A Pattison Company’s Possible Deal with ICE Brings Boycott Threats

Jan. 27, 2026

Trump’s immigration enforcement agency wants to buy a warehouse for a ‘processing centre’ in Virginia.

The leader of the BC Green Party is calling for a boycott of Save-On-Foods and other businesses owned by B.C. billionaire Jimmy Pattison.

According to a letter sent by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to the Hanover County planning department, ICE plans to use the warehouse as a processing facility “in support of ICE operations.”

Allie Carpenter, a resident of nearby Richmond, Virginia, who is active in opposing the Trump administration and ICE’s aggressive deportation push, said she hopes Canadians will pressure the Jim Pattison Group to stop the sale.

Carpenter said local residents are concerned the plan to turn the warehouse into an immigrant processing facility means ICE is preparing to start arresting and detaining immigrants in Richmond, a city of 235,000 people.

According to reporting by WRIC, an ABC affiliate in Richmond, ICE activity has already started to ramp up in Virginia, following the inauguration of Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger.

Carpenter said there have been numerous human rights abuses committed by ICE and border patrol agents working together to carry out the Trump administration’s mass deportation goals.

She said her message to the Jim Pattison Group is simple. “Don’t sell it to them. There’s a moral obligation to private citizens and companies that work in the United States to resist people being treated this way.”

Lowan tied her call for a boycott of Pattison-owned businesses to the problem of grocery store consolidation in Canada and the rising price of food over the past five years. Lowan called for the establishment of publicly owned grocery stores to provide an alternative to corporate-owned supermarkets.

“This boycott is gaining traction,” she said in a video posted Sunday. “But it also highlights a problem: in many communities, Pattison or Loblaws holds an effective monopoly on our food supply.”

According to the report from WRIC, ICE plans to construct “holding and processing spaces” in the 550,000-square-foot facility.

The Tyee reached out to several Pattison businesses via email and left a voice mail at the Jim Pattison Developments office. We did not hear back.

WRIC reported the owner of the property is Jim Pattison Developments, a real estate company based in B.C. that owns several shopping malls in communities across the province. In a real estate market report for 2023 published by commercial real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield, the property owner is listed as Jim Pattison Group. The 2023 third-quarter report describes the warehouse as “under construction.”

Pattison, one of B.C.’s best-known business figures, also owns grocery stores like Save-On-Foods and Urban Fare, advertising billboard companies and car dealerships. His privately owned company reports $19 billion in sales.

News of the potential real estate sale sparked condemnation when the WRIC story was posted in a Canadian Reddit channel.

But the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis on Saturday spurred Victoria, B.C., resident Jen Stewart to email the company with her concerns.

Stewart said she contacted Pattison Food Group, the grocery store side of the business, because she often buys groceries at Save-On-Foods stores.

“It’s a small gesture, but I can tell them that ‘Hey, if you go through with this, if you collaborate with ICE, if you support them to create a facility to put humans in a warehouse that you own, I’m not going to support your business,’” Stewart said.

To carry out the Trump administration’s goal of mass deportations, ICE has undertaken an aggressive campaign to arrest and deport immigrants living in the United States. Aggressive arrests, car chases and ICE’s heavy-handed response to protesters and observers have led to chaotic and violent scenes on the streets of U.S. cities.

Meanwhile, large detention centres, such as “Alligator Alcatraz,” have been built in several states to hold the immigrants that ICE is arresting. Experts have said these facilities can be defined as concentration camps, and human rights organizations have flagged concerns about the treatment of detainees.

In Minneapolis, where residents have organized to resist ICE operations, Americans have been horrified by the deaths of two protesters (also referred to as observers) — mother and poet Renee Good and ICU nurse Pretti — at the hands of officers involved in ICE operations.

Stewart said she was also disturbed by the detention of a five-year-old boy, Liam Ramos, as he was coming home from preschool.

Stewart said she quickly received a letter back from Pattison Food Group, letting her know the company was aware of “online discussion regarding a U.S. property owned by Jim Pattison Developments.”

“Pattison Food Group and its retail banners operate separately within the Jim Pattison Group and are not involved in real estate decisions made by Jim Pattison Developments,” the company continued.

“As always, at Save-On-Foods, our focus remains serving customers, supporting our teams, and contributing positively to our communities.”

Stewart responded, asking the company to “pass on the message” that any support of ICE would result in the company losing her business.

“ICE has murdered people, terrorized whole cities, and arrested small children. The home page of your website states, ‘We take pride in all we do. For over 60 years, The Jim Pattison Group has valued quality, integrity, and commitment,’” Stewart wrote. “Will you really be proud of enabling a lawless paramilitary group to imprison toddlers?”

Aidan Gilchrist-Blackwood, a network co-ordinator for the Canadian Network on Corporate Accountability, said that although it’s legal for Jim Pattison Developments to sell a property to the Department of Homeland Security, the human rights abuses ICE has been perpetuating make it a clear ethical problem.

“We’re seeing it reported every day, really horrifying human rights violations that are being linked to this organization really consistently,” Gilchrist-Blackwood said. “So I think from an ethics and human rights perspective, you know that your collaboration, your sale of this building to this entity is very likely to be contributing to the ability of those human rights abuses to persist.”

Gilchrist-Blackwood said his organization has been pushing for Canadian legislation that would make it a legal obligation for Canadian companies “to examine their business relationships, their suppliers, the people they’re buying and selling from, and make an assessment of whether their action risks contributing to or causing a human rights violation.”

Carpenter said she and other local residents plan to attend the Hanover County meeting on Wednesday to oppose the warehouse plan.

But the local county government has limited power when it comes to saying no to federal plans to make a suburban warehouse into an ICE facility, she said. 

[Top photo: Vancouver businessman Jim Pattison’s range of holdings includes a warehouse in Virginia that ICE wants to buy and convert into a detention centre. Photo by Darryl Dyck, the Canadian Press.]