ICE’s Appalling Warehouse Scheme

Even communities that supported President Trump are pushing back on cruel plans to detain immigrants in warehouses.

Placard at an Anti-ICE Protest Jan 30 2026, Minneapolis, Minnesota -- Fibonacci Blue, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

By Farrah Hassen

Warehouses are for storing goods. ICE wants to use them to store people.

As Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) ramps up arrests, the Trump administration is seeking to spend $38 billion to expand its detention capacity to 92,600 people, according to agency documents.

At least 73,000 people — a record high — are already being held in ICE detention. To make room for more, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) plans to buy numerous industrial warehouses using tens of billions in funding from the “Big Beautiful Bill.”

ICE has already purchased at least eight facilities in Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Maryland, New Jersey, and Arizona — and is looking at as many as 24 warehouses across the nation.

To fill them, the administration would have to expand arrests dramatically beyond what it’s already doing. More federal agents would be dispatched to terrorize communities, shoot people dead in the streets, and break families apart.

Almost certainly, more people would die in detention too.

Last year, at least 32 people died in ICE custody. Nine more have died in 2026 as of this writing. Overcrowding, medical neglect, measles outbreaks, physical abuse, and lack of clean water and edible food are only some of the horrific conditions documented in ICE prisons.

Not even children have been spared. Since President Trump returned to office, at least 3,800 children have been held in ICE detention.

ProPublica recently investigated the plight of children caged at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas, run by the for-profit prison contractor CoreCivic. “The water is what makes people sick here,” said Ender, a 12-year-old from Venezuela who’d been detained for 60 days. “There were children in Dilley who were so distraught they cut themselves or talked about suicide, several mothers told me,” noted ProPublica reporter Mica Rosenberg.

But communities around the country are fighting back — including in areas that voted for Trump.

In Oklahoma City, the Kansas owners of a warehouse pulled out of a deal with ICE after facing “widespread” protests that “spanned ideological differences,” reported The Oklahoman. DHS had been looking to convert a 415,981-square-foot warehouse in a predominately Hispanic neighborhood into a 1,500-bed detention center for ICE.

In Virginia’s Hanover County, residents mobilized against the sale of a 552,576-square-foot warehouse to ICE, leading the warehouse’s Canadian owner to cancel the sale. And in Hutchins, Texas, residents successfully blocked Majestic Realty Co. from selling or leasing a warehouse for up to 10,000 people in a town of 6,000. As one resident questioned, “We’re gonna get an ICE detention center before we get a grocery store in Hutchins?”

Communities in Social Circle, Georgia and  Socorro, Texas are also resisting planned warehouse detention sites. Residents have raised varying concerns, such as diminished property tax revenue, the impact on local water supplies and sewage infrastructure, and ICE’s reputation for lawlessness.

“Nobody wants a prison in their backyard,” Social Circle resident Harriett Nunnally told The Guardian. “I think a lot of innocent people are getting caught up in their dragnet,” Socorro resident Jorge Mendoza said at a city council meeting.

In many cases, ICE has left local officials in the dark. In Socorro, “nobody from the federal government bothered to pick up the phone or even send us any type of correspondence letting us know what’s about to take place,” observed Mayor Rudy Cruz Jr.

Being undocumented is a civil, not a criminal offense. People also have a legal right to seek asylum. This system that locks up immigrants is already cruel and punitive, but warehousing them in this way represents the lowest depths of Trump’s racist agenda.

Detention in general fails to address the root causes of forced displacement, such as war and persecution, or confront our nation’s outdated immigration laws, which are in dire need of reform.

Instead, we need real immigration solutions rooted in justice and dignity for all. ICE and its inhumane detention system must be abolished, not expanded.

OtherWords columnist Farrah Hassen, J.D., is a writer, policy analyst, and educator. This op-ed was distributed by OtherWords.org