Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning to give away or sell seven empty warehouses it bought for $700 million to detain migrants as part of the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown, according to a report.
Under ousted Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the immigration agency purchased 11 facilities, so far totaling $1 billion. But now that her replacement, Markwayne Mullin, wants his department to go about immigration enforcement in a “more quiet way,” the agency is getting rid of seven of the sprawling facilities, The New York Times reports.
The warehouses were purchased after ICE was given a massive injection of taxpayer funds through Trump’s One Big Beautiful Act domestic spending bill last year, and there were plans to spend nearly $40 billion on the warehouse-to-detention program championed by Noem.
Mullin paused the warehouse plans once he took office.
The facilities—which the administration wanted to use for processing more detainees— were acquired in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Texas, according to public records and local reports. Now ICE is planning to offload the warehouses in Michigan and New Jersey, according to The Times, and could give them away to other federal agencies.
ICE is still moving ahead with four of the warehouses purchased under Noem, according to documents reviewed by the newspaper, but it was unclear as to why.
Some of the facilities were capable of housing 7,000 to 10,000 detainees each and were planned to serve as as “primary locations” before people were removed from the country, according to government documents.
Claire Trickler-McNulty, a senior ICE official in the Biden administration, told The Times that the plan “seemed questionable from inception.”
“Clearly the warehouses have caused some serious headaches, with pauses due to state litigation, an I.G. investigation and no opening date in sight with close to a billion dollars spent,” Trickler-McNulty said.
“From Day 1, D.H.S. has remained singularly focused on removing the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from the United States and is always evaluating the best methods to do so,” the Homeland Security Department said in a statement to the outlet in response.
“These heinous criminals, once arrested, should be removed at lightning speed, not housed on American soil at the taxpayer’s expense. D.H.S. is moving swiftly to utilize EXISTING detention space with our state and county partners,” the statement added.
When ICE purchased the warehouses, local communities in those towns and cities rebelled, with protests often breaking out outside the facilities.
John Fabbricatore, a former Trump administration official who recently advised on immigration issues at the Department of Health and Human Services, said the warehouses were “a quick concept to scale up mass deportation.”
“Unfortunately, because of the scale and footprint, the left was able to throw up immediate roadblocks,” Fabbricatore told the newspaper. “Immigration detention is necessary for a successful deportation plan, and this was the easiest point for the Democrats to attack and stop that effort.”
Homeland Security’s inspector general is investigating the warehouse purchases, it was first reported in May.
The agency also has plans to purchase detention facilities from private prison companies ICE already holds contracts with.
The Independent has requested comment from DHS.
