Roughly two-thirds of the warehouses Immigration and Customs Enforcement purchased across 11 cities under former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem are in the process of being sold or off-loaded.
The Trump administration is backtracking on its initial plan to significantly expand immigrant detention space nationwide after spending $1 billion acquiring large warehouses that were supposed to be converted into temporary holding sites for illegal immigrants in deportation proceedings. The warehouses were supposed to be in addition to about three dozen existing ICE detention sites.
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Seven of 11 warehouses in red, purple, and blue states are in the process of being sold or shifted to other federal agencies, according to the New York Times.
Fiscal, ethical, logistical, and political concerns have halted the plans over problems related to overpaying for facilities, giving contracts to potential acquaintances, the ability to acquire plumbing for remote sites, and backlash from local communities.
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The decision comes in the wake of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin‘s arrival at the agency on April 1.
The four warehouses ICE continues to move forward with are in Socorro, Texas; San Antonio, Texas; Surprise, Arizona; and Hagerstown, Maryland, according to various local and national media reports over the past week. The Socorro site includes three warehouses, while the others each have one warehouse.
The Socorro warehouse may be the next site on the chopping block, according to the Associated Press, which would bring the total of dropped sites to eight.
The dropped warehouses across the seven cities were purchased for more than $700 million and have either been off-loaded already or are in the process of being sold or handed off to agencies unrelated to immigration.
One such warehouse being dropped by ICE was located in Salt Lake City. The Atlantic reported that the government spent $145 million purchasing the warehouse despite it being valued at $97 million.
The Roxbury Township, New Jersey, site was acquired for $129 million, approximately double its value, according to tax records cited by the Associated Press.
The Trump administration informed a federal judge on Monday that it planned to sell its $35 million warehouse in Romulus, Michigan, following a lawsuit from Michigan and a Detroit suburb.
Two Georgia warehouses in Oakwood and Flowery Branch are also on the chopping block, as well as two in Hamburg and Tremont, Pennsylvania.
DHS has not commented publicly about the status of the 11 warehouses, but a spokesperson confirmed to the Washington Examiner on Thursday that it is reviewing recent purchases by ICE.
“As with any transition, we are reviewing agency policies and proposals. As Secretary Mullin said in his confirmation hearing: ‘I will work with the community leaders and make sure that we are delivering for the American people what the President set out. … We want to work with community leaders. We want to be good partners,'” the DHS spokesperson said.
Detention is the middle step that must run smoothly in order for ICE officers to continue making arrests and having somewhere to hold people. While in detention, immigrants will appear before an immigration judge who will determine whether they will be removed from the country. Once a person is ordered to be removed, ICE will wait until it has the plane or transportation needed to repatriate the person to their home country.
As part of Noem’s detention overhaul funded by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, ICE was set to acquire and renovate eight large-scale detention centers and 16 facilities where people in custody are processed, as well as 10 “turnkey” facilities it already has.
Those changes were expected to bring the total to 92,600 beds, up from roughly 50,000 at the start of Trump’s second term.
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Andrew Arthur, a former immigration judge who is now resident fellow in law and policy for the Center for Immigration Studies think tank that supports lower immigration levels, told the Washington Examiner on Thursday that plans to sell warehouses would prove smart given a federal appeals court’s ruling on Tuesday that will allow the federal government to swiftly deport illegal immigrants inside the United States without having to detain them through court proceedings.
“DHS will need less detention space, or more precisely the same amount of detention space the department has now, only for shorter periods meaning quicker turnover,” Arthur wrote in an email. “DHS warehouse detention was never a good idea. As a fiscal hawk, it’s better to contract with CoreCivic and [GEO Group], and with state prisons and county jails, because the added space won’t come with a guaranteed federal pension.”
