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<\/picture> <\/div>\nIn his second inaugural address<\/a>, President Donald Trump pledged to crack down on illegal immigration: “All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.” The administration set a minimum goal<\/a> of 3,000 deportations per day.<\/p>\n There was a problem. At the time, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operated or contracted with<\/a> more than 200 disparate facilities across the country, from federal detention centers to county jails, and it had the resources<\/a> to detain only about 41,000 people at a time. To reach its daily deportation goal, the government would have to scale up its capacity. So this year the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has gone on a real estate shopping spree, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on warehouses across the country. The plan: to transform them into detention centers for undocumented migrants.<\/p>\n It is inhumane to store human beings\u2014people who in many cases have not been convicted or even accused of anything more serious than civil immigration violations\u2014in warehouses like so much freight. It is also far too costly, both in tax dollars spent and in harms imposed on the communities where these holding centers are being built.<\/p>\n The 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act<\/a> gave ICE the money to hire 10,000 new immigration officers, plus $45 billion for “single adult alien detention capacity and family residential center capacity.” A Homeland Security press release<\/a> announced that this funding “provides ICE with enough detention capacity to maintain an average daily population of 100,000 illegal aliens and secures 80,000 new ICE beds.”<\/p>\n The department immediately started buying up<\/a> industrial warehouses across America. According to DHS documents<\/a>, the plan is to streamline operations to 34 dedicated facilities with a total detainee capacity of 92,600. This would include “the acquisition and renovation of eight large-scale detention centers and 16 processing sites.” The processing sites would hold up to 1,500 detainees for a few days at a time. A blueprint in a DHS report<\/a> shows elaborate centers with kitchens, cafeterias, laundry facilities, gun ranges, and housing for up to 10,000 detainees. Homeland Security claims these will be ready for use November 30.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The administration doesn’t like to call these facilities warehouses<\/i>. They “are not warehouses\u2014they are detention facilities,” recently departed<\/a> DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told<\/a> The Washington Post<\/i> in January. An ICE spokesperson tells Reason<\/i> that “these will be very well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards.” But no matter how they dress it up, ICE acquired industrial properties with empty warehouses designed to store and transport freight, with the intent to use them for storing and transporting people.<\/p>\n It’s not like ICE’s “regular detention standards” are anything to be proud of. There have been numerous reports<\/a> across the country of inhumane conditions in ICE facilities. In just 50 days at Camp East Montana, a detention center at Fort Bliss, Texas, “migrants were subjected to conditions that violated at least 60 federal standards for immigrant detention,” The Washington Post<\/i> reported in September<\/a>. Three detainees at the camp died<\/a> within six weeks, and the Associated Press reported<\/a> that the staff were taking “bets…over which detainee would be next to die by suicide.” In March, officials shut down<\/a> access to Camp East Montana after 14 detainees tested positive for measles, before announcing<\/a> a new contractor would take over.<\/p>\n It’s also worth noting that as of February 7, 2026<\/a>, about 74 percent of the people held in ICE custody\u201450,259 out of 68,289 detainees\u2014had no criminal convictions, despite Trump’s repeated pledge<\/a> to go after the “worst of the worst.” David J. Bier, director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute, similarly found<\/a> that of all the people ICE detained from October 1 through November 15, 2025, only 5 percent had been convicted of a violent crime, 73 percent had no criminal convictions of any kind, and 47 percent had no charges pending either.<\/p>\n The warehouse detention centers won’t be cheap.<\/p>\n Take the facility that the DHS bought<\/a> in Surprise, Arizona. It paid $70 million for the warehouse. The agency estimates<\/a> that it’ll cost another $150 million to retrofit the building into a processing site, plus $180 million to operate it for its first three years. That’s $400 million for just one spot, projected<\/a> to house up to 550 detainees at a time.<\/p>\n The feds have often paid more than the properties appear to be worth. In January and February alone, ICE “bought industrial space totaling more than 6.8 million square feet…for at least $894 million, often paying a premium for the real estate in the once white-hot U.S. industrial market that is now dealing with a downturn in demand,” reports<\/a> CoStar<\/i>. “ICE appears to be paying an 11% to 13% premium, with some properties trading at over 30% of recent comparable trades in the market.” That $70 million warehouse in Surprise? The tax assessor gave it a valuation<\/a> of $46 million.