'Mega detention centers': ICE considers buying large warehouses to hold immigrants

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is exploring buying warehouses that were designed for clients like Amazon and retrofitting them as detention facilities for immigrants before they are deported, a move that would vastly expand the government’s detention capacity, according to a Homeland Security Department official and a White House official.

The precise warehouses that Immigration and Customs Enforcement may buy have not yet been determined, but the agency is looking at locations in the southern U.S. near airports where immigrants are most often deported, the DHS official and the White House official said. Selecting such warehouses would “increase efficiency” in deportations, the DHS official said.

A deal to purchase the warehouses, which on average are more than twice the size of current ICE detention facilities, is past the early stages but not yet final, the DHS official and the White House official said. The DHS official described the warehouses as future “mega detention centers.”

Amazon would not be a part of any deal and would not profit from it as the warehouses were built by developers for Amazon but never used or leased by the company, the officials said.

An Amazon spokesperson said that the company is not involved in any discussions with DHS or ICE about warehouse space and that it leases and does not own the vast majority of its warehouse space.

It was not immediately clear who owns the warehouses that the government may buy and the DHS official and the White House official did not know how much the deals could be worth. The DHS official said some of the warehouses under consideration were built by developers with Amazon in mind but never used.

Any decision on whether to use such warehouses, or how many, has not yet been finalized, the DHS official said.

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The White House referred all questions on the matter to DHS and ICE. DHS and ICE did not respond to comment.

Purchasing large warehouses would be the latest in a series of unconventional — and at times contentious — ideas in the Trump administration’s search for immigrant detention space. The plans underscore ICE’s ambitions to ramp up its detainment of immigrants on a large scale.

ICE has struggled to hit daily arrest quotas and fill hiring goals, and some of its senior leaders are being replaced amid White House frustrations.

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Amazon warehouses range in size, averaging approximately 800,000 square feet. The largest is in Wilmington, Delaware, at 3.8 million square feet. By comparison, an ICE detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, houses 1,500 immigrants in 277,000 square feet.

The White House official said ICE would pay for the warehouses with funds from the budget reconciliation package that President Donald Trump signed earlier this year and calls the “One Big Beautiful Bill.”

The warehouses would be owned by ICE outright and not contracted through the private prison industry or states, as is the case with other facilities, the DHS official and the White House official said.

If the purchases are finalized, the idea is for ICE to convert the warehouses into detention facilities and likely run them with its own employees, not contractors or military personnel, the DHS official and the White House official said. Prior to the current administration, most ICE detention facilities were run by private prison contractors that both owned and staffed the building with federal funding.

An NBC News poll released earlier this month noted that 51% of voters said the Trump administration has lived up to their expectations on border security and immigration, while 44% said it fell short of their expectations. In addition, 39% of registered voters said they view ICE favorably, while 50% said they view it unfavorably. A Pew Research Center survey from this summer noted, “the Trump administration’s overall approach to immigration is viewed more negatively than positively, with 42% approving and 47% disapproving,” adding the sentiment was largely split along party lines.

Since Trump retook office in January, after campaigning on a promise of mass deportations of immigrants, his administration has tried different approaches to detention facilities, with varied success.

Trump charged the military earlier this year with holding immigrants in tents at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but the plan to hold tens of thousands of immigrants there did not materialize.

The administration next turned to large scale detention of immigrants in tents in Fort Bliss, Texas. That effort hit hurdles during contracting and construction, but now houses over 2,000 immigrants. The administration also recently announced more state-run immigrant detention facilities in Florida, Louisiana and Indiana.