Cary town staff fielded questions in 2025 about whether local zoning would allow a facility tied to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, but members of the town council say they only recently found out those conversations happened. The revelations center on a stretch of correspondence between town planners, a local real estate broker, and a federal employee working to secure office space — all of it unfolding without the full council's knowledge, according to the Raleigh News & Observer.
A Broker's Zoning Questions in June 2025
The chain began in June 2025, when real estate broker Sam DiFranco Jr. contacted Cary officials through the town's 311 portal, asking whether local zoning would permit a daytime detention facility connected to ICE, according to the News & Observer. DiFranco had listed a building at 3500 Gateway Centre Blvd., which carries a Morrisville mailing address but falls under Cary's zoning rules. He described a prospective buyer as a government agency tied to ICE or the Department of Homeland Security, and said that buyer was reportedly a West Coast-based development company planning to lease the building to ICE — though the paper reports the building's actual buyer turned out to be unrelated to ICE.
Cary official Jeph Allen consulted town planning staff about the proposed use and told DiFranco on June 12, 2025 that the use would not be considered a correctional or penal institution. Two weeks later, on June 27, Allen told DiFranco that office use by a government agency without overnight detainees would be permitted. Town of Cary planning staff have said government office use without overnight detainees would be allowed under current rules, and that such a use could be permitted within Cary's Airport Overlay district — a zoning area covering land near Raleigh-Durham International Airport.
Assistant Town Manager Scot Berry said planning staff performed routine work in answering the zoning questions, but he also said an inquiry of this type should have informed the town manager, per the News & Observer's reporting. That distinction — routine staff work versus a gap in notifying leadership — sits at the center of why several council members say they were caught off guard.
A Second Contact Point in October
Months later, a different federal employee took a similar question to Cary's top administrator directly. Erin Robertson, who worked as an immigration services analyst with the Department of Homeland Security, emailed then-Town Manager Sean Stegall on October 3, 2025 about available office space, seeking room for up to two service center operations employees. Robertson said some USCIS employees faced 150 miles of daily roundtrip travel, the News & Observer reports. Stegall resigned in December after being placed on leave over documented misuse of town funds, a departure unrelated to the ICE inquiries but one that left a gap in institutional memory right as the issue was surfacing.
Council Members Say They Were Left in the Dark
Council member Lori Bush said she had not heard about the ICE-related communications until the News & Observer told her, and said the matter should have received a heads-up to the full council. She also said fellow council member Russ Overton was unaware of the communications with town staff. Council member Sarika Bansal said she had not previously known about the 2025 inquiry either, and contacted Cary's town attorney, who reviewed the matter after her inquiry.
Bush said she expects the town council to address the information, and argued residents deserve to know how the town handles information that affects the community. Cary's broader population of roughly 180,000 residents means decisions about federal office space near a major amphitheater and lake district carry weight well beyond a single zoning memo.
The Regency Parkway Lease and What Remains Unconfirmed
Separately, the General Services Administration has leased office space at 11000 Regency Parkway in Cary, a five-story building near Symphony Lake and the Koka Booth Amphitheatre, with a five-year lease term, according to the News & Observer. Reporting from INDY Week says the GSA's own listing shows that lease took effect in October 2025 and runs through October 2030, valued at just over $7.6 million for a 10-year term with a five-year minimum. INDY Week has not been able to independently confirm that ICE is the agency behind that lease, and WRAL likewise says it has not independently verified the report that ICE is expanding its office footprint in Cary.
Cary Mayor Harold Weinbrecht told WRAL he had not heard anything about a detention facility coming to the town, and a Cary spokesperson said federal agencies have independent authority and will operate in ways that do not require local rezoning or municipal approval. A representative of Bridge Commercial Real Estate told the station the lease was for office use, declining to identify the government agency involved beyond saying it was not anything beyond attorneys in suits. WRAL's review of a GSA database found a lease for 25,000 square feet at the Regency Parkway building beginning in October and running through at least 2030. ICE already operates at least one office in Cary, at 140 Centrewest Court, meaning the reported Regency Parkway space would mark a second local footprint if the agency link is confirmed. According to INDY Week, Cary officials said 45 residents had contacted the town to express opposition to the reported lease.
A National Pattern, and Calls for Tighter Local Rules
The Cary questions fit into a much larger federal push. Federal records reviewed by WIRED show ICE and the Department of Homeland Security have carried out a campaign involving more than 150 leases and office expansions in nearly every state, with DHS saying the agency now has 22,000 officers and agents stationed nationwide after more than doubling in size since 2025. A September 2025 training kickoff for an ICE surge team cited the hiring of 13,000 new ICE employees as the trigger for needing around 250 new locations, and by October 9, 2025, ICE's Office of the Principal Legal Advisor had requested office locations in 41 cities. Starting that same September, GSA was pushed to bypass the Competition in Contracting Act's usual open-competition requirement using an urgency justification requested by ICE.
Immigrant advocacy group Siembra has urged Cary to require permits and hearings for any facility that holds people in custody. Siembra's North Carolina defense manager Andreina Malk said daytime ICE custody cells currently count as an ordinary government office under Cary's existing rules. Malk pointed to Greensboro and San Antonio as examples of cities that already require special approval for such facilities.
Greensboro offers the clearest model. The WFDD reported that city's council amended its land development ordinance in February to better regulate detention facilities, now requiring special-use permits and limiting where such facilities can be placed.
