Despite protests in small towns and cities across the US, the Trump administration pushed ahead with the purchase of warehouses it planned to convert into immigration jails in what could be the largest expansion of such detention capacity in US history.
The cost for acquiring two warehouses alone was $172 million. A third in El Paso, Texas, could be among the largest jails of any kind in the country if completed as envisioned, with 8,500 beds. The deals marked the latest turn in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s plan to use as many as 23 warehouses for detaining thousands of immigrants arrested by federal agents in Minneapolis and other cities. Those aggressive enforcement actions ignited clashes with protesters and led to agents killing two US citizens, Bloomberg reported.
On Jan. 16, the administration paid $102 million for a site near Hagerstown, Maryland, according to a local court filing. A week later, the govt paid $70 million in cash for a warehouse in Surprise, Arizona. The price tags, roughly in line with the industry average for the warehouse market, covered just the acquisition of the sites, which were currently empty shells. ICE still had to pay companies to outfit the buildings with toilets, showers, beds, dining and recreation areas and then run them as detention centres.
The El Paso site was purchased by the Department of Homeland Security recently, according to people familiar with the transaction who asked not to be named discussing a confidential process. But the sale price had not yet been made public.
As the political pressure intensified, some deals were collapsing. Canadian billionaire Jim Pattison’s company said Friday that a transaction to sell its 550,000-square-foot warehouse in Ashland, Virginia, “will not be proceeding.” Earlier in the week, the company had said it had initially agreed to sell the facility to a US govt contractor but that “some time later, we became aware of the ultimate owner and intended use of the building.” It added: “We understand that the conversation around immigration policy and enforcement is particularly heated, and has become much more so over the past few weeks. We respect that this issue is deeply important to many people.”
On Thursday, Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt said he’d met with the owners of a warehouse identified by ICE who told him they were no longer going to sell or lease the facility to the agency. “I commend the owners for their decision and thank them on behalf of the people of Oklahoma City,” Holt said. “I ask that every single property owner in Oklahoma City exhibit the same concern for our community in the days ahead.”
The warehouses, many of which originally were designed and marketed as e-commerce distribution facilities, represented a significant pivot for the administration’s $45 billion immigration detention buildout. Last year, it relied on tent camps constructed in remote places like the Florida Everglades and an Army base in Texas.
Little had been publicly shared about ICE’s plans for the new detention centres in small towns and cities across the country. Already, many residents voiced opposition and local leaders considered options to prevent the agency from using them. The concerns included both immigration politics as well as land-use issues, including proximity to homes and schools, and questions of sewer capacity and water demand. Given such pushback and the logistical challenges, there was no guarantee each of the 23 sites would be converted.
More than 200 people showed up to protest the warehouse plans in Hagerstown on Jan. 20 in below-freezing temperatures. “One of the most obscene, one of the most inhumane, one of the most illegal operations being carried out by this Trump Administration is what they’re doing at the Department of Homeland Security and ICE,” US Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, told the protesters. “We do not want an ICE facility here in the state of Maryland.”
DHS and ICE did not respond to a detailed request for comment. Neither did the companies that sold the properties in Maryland, Arizona and Texas, Fundrise, Rockefeller Group and Flint Development, respectively.
The 23 proposed sites would range in size from 500 to 9,500 beds. If completed as planned, the larger facilities would be some of the biggest detention centres of any kind in the country. For example, the 9,500-bed facility ICE was planning for Hutchins, Texas, could fit the entire average daily jail population of Dallas County with thousands of beds to spare.
In recent weeks the federal govt gave tours of potential sites in more than 20 cities to contractors and shared with them the designs, including preferred layouts, for at least 15 of the sites, according to people familiar with the confidential process. Contractors, the ones who would turn these warehouses into jails, were required to send in their proposals for the first sites this week, starting with Hagerstown, according to those sources.
To reach its goal of deporting 1 million people a year, the Trump administration said it needed more than 100,000 detention beds. Currently, there were more than 73,000 people in ICE custody, a record. The new sites could give the agency an additional 76,500 beds, according to documents shared with Bloomberg News. To fill all of them, the administration would have to expand immigration arrests beyond what it was already doing, said Emma Winger, deputy legal director at the American Immigration Council.
“To reach these kinds of numbers, they’d need to go out into the communities and find people who’ve been living their lives and been here a long time,” Winger said. “They’d have to dramatically increase their presence in communities across the country.”
