Last Updated on March 2, 2018, 4:42 PM | Published: March 2, 2018
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has plans for a new facility in Oklahoma City around I-40 and Meridian.
It is designed to provide offices for up to 65 professional staff from the agency’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) a rezoning request with the City of Oklahoma City shows.
The rezoning application states ERO is responsible for “overseeing programs and conducting operations to identify and apprehend removable aliens, and to remove illegal aliens from the United States.”
The renovated building will also have detainee interview rooms. However, current plans do not call for it to be an overnight detention facility.
A Georgia corporation, “RP Oklahoma City LLC,” filed the rezoning application with the city for their building at 1220 Sovereign Row, part of a one-story office building park.
County Assessor records show that an Oklahoma corporation, Sovereign of Oklahoma LLC, sold the property to RP Oklahoma City June 2017.
The application says that ERO will be their only tenant.
Construction beginning
The building has been gutted down to roof, walls and slab with a large opening cleared on the north end.
But it appears that preparations are being made to start construction on the shell. New lumber and other building materials were stacked on the lot.
Public meeting
The Planning Commission will take up the application in their regular meeting at 1:30 p.m. Thursday, March 8 in the Council Chamber at City Hall, 200 N. Walker Avenue.
Free Press learned about the application from a tip late Wednesday. We obtained the application documents through an open records request Thursday morning.
The agenda for the meeting was not on the City’s website until Friday.
APPLICATION DOCS
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Founder, publisher, and editor of Oklahoma City Free Press. Brett continues to contribute reports and photography to this site as he runs the business.
