ICE reveals $38B plan for immigrant mega-jails
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ICE's El Paso Processing Center pictured in El Paso, Texas, on Feb. 13, 2025. Photo: Justin Hamel / AFP
ICE is preparing to spend $38 billion this year on a "new detention center model" that will hold nearly 100,000 people.
Why it matters: Expanding immigration detention is a major part of the deportation pipeline and will fuel President Trump's pledge to deport millions of people. But the plans are facing local pushback.
Driving the news: ICE is going on a buying spree for warehouse spaces, estimated to cost $38.3 billion out of the $45 billion from the "One, Big, Beautiful Bill" passed last year.
- A new ICE memo, shared with the New Hampshire Governor's Office on Thursday, states that it plans to buy "non-traditional facilities built specifically to support ICE's needs."
- ICE plans to buy eight "mega centers," 16 processing centers and 10 more facilities that ICE's enforcement division already uses.
- The memo was released hours after a Senate hearing where Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) questioned the acting ICE director about his plans to expand immigration detention in her home state. The Washington Post first reported on the memo.
By the numbers: Across all the new buildings, DHS plans to have capacity for 92,600 people, according to the memo.
- The processing centers will accommodate between 1,000 and 1,500 people for 3–7 days, according to the memo.
- The larger facilities will hold 7,000–10,000 people for about 60 days on average and will be the "primary" sites to hold people before their deportations.
- Only 21 of the 220 current ICE detention centers hold more than 1,000 people, according to ICE data. The largest detention site currently operating is in El Paso, Texas. It held less than 3,000 on average in the first weeks of February.
Zoom in: DHS also gave New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.) an economic impact analysis memo that estimates that the agency will spend $300 million retrofitting and operating the facility in Merrimack in its first three years.
- DHS is also estimating that this will support 1,252 new jobs in the area.
- The memo explains that ICE's new strategy is to own detention sites and hire contractors to operate them, as opposed to leasing privately owned spaces from companies whose profits have ballooned over the last year.
- "These facilities will ensure the safe and humane civil detention of aliens in ICE custody, while helping ICE effectuate mass deportations," the memo says.
The bottom line: These facilities are already deeply unpopular. Community members and local elected officials have also pushed back across the country at local meetings and with demonstrations.
- Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem opposing the purchase plan for a warehouse in his home state because it would take away from possible private investment and economic growth.
- Wicker also said there are "serious feasibility concerns" because of the infrastructure needed to house that many people in one site.
- Owners of warehouses in Virginia and Missouri have already pulled out of their sales to ICE.
