Several hundred protesters marched in Gilroy on Sunday to voice their disapproval of a federal plan to build an immigration detention facility on agricultural land just outside the city limits.
Community organizers and residents gathered June 14 at Arroyo Circle near Gilman Road at Highway 101 at 1pm for a rally, speeches, banner and sign waving before marching east on Gilman Road.
“I am out here today because I think it is plainly a ridiculous thing to put a detention center here,” said Carmen Gagne of Indivisible Pajaro Valley. “It will greatly affect where I live.”
The 1.5-mile march culminated at 7240 Holsclaw Road, the proposed site for the center. Public records recently surfaced showing the General Services Administration awarded a $26.5 million contract in 2025 to a Beverly Hills-based real estate firm connected to other ICE detention centers.
During the rally, community organizer and former Gilroy City Council member Rebeca Armendariz thanked the crowd for showing up.
“Immigrants have worked really hard to make Gilroy what it is,” she said. “And we don’t want to let racist policies—systems that work together with a data center right here in Gilroy to use our data and use our images to oppress—to kidnap people who continue to build our economy and make this our home and make it the beautiful place that it is. So together, Santa Cruz County, San Benito and Santa Clara counties—we’re going to work together to stop them from bringing ICE agents into the fields and detaining workers.”
She told the crowd that the new site is slated to work in tandem with a similar facility in Dublin, CA.
“We cannot have that,” Armendariz said. “Not here, not in Dublin, not in the Bay Area, not in California.”
Protester Landon Sepulveda said, “By being here today we prove that we are not voiceless…we will come out en masse, and we will prove that we will not quiet down, we will not give up and we will not take any excuse they give in order to forget about the issue entirely. We will not stop; we will not back down; we will march and make noise until they listen to us.”
A resident of Gilroy for the past 28 years, Amy Tripoli said she wanted to join the march because, “I cannot stand that this government is going beyond anything that I ever expected. This has evolved to a whole new level of cruelty. Our tax dollars are going to this unimaginable horror that is being perpetuated on our fellow humans.”
