ORLANDO, Fla. — “Lake Nona Concentration Camp” is certainly an evocative nickname for a potential Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in east Orlando. But lawyers for a development company say the monicker violates their clients’ trademark, and they are insisting that the activists who are using it in flyers and signs must stop.

50501 Orlando, which has led No Kings protests and other actions opposing the rumored conversion of a warehouse into an ICE processing facility, received the demand email on March 23 from attorneys representing Lake Nona Property Holdings, an affiliate of Tavistock, the developer of the Lake Nona planned community in Orlando.

The letter, which gave the group until March 31 to stop using the development’s name, notes that Lake Nona has no affiliation with the warehouse plan, nor is the proposed site even within its boundaries.

“Your use of “LAKE NONA” in this manner implies some type of affiliation between the proposed facility and LNPH, which does not exist,” it reads. “The predominant use of LAKE NONA as the attention-getting device in your title makes consumer confusion as to the source more likely.”

50501 posted a video on social media on April 1 in response, stating it considered Lake Nona a geographic area and didn’t realize it was trademarked. Lake Nona is also the name of a lake in the vicinity.

“Maybe those big feelings are being directed at the wrong people?” group member Jackie Giralt says in the video shared by 50501. “Because we are not the ones who want to buy a warehouse in your neighborhood with the intention of kidnapping members of your community and holding them indefinitely without due process in horrifying and inhuman conditions.”

Corey Hill, a spokesman for 50501 Orlando, said the group believes its messaging on digital flyers and signs is protected by the First Amendment.

“We’re pretty confident in our First Amendment rights,” Hill said. “They’re more than welcome to meet with us and talk about how they can join the fight.”

The letter from Tavistock requested dropping the use of “Lake Nona” and removing all references from their materials, and also adding a disclaimer to previous posts clarifying that the company has no association with a detention center, nor is it located in its development.

As of Friday afternoon, it doesn’t appear 50501 has done so.

“They acknowledge in their own materials the property in question is not located in Lake Nona; and yet, they continue to use the Lake Nona name in a misleading and highly offensive campaign, which is blatantly inaccurate and deceptive,” said Tavistock vice president of marketing and communications Jessi Blakley.

The company has been very protective of the name of its 17-square-mile mixed-use development, home to more than 60,000 people. In 2015, it sued the Klein Company of Philadelphia alleging that its “Dwell at Lake Nona” project was a violation of its trademark. Attorneys for Klein argued Lake Nona is a “geographic name,” but later backed down and renamed the project.

Tavistock also took issue with a planned “Lake Nona Elementary School” that same year. While the Lake Nona name was already used for a high school and middle school, the elementary school was not located in the development itself. Orange County named the school Eagle Creek instead.

While the land is not part of the Lake Nona development, Tavistock does plan to develop acreage surrounding the warehouse park for its future Sunbridge plan, which promises to bring thousands of homes and apartments, hotel, office and retail space.

Asked in February about a proposed ICE facility near the Sunbridge site, Tavistock stated, “We have not been contacted by any agency regarding the site, and we do not own or manage the property being referenced. Our focus as an adjacent landowner remains on supporting long-term economic growth and a stable business environment in Central Florida.”

50501 and other groups been protesting in opposition of ICE opening a detention center at the warehouse site since it first gained notice in January. That month, TV cameras recorded a senior ICE official touring the facility in a currently remote part of Orlando, south of State Road 528 and 8 miles east of Lake Nona.

50501 held a protest in Lake Nona in recent weeks and led a phone campaign to pressure the Winter Park real estate firm that was marketing the site – leading HLI Partners to remove its contact information from its website and play the Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up” to any callers.

Language comparing detention facilities to concentration camps has been controversial around the country.

Critics have said the comparison to Nazi camps “both overstates the situation in ICE facilities and trivializes the Holocaust,” according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

But others have said the comparison is apt. In a video call on the topic hosted by the national 50501 group, journalist Frank Abe, co-editor of The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration, said the ICE warehouses “are nothing but 21st Century American concentration camps.”

“I’m a third-generation Japanese American, and I know a concentration camp when I see one,” Abe said, referring to World War II-era internment in the U.S.

So far, the Department of Homeland Security has purchased 11 warehouses across the country in a bid to substantially increase the nation’s detention capacity to carry out President Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

But the current status of the Orlando warehouse plan remains unknown. This week, NBC News reported that ICE was pausing the purchase of new warehouses and was scrutinizing purchases made under former DHS Sec. Kristi Noem, who was removed in March. The Senate confirmed former U.S. Sen. Markwayne Mullin as her replacement, and he was sworn in last week.

The agency didn’t respond this week to emailed questions about its plans in Orlando.

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