Developer denies Concord warehouse tied to ICE detention center

CHARLOTTE — A New York Times report listed Concord as home to a potential warehouse turned ICE detention facility. The city of Concord denies any knowledge of the plans. The developer of a Concord warehouse is adamant those talks with ICE have never happened and will not happen. Despite that, protestors demonstrated outside that developer’s office.

Protestors packed Uptown outside the office of Crescent Communities Friday to rally against a warehouse the company developed from being turned into an ICE detention center. Protestors tried to deliver a list of demands but doors to the lobby were locked by security.

Crescent Communities says they respect the right of people to peacefully protest but says the whole premise of the demonstration is wrong. The managing director of the developer’s industrial business side says there have been no direct or indirect conversations with ICE, U.S. Customs and Border Protection or any federal agencies about using this warehouse or any of Crescent’s other Sun Belt properties as a detention center.

“We value the communities that we invest and build in and would never go in an opposing direction of what we know to be right,” managing director Chase Kerley said.

Concord showed up in a New York Times article as one of 21 cities where ICE either has or intends to buy a warehouse for immigration detention beds.

The New York Times claims Concord would house 1,500 beds. The source is listed as Department of Homeland Security property records. No address for the Concord facility is listed in the article. But protestors have honed in on the Crescent Communities warehouse on Weddington Road.

At the Friday protest, immigration attorney Jamilah Espinosa said warehouses should not be used for detention.

“Warehouses are built for pallets. They’re built for goods,” she said. “They’re not built for children, not built for families, and they’re certainly not built for people that have space trauma and they are not built for justice.”

Crecent Communities is stressing its warehouse wasn’t built for ICE and won’t be used by the agency.

“It doesn’t fit with what our goals are, what we’re building and what we’re doing,” Kerley said. “It’s not an idea that we’ve explored, even to the fact of whether or not we could do it if we wanted to.”

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