For months now, Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been moving fast—fast enough to unsettle whole towns, fast enough to turn warehouses into a political fight. As of February, ICE held about 68,000 immigrants in detention, and the agency is aiming to make space for up to 92,600 detainees by this fall.
The Trump administration’s push is tied to the broader crackdown on illegal immigration that President Donald Trump ordered after record-high illegal border crossings under the Biden administration. ICE’s expansion is also arriving alongside efforts to end deportation protections for many immigrants lawfully in the U.S. Congress last year gave ICE a $45 billion check to expand detention and help fulfill Mr. Trump’s mass deportation goals, as arrests began to surge in the interior. ICE says detention isn’t punitive—it’s about making sure people appear for court dates and are already in custody if a judge orders deportation.
ICE’s approach has also drawn criticism for how broadly the administration is interpreting when mandatory detention should apply. Immigration judges are being urged to deny immigrants bond, and the government is framing the strategy as necessary and efficient. Critics argue the opposite: that harsh detention conditions are used to pressure people into “self-deportation,” while also raising concerns about access to medical care and legal counsel. DHS has denied those claims, and meanwhile the toll continues to be questioned—14 people have died in ICE custody so far this year, according to analyst Austin Kocher, a professor at Syracuse University. (ICE did not respond to several questions sent by the Monitor.)
Behind the arguments, there’s a very real, unglamorous logistics story: ICE has been buying up warehouses around the country. Misryoum newsroom reported that some facilities could hold 1,000 to 10,000 beds each, and at least 11 warehouses have been purchased, while ICE has also canceled 13 planned warehouse purchases—nearly all following local opposition. The agency says it’s aiming to buy 24 “non-traditional facilities.” To the frustration of many residents, state and local governments generally have little power to stop the federal government from buying properties, even if they can slow the process or raise alarms.
Misryoum newsroom reported that the timeline has been jolted by the leadership change at DHS. Newly confirmed Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin is reviewing where things stood under his predecessor, and last week DHS said it had paused new warehouse purchases. During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Mullin said he wanted to work with communities where detention centers were proposed. “As with any transition, we are reviewing agency policies and proposals,” a Homeland Security spokesperson said in an emailed statement. It’s a pause, but not a retreat—at least not publicly.
Nowhere is the tension clearer than in Social Circle, Georgia, a city of about 5,000 where ICE purchased a warehouse to hold at least 7,500 detainees with 2,000 staff members. City Manager Eric Taylor says the site could exceed the city’s entire sewage capacity and overwhelm local emergency resources. “I’m extremely worried,” he said, adding that he locked a water meter at the facility in February to prevent water from being turned on. He remembers
the sound of it—partly because it was a small act of protest, and partly because it made the whole plan feel more immediate. “[DHS officials] don’t seem to have any plans for how they’re going to address [the facility’s impact],” he said. In his telling, the only contact from Homeland Security came in mid-February, weeks after the $129 million purchase, and he says a federal official presented a sewage analysis that erroneously included an out-of-county
treatment plant.
Other places are looking at detention sites through a different lens. In Bradford County, Florida, prisons are already a major source of employment, so county officials see an ICE facility as economic development. County commissioners voted in January to refine a proposal to turn a vacant, county-owned warehouse into a facility holding at least 1,000 detainees for ICE. The facility would be run by Sabot Consulting, which the county sheriff says reached out to him with the proposal. The company did not respond to a request for comment. Sheriff Gordon Smith says he “totally supports” the idea, arguing it would create hundreds of “living-wage jobs,” and bring infrastructure upgrades the county can’t afford itself.
Even if the warehouses get built, the question of how long people will be held keeps coming up. Kathleen Bush-Joseph, who until this month worked as a lawyer at the Migration Policy Institute, said courts have said ICE cannot detain people forever. The Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that ICE can’t indefinitely detain people with final deportation orders, and that they shouldn’t be held for more than six months if it appears unlikely they’ll be deported. But courts haven’t set detention limits for people awaiting outcomes in their immigration cases, and time can stretch if someone fights on and appeals. “The courts have said that you cannot detain people forever,” she said, then added: “sometimes people can languish in detention for long periods of time.”
For children, the rules are different and the gaps are sharper. Under U.S. law, DHS generally can’t detain unaccompanied minors past 72 hours, after which they must transfer to the Department of Health and Human Services. That agency housed on average 2,348 unaccompanied children in February. Families, meanwhile, can be held longer, and courts have interpreted a decades-old settlement agreement to generally require ICE to hold family groups including minors no longer than 20 days.
At the Dilley detention center in Texas, families have reported lockdowns, virus outbreaks, and worms in food, according to complaints. It’s not clear whether any of the new facilities will hold families. And by January, over 900 children had been held beyond 20 days, Misryoum newsroom reported, citing data from court-appointed monitors. “The Trump administration, it seems, ‘is not taking those rules very seriously,’” Scott Shuchart, a former assistant director for regulatory affairs and policy
at ICE, said. “It does seem like they’re detaining people, family groups, longer term.”
How ICE justifies the whole system is fairly consistent across the agency: detention is “the cornerstone of the deportation process,” Scott Mechkowski, a former deputy field office director at ICE, said. But he also pointed out the cost—every day adds strain on taxpayers. And as ICE pushes for more beds, the tension between efficiency and accountability shows up in local meetings, court filings, and—at least in one small Georgia town—in who has access to a water meter.
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