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After hearing pleas from residents at yet another meeting, the Pleasanton City Council changed its tune and decided to follow Livermore’s footsteps, directing staff to investigate what options the city could take to potentially oppose any plans to convert a shuttered prison in Dublin into an immigration detention center.
The decision, which was carried through thanks to support from three of the five councilmembers, came weeks after the council declined to agendize a possible resolution to formally oppose any ICE detention centers in the region. Residents at the June 16 council meeting asked the council to reconsider the resolution, but it once again failed to get placed on a future agenda due to a lack of council majority support.
“All we are asking is that you make a statement,” Laurie Herbert, a longtime Pleasanton resident since the late ’70s, said during the public comment portion of last week’s meeting.Â
“If you’re OK with ICE’s actions in other communities, stay silent,” she added. “During the Holocaust, German civic leaders stayed silent, but most did not know of the atrocities that were occurring in their own cities. We have no excuses. We do know what ICE has done, we have seen it with our own eyes, we do know that they have no reason to change their tactics. It’s the least we can do.”
The Federal Correctional Institution, Dublin has been in the immigration spotlight after the federal Bureau of Prisons issued a 2,731-page draft environmental impact report, which many speculate could be the first step in the process to repurpose the facility as a detention center for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.Â
The facility, which used to be a low-security women’s prison, shuttered in 2024 due to sexual abuse and other documented issues like failing infrastructure.
In addition, reports began emerging last year that President Donald Trump’s administration was considering reopening the facility as a detention center for immigrants, which prompted local leaders at the city of Dublin and Alameda County to publicly denounce those considerations.
Dublin’s City Council did so through a resolution it passed last December and the Alameda County Board of Supervisors followed suit this past March with a resolution introduced by District 1 Supervisor David Haubert.
During its May 19 meeting, the Pleasanton City Council heard from residents who asked the council to consider agendizing a similar resolution for future discussion but the council failed to get majority support to do so, which left some speakers last week feeling disappointed.
One of those half-dozen residents was Anne Matarrese-Everton, a nearly 50-year Pleasanton resident. She asked Pleasanton Mayor Jack Balch and council members Matt Gaidos and Craig Eicher (who was absent with illness) to reconsider their decision to not move forward with a resolution because of the impact an ICE facility would have on the entire Tri-Valley and greater Bay Area.
“Please consider with your hearts the terror, the disdain for due process and the miserable treatment of our neighbors that nearby ICE presence will bring,” she said.
A number of other speakers also shared stories of what they have seen happening nationwide with violent immigration enforcement and how any sort of ICE presence in the Tri-Valley will negatively affect the lives of every resident in Pleasanton and the surrounding cities.
And while many of the public speakers agreed that even though the Pleasanton City Council has no direct authority over ICE or federal immigration enforcement, they said the council should at least go on the record to protest the violent immigration enforcement happening across the country and to oppose any inkling of a plan to open a detention center in Dublin.
Linda Kelly, another longtime Pleasanton resident, was the only public speaker who had a somewhat different take on the issue.
Kelly first made it clear that she, and the rest of the City Council, share the same feelings toward ICE and the “abhorrent things they have done”. She even noted how her granddaughter lives in Minneapolis and has delivered food to colleagues who are too scared to leave their homes.
However, Kelly told the council — and those in attendance — that at no point have these rumors about an ICE facility been confirmed.
William K. Marshall III, director of the federal Bureau of Prisons previously told Dublin City Manager Colleen Tribby in a Nov. 28, 2025 letter that there was “no indication that the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement will utilize the facility and BOP has no plans to reopen the facility”.
“There are no plans to do that,” Kelly said. “There has been nothing that has been publicized, anyway, that suggests such so this fear is premature, I believe.”
She said municipalities in the region have done their due diligence in staying informed with the latest updated information and if it ever does get to the point where an ICE facility is slated to be built, she is sure cities like Pleasanton will voice their opposition in the form of some letter or resolution.
Still, the council decided to follow a similar path recently taken by the Livermore City Council: direct its city staff to confer with representatives from the city of Dublin and Alameda County to see how Pleasanton could best support the jurisdictions in rejecting the facility’s reopening.
Councilmember Julie Testa, who originally supported a draft resolution to oppose any potential future ICE facilities last month along with Councilmember Jeff Nibert, was one of the first to voice her support for doing what Livermore did.
“I think it’s important that we stand up with our neighboring communities and have a strong regional voice,” Testa said during the meeting. “I think there’s a very significant benefit to doing that … They’ve shown the courage, we should show the courage as well.”
Nibert and Balch both supported directing staff to take similar action to what Livermore did. Gaidos was the only one who did not offer any comments on the matter during the meeting.
Balch also said he recently reached out to Livermore Mayor John Marchand and Dublin Mayor Sherry Hu to “understand exactly the actions that Livermore is taking and what they may find out”.
He said Marchand agreed to keep Balch updated so that he could communicate those actions to Pleasanton staff.
“I am deeply concerned about the actions of ICE. I am watching it carefully myself,” Balch said. “Trying to figure out how to lead a community through these very unique times is a gut-wrenching experience as mayor that I’ve never experienced in my life.”
“So I’m doing my best,” Balch added. “And that means caution for those members that are ahead of me, that means prudence for those members that are behind me so that the community moves together. That’s what I’m trying to do.”
But even though Balch joined the majority to ask to work with Livermore and Dublin to understand what options are available, he maintained that he doesn’t want the city to pursue a resolution, for the time being.
“I’m not supportive of the resolution at this time because the fact pattern hasn’t changed from the last time,” Balch said.
During the matters initiated portion of the meeting, Nibert tried to once again agendize such a resolution for future council consideration but that failed to get a majority approval. Testa supported Nibert’s motion, Balch and Gaidos did not.
