What’s the Alternative? Instead of Detention Centers, Use Warehouses for Communities

A Report of Immigration Research Initiative, National Immigration Law Center, and Regional Planners

Since taking office, the Trump Administration has been working to vastly expand the already enormous U.S. immigration detention system. Under former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) launched its “Detention Reengineering Initiative”—a plan that would put tens of billions of taxpayer dollars into buying and converting warehouses and other facilities across the country into detention centers to jail immigrants on a mass scale for indefinite periods. Across the country, including in many Republican-dominated areas, people have recognized the dehumanizing impact of warehousing people and opposed it.

The status of the administration’s detention expansion plans appears to be in flux following Noem’s firing. Recent reports suggest the administration is attempting to sell back several of the eleven facilities it has already purchased. Critically, however, the administration still intends to move forward with converting four of the purchased warehouses for immigration detention: in San Antonio and Socorro, Texas; Surprise, Arizona; and Hagerstown, MD, according to a New York Times report. Warehouses that the government doesn’t or can’t sell back may be offloaded to other federal agencies.

These four sites will cause extensive harm in and of themselves, and who knows how many more may be in the pipeline over the coming years.  We fear these sites could serve as a blueprint for future use in other facilities by this or future administrations. ICE’s goal still seems to be to have the capacity to jail 92,600 people on any given day, and to deport 1 million people per year.

In the areas where ICE has already bought warehouses as well as those where it still may be in question, residents and local governments may feel pressured to accommodate ICE’s detention plans because of a misguided belief that this is their only option for dealing with warehouses that are eyesores. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many of the past and current sites are in locations where they can find synergies with other nearby activities or create new connections in nearby communities.