<\/p>\n “You paid $129.3 million for a facility in my state that was assessed at less than half of that, at $62 million,” Sen. Cory Booker (D\u2013N.J.) told<\/a> then\u2013DHS Secretary Kristi Noem during a Senate oversight hearing in March.<\/p>\n ICE bought<\/a> one 235-acre plot\u2014in Social Circle, Georgia\u2014for $128.5 million. Its prior owner, a real estate developer, paid<\/a> $29 million for the property in 2023 and built a warehouse there, an improvement the tax assessor valued around $26 million.<\/p>\n “In Oakwood, Georgia, the government paid $68 million for a warehouse and surrounding land that was appraised in 2025 for a combined $7.1 million,” adds<\/a> USA Today<\/i>. “Experts in federal property acquisition said DHS may be paying high prices to compel developers and commercial landowners to sell their property despite local opposition.” You can do that when you have billions to play with.<\/p>\n Indeed, there has been considerable local opposition\u2014even in otherwise sympathetic locales, where neighbors worry about the effect a sudden influx of guards and detainees could have on the existing infrastructure.<\/p>\n Many of the chosen sites are in rural areas. Social Circle has just under 5,500 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau<\/a>, but the detention center that ICE plans to build there would hold up to 10,000 detainees. When fully staffed and at capacity, it would triple the local population.<\/p>\n “Sites undergo community impact studies and a rigorous due diligence process to make sure there is no hardship on local utilities or infrastructure prior to purchase,” an ICE spokesperson tells Reason<\/i>.<\/p>\n ICE’s infrastructure analysis<\/a> said the center in Social Circle would generate about 1 million gallons of wastewater per day. The area is currently served by a wastewater treatment facility with a 1.25 million gallon daily capacity, and the city had already committed to build a new plant. But as city officials have warned<\/a>, the “current wastewater system processes 660,000 gallons a day and is already operating at capacity. It cannot accommodate an increase in usage of this magnitude.”<\/p>\n They added that the 1.25 million gallon facility is located in another county and does not service the site or any part of the town. And while the city did plan to build another treatment plant, construction would take 18 months\u2014and even then, it would process only 1.5 million gallons per day.<\/p>\n The planned processing center<\/a> in nearby Oakwood, slated for 1,500 beds, would run into the same problems. City manager B.R. White tells Reason<\/i> the town is already near its wastewater treatment capacity, and a new ICE facility would compete for already-strained resources.<\/p>\n Both are Trump-friendly areas. The president won more than 70 percent of each<\/a> county’s votes<\/a> in 2024. But political partisanship is not enough to overcome logistical hurdles.<\/p>\n “The City of Oakwood supports ICE’s mission of apprehending and detaining individuals with criminal records,” says a statement<\/a> from the mayor and city council. “Our concern is not with the agency’s lawful role in public safety. Our concern is with the proposed location and the process by which this site was selected, which occurred without consultation, coordination, or impact analysis involving any local governing body.”<\/p>\n “Although I am aligned with the mission of ICE…I agree with the community that Social Circle does not have the sufficient resources that this facility would require,” Rep. Mike Collins (R\u2013Ga.), a stalwart Trump supporter<\/a> who represents the city in Congress, wrote on Facebook<\/a>. “I have asked DHS to continue evaluating the impacts that the facility would have on Social Circle and to ensure we can accomplish the mission without negatively impacting this community.”<\/p>\n Local officials don’t just worry about what an ICE facility will do to their plumbing. They worry about what it’ll do to the local economy.<\/p>\n When ICE builds a detention center in a rural area, it takes a place where a business could have gone instead. ICE purchased<\/a> a property in Romulus, Michigan, to turn into a processing site with 500 beds. According<\/a> to state Sen. Mallory McMorrow (D\u2013Detroit), the government “outbid an auto supplier” to purchase the property.<\/p>\n ICE outbid an auto supplier to acquire a warehouse they intend to turn into a detention facility.<\/p>\n Hundreds of community members joined in support of the Romulus City Council – who voted unanimously on a resolution opposing this detention center. pic.twitter.com\/Mb2nDelmlZ<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Mallory McMorrow (@MalloryMcMorrow) February 26, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nCongress Gave ICE $45 Billion To Build Detention Centers<\/h1>\n
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The Trump Administration Is Overpaying for ICE Real Estate<\/h1>\n
GOP Congressman Says Georgia Town Doesn’t Have ‘Sufficient Resources’<\/h1>\n
DHS Uses Fuzzy Math To Justify Purchases<\/h1>\n
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