By McKenzie Romero | Editor
It’s official. Plans to convert a Salt Lake City warehouse into a vast detention center for people detained by immigration authorities have been called off, with the building to be sold.
That’s according to a court filing in the city’s lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security that called the effort to hold up to 10,000 people in an industrial warehouse a threat to water supplies, sewer systems, pollution levels and policing capacity.
In today’s Dispatch we update you on the apparent end of Salt Lake City’s ICE warehouse saga, lawmakers’ data center update after a turbulent summer, and fears about White Mesa Mill’s uranium operation 5 miles from a tribal community.
“Defendants, through counsel, informed Plaintiffs that they no longer intend to convert the Salt Lake Warehouse into an immigration detention facility and instead intend to designate the Salt Lake Facility as excess property for disposition by the General Services Administration.” — Salt Lake City lawyers in their motion to temporarily pause their lawsuit against the detention center plan.
A warehouse purchased by U.S. Immigration Customs and Enforcement at 6020 W. 300 South in Salt Lake City is pictured on Friday, March 13, 2026. (McKenzie Romero/Utah News Dispatch)
By Katie McKellar
The Salt Lake City warehouse, one of ICE’s most expensive purchases as part of a planned $45 billion expansion of immigration detention centers across the country, was purchased just days after Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was fired.
The city’s motion to pause its lawsuit for 60 days after the agency informed Salt Lake officials it would not proceed with the detention center plan requires DHS to not “take any action to convert the Salt Lake (warehouse) into an immigration detention center during the stay.”
The sun rises over a part of Hansel Valley, in Box Elder County, near the proposed Stratos Project on Thursday, May 28, 2026. (Photo by Spenser Heaps for Utah News Dispatch)
By Annie Knox
Data centers took center stage at the Utah Capitol as lawmakers heard from experts, administrators and everyday Utahns for insights on the industry and its impacts on the environment and economy during their interim meetings.
They also acknowledged loud and bipartisan public outcry. Fierce opposition to new data center development, erupting across the country, has ignited in Utah in response to the massive proposed Stratos Project near the northern tip of the Great Salt Lake in Box Elder County.
Malcolm Lehi stands at Entrance Spring, where in the late 2000s elevated levels of radionuclides were linked to the nearby White Mesa Mill. (Melissa Bailey for KFF Health News)
KFF HEALTH NEWS
By Melissa Bailey
On a hot April day, Malcolm Lehi found himself at Entrance Spring, a site on land long connected to his tribe, the Ute Mountain Ute. It lies just across the highway from White Mesa Mill, the nation’s only remaining conventional uranium mill, which produces yellowcake for nuclear power fuel.
For decades, the mill has sparked debate over whether radioactive contamination threatens human health by getting into the water and the air. Concerns run especially deep in the White Mesa Ute Community, where Lehi and about 200 members of his tribe live some 5 miles south of the facility.
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