On May 23, 2026, construction of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facility began at the Kenneth B. Keating Federal Building in downtown Rochester. The project will take over a year to complete, according to U.S. Rep. Joe Morelle, who represents New York’s 25th congressional district, containing Rochester, Irondequoit and Greece.
Currently housed inside the federal building are a federal courthouse, bankruptcy court, several government agencies and a children’s daycare. The detention facility will take the place of the former U.S. Post Office space on the building’s first floor.
The U.S. General Services Administration informed News10NBC that the federal building was approved for detention facility purposes five years ago, referring to the $5 million relocation plan as a “cost-saving measure.” The new location in Rochester will allow U.S. Customs and Border Protection, a separate entity from ICE under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to end its lease for its present station in Irondequoit.
DHS informed Morelle that the new facility will include three detention holding cells, a detainee transfer zone and restricted parking access inside and around the federal building.
“There is nothing responsible about dropping detention cells into the downtown community in Rochester without explaining how they’ll operate,” Morelle said in a statement to the press. “Without explaining how those security measures will be created, what they’ll look like, or what risks this creates for the workers in the public that utilize this building every single day. And there’s certainly nothing humane about the climate of fear.”
While a detention facility is unprecedented for Rochester, ICE officers in and around the city are not.
Rochester Rapid Response Network (RRRN) is a Rochester-based activist group that raises alerts of ICE officers in the area and supports immigrants at risk of detention and deportation. The organization frequently posts on Facebook, highlighting their educational sessions, fundraisers, community events and protests.
On June 9, 2026, RRRN hosted its Stop the Build protest at the Keating Federal Building, which drew nearly 600 attendees. Protesters held signs that read: “ICE OUT NOW. STOP ARRESTING US. STOP KILLING US” and “Immoral Corrupt Executioners.”
RRRN is also protesting the expansion of the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia, just a 40-minute drive away from the planned Rochester facility. In their statement on Facebook, RRNN said that “medical neglect, solitary confinement, and violence are life-threatening, and each bed that we limit is a neighbor less that they can hurt.”
The protests follow an unannounced 2025 inspection by the DHS Office of Inspector General, which found that inappropriate force was used on Buffalo detainees. In one instance, a detainee was sprayed with pepper spray and pinned to his bunk to remove his hand restraints. In another incident, an officer forcibly placed a detainee on the floor and applied hand restraints, following the detainee’s refusal to exit his cell. In both cases, neither detainee posed a threat to themselves or others, making this a clear violation of the DHS office’s guidelines.
Additionally, facility staff failed to provide detainees with outdoor recreation equipment, instead greeting them with a small fenced-in area resembling that of a cage. The facility also lacked a permanent dentist and physician, which created delays in dental and physical healthcare for the detainees.
An investigative piece conducted by Spectrum News’ Lives in the Balance —a team composed of journalists from Syracuse University (SU) and partnered universities across the country — alleged that Buffalo detainees were squeezed into freezing rooms and forced to sleep on gymnasium floors with only two thin blankets. Some detainees supposedly had to use shoes or folded pieces of clothes to make a pillow for themselves.
Data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearing House — a data research organization at SU — suggests that the facility is operating above full capacity; while the facility is only able to house 650 detainees, 698 detainees are currently being held there. As of July 3, the Buffalo center is expanding with a new 100-bed facility.
According to the White House’s Secure the Border webpage, the actions being taken by DHS “are protecting U.S. sovereignty and safeguarding American communities.”
