B.C.-based Pattison says Virginia warehouse sale to ICE won’t proceed

VANCOUVER — Vancouver-based Jim Pattison Developments announced Friday it will no longer be selling a Virginia warehouse property to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which had said it wanted the site as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility.

“The transaction to sell our industrial building in Ashland, Virginia will not be proceeding,” said the one-line statement posted online by the firm owned by British Columbia billionaire Jimmy Pattison.

The pending sale had been subject to intense criticism amid an immigration crackdown in the United States. Two U.S. citizens have been shot dead by federal agents in Minneapolis this month, prompting widespread protests.

The B.C.-based company had said earlier this week it was not aware of the final owner or their intentions for the site when it accepted a purchase offer from a U.S. federal contractor.

Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The board of supervisors in Hanover County, Va., where the property is located, received a letter from the department last week saying it planned to use the 43.5-acre site as a “holding and processing” facility.

The 550,000-square-foot industrial warehouse is located near a shooting range, a heating equipment supply store and across the street from a hotel in the small town of Ashland, with a population of just under 8,000 people.

Board chair Sean Davis told residents on Wednesday that the board opposed the sale, while hundreds of people had gathered at the county administration building to weigh in on the now-cancelled transaction.

An email from Hanover County on Friday said it was aware of the statement posted to Pattison’s website.

“The county is working to confirm the accuracy and legitimacy of that statement. We will share additional details if they become available,” it said.

Representatives from Jim Pattison Group and Jim Pattison Developments did not immediately respond to questions on Friday.

An earlier statement from the development arm had said the sale remained subject to approvals and closing conditions and it intended on “complying with all applicable laws.”

It said the company would not normally comment on a private transaction.

“However, we understand that the conversation around immigration policy and enforcement is particularly heated, and has become much more so over the past few weeks,” it said.

“We respect that this issue is deeply important to many people.”

Point Blank Creative Inc., a digital media agency with offices in Vancouver and Toronto, had issued a letter to Jim Pattison Group this week saying it strongly opposed the transaction with U.S. Homeland Security.

The letter said the agency had spent more than $550,000 of its clients’ media budgets with Pattison companies, but it was suspending all media buying with them until further notice.

The decision was “grounded in a commitment to human rights, dignity and justice, and the labour and social justice movements we serve,” said the letter signed by Point Blank CEO Nat Wilson.

In an email on Friday, Wilson said Point Blank was “not yet in a position” to restart any business with the Pattison group, as the company hadn’t provided its rationale for calling off the sale.

“Did they walk away because it was a principled decision? Did they not obtain the approvals needed? Or was it because the cost to them – financially and reputationally – was too damaging.”

Wilson said the reversal is “exactly why people need to speak out, hold the companies you do business with accountable, and be willing to take your business elsewhere if their decisions don’t align with your values.”

A protest had been planned outside the headquarters of Jim Pattison Group in Vancouver on Friday, along with another outside the offices of tech firm Hootsuite, which is providing social media services to ICE.

A statement from the BC Green Party on Friday said the event outside the Pattison headquarters would instead be a “public gathering to celebrate a collective victory, rather than a protest.”

“This didn’t happen by accident,” Green Leader Emily Lowan said in the news release. “Workers and communities can win against the billionaire class when we stand together. This deal was stopped because people organized, applied pressure, and refused to be silent.”

Later Friday, dozens of people assembled outside the Hootsuite offices in Vancouver, wearing ponchos and brandishing umbrellas against pouring rain, to protest the company’s social media work for ICE.

Tom Tillicum, a retired social worker in his 70s, was among those gathered. With a drum slung around his hip, he said he showed up because he has friends and relatives in the United States.

“I’ve been appalled to see a nation that I thought at least sometimes provided leadership and democracy and multiculturalism turn into something that’s looking more and more (like) authoritarianism, more and more like a fascist state,” he said in an interview.

Mike Tan, identifying himself as a former Hootsuite employee as he addressed the crowd, said he’d always been “very proud” of his role there, which had helped him succeed in the industry.

But he said hearing about the company’s involvement with ICE changed how he feels. “Shame on Hoosuite,” Tan said, sparking cheers from the crowd.

Tan said the protesters were demanding that Hootsuite cancel the contract, and until it had done so, that Canadian companies end their own contracts with his former employer.

Justine Sones, who lives in nearby Maple Ridge, B.C., said she showed up to the protest because she believes “tech is not neutral.”

“Complicity is a choice, and in this case, Hootsuite has made a choice to cause harm instead of doing good, and we all collectively are demanding that they do better.”

Hootsuite CEO Irina Novoselsky said in a statement on Wednesday that its technology makes public conversations “visible at scale” and the firm’s “responsibility is to ensure those voices remain visible.”

She said Hootsuite’s work with ICE “does not include tracking or surveillance of individuals.”

B.C. Attorney General Niki Sharma said Tuesday that business leaders need to consider whether their decisions are contributing to the U.S. immigration crackdown.

— with files from Kelly Geraldine Malone

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 30, 2026.

Brenna Owen and Nono Shen, The Canadian Press