ICE Wants to Spend $38 Billion to Turn Warehouses into Detention Camps
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is planning to vastly expand its network of detention centers as it ramps up its arrest of immigrants whom it claims are undocumented. As Republican Pres. Donald Trump continues to crack down on immigration, recent reporting from The Washington Post and other outlets reveals that ICE earmarked $38.3 billion to purchase warehouses across the country and turn them into detention centers.
The agency expects to create 16 of these “regional processing centers” that can cage up to 1,500 immigrant detainees each, and another eight with a capacity of 7,000 to 10,000 detainees. The plan claims that, with the warehouse system in place, the deportation of immigrants can be done more quickly as the agency will not need to move them around in search of available beds. The $38.3 budget for the expansion, the Washington Post reported, is more than what 22 states spend annually.
So far, ICE has paid $690 million to acquire eight buildings in Maryland, Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Some of the warehouses could receive detainees as soon as April, and ICE has said it will “activate” all of the facilities by November 30 of this year. The warehouses, if fully rolled out, are estimated to imprison 80,000 immigrants, adding to the roughly 70,000 people who are already detained.
But it’s not certain that ICE will be able to complete its plan as outlined, as humanitarian concerns surrounding the idea of placing thousands of people into makeshift warehouses not designed for habitation has sparked significant opposition from the towns where they are potentially located. On February 12, 2026, investment firm Platform Ventures pulled out of a deal with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE’s umbrella agency, to buy a 1 million-square-foot warehouse it owns in Kansas City, Missouri. The company was pressured to refuse to sell by a coalition of immigrants’ rights groups that paid for anti-ICE billboards and made hundreds of calls to the Platform Ventures’ owners.
In other cases, ICE’s warehouse purchases could get shelved due to infrastructure concerns. Local officials in several of the targeted towns have pointed out that they simply don’t have the water and sewer infrastructure to accommodate a sudden influx of thousands of people. The town of Social Circle, Georgia, which has a population of 5,000, for example, is only allowed to pump 1 million gallons of water per day—and it nearly reaches that amount for much of the year.
Source: The Washington Post, Truthout
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