys for Salt Lake City and Salt Lake County jointly asked a federal judge on Wednesday to pause a lawsuit over the proposed detention center due to ICE’s “intention to no longer convert the Salt Lake Facility into an immigration detention facility and to instead designate the facility as excess property for disposition.”

That means the federal government will look to sell or transfer the building at 6020 W. 300 South to another agency, government or private owner.

Earlier this summer, The New York Times reported such a move was in the offing, per documents it had obtained.

The city and county sued over the facility in June, arguing that the Trump administration did not complete a public environmental review of the project, cooperate with them or show reasoned decision-making.

Gov. Spencer Cox said Thursday that there had been many discussions with the Department of Homeland Security and believes that there still needs to be an ICE detention facility in Utah.

“Even under the Biden administration, they knew we needed a facility here, but it needed to be the right size and in the right place,” he told reporters Thursday morning. “I know that those conversations are happening, but they haven’t gone very far, so there’s no location or place that we’re aware of right now.”

Spokespeople for both Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson and Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall declined to comment on the court filing.

ICE did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment Wednesday afternoon.

U.S. District Court Judge Jill Parrish has yet to approve the motion to pause the litigation, which is typically a formality when the parties are in agreement.

That doesn’t mean, however, that plans can’t change.

ICE had also supposedly jettisoned a proposed detention center in New Jersey, but last month backtracked and said it was back on. A Republican city councilmember blamed the reversal on New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, who he said did “an anti-Trump dance in the end zone to celebrate her victory.”

The Department of Homeland Security purchased the facility for ICE in March, sparking widespread pushback over plans for a detention center. The federal government bought the 833,000-square-foot warehouse for $145.4 million from a real estate investment trust tied to German asset-management firm DWS Group.

It was a part of the federal government’s push to expand detention space for people in ICE’s custody early this year. Under new DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, the agency has been reviewing similar facility purchases nationwide.

Taking authority from local leaders

Since President Donald Trump’s second inauguration, ICE arrests and deportations have surged in the Beehive State.

ICE arrested more than 5,000 people in Utah from January 2025 through mid-March 2026, according to the Deportation Data Project, a joint effort from a team of researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and UCLA.

In southwest Utah alone, 1,100 people have been arrested by ICE since Trump returned to the White House.

“The mass detention of people inside a warehouse is inhumane and is contradictory to the function, values and desires of Salt Lakers,” Mendenhall said at the time of the purchase. “And I will use every tool at the city’s disposal to stop it.”

At a news conference Wednesday before the lawsuit was reported, U.S. Sen. John Curtis, a Republican, said he’d spoken with Mullin about the proposed detention center earlier this year.

Curtis said he served with Mullin when the now-secretary was in Congress and the two know each other quite well.

“I don’t want to take credit for the change, but I was able to talk to Markwayne and tell him how it was being received here,” he said of the detention center.

Curtis said, as a former mayor, he was particularly concerned about the federal government planning to use a building that hadn’t been zoned to hold people.

“I put on my mayor’s hat and was very firm that you cannot take away authority from local leaders to plan zoning and things that are good for their community,” the senator told reporters. “Coming in and mandating from the federal government that this facility that was never built for that many people, never built for that kind of traffic, never built for anything, should go into that community was wrong.”

The senator said the concerns he’s heard from constituents about the detention facility reminded him of those he’d heard from people about the proposed hyperscale data center in Box Elder County and the closed-door feeling of how it was approved.

House Minority Leader Angela Romero, D-Salt Lake City, expressed gratitude for the protest against the detention center plan.

“I’m incredibly grateful to the community members who came together to stand against this facility,” she said in a statement posted to social media. “Their persistence, courage and advocacy helped make this victory possible.”

Romero also said that, for some families, fear and uncertainty around immigration status haven’t gone away and encouraged Utahns to keep voicing their opposition to the facility.

Dominique Byrd, the executive director of a Latino and immigration nonprofit called Comunidades Unidas, isn’t taking a victory lap quite yet.

“Once I actually see it transferred is when I would feel like it’s done,” she told The Salt Lake Tribune Wednesday evening.

Not to readers, Aug. 20, 11:10 a.m. • This story has been updated to include remarks from Gov. Spencer Cox.