ICE considers buying large warehouses to hold immigrants

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is considering buying warehouses designed for clients like Amazon and turning them into detention centers for immigrants before they are deported, a move that would significantly increase the government’s detention capacity, according to a Department of Homeland Security official and a White House official.

The precise warehouses that Immigration and Customs Enforcement might purchase have not yet been determined, but the agency is studying locations in the southern United States near airports where immigrants are most often deported, DHS and White House officials said. Selecting such warehouses would “increase the efficiency” of deportations, the DHS official said.

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

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

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

It was not immediately clear who owned the warehouses the government might buy, and DHS and White House officials did not know what the value of the deals might be. The DHS official said some of the warehouses under consideration were built by developers with Amazon in mind, but were never used.

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

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

Buying large warehouses would be the latest in a series of unconventional — and sometimes controversial — ideas in the Trump administration’s pursuit of immigrant detention space. These plans underscore ICE’s ambitions to intensify large-scale immigration detention.

ICE has struggled to meet its daily arrest quotas and meet recruiting goals, and some of its top leaders are being replaced amid White House frustrations.

Amazon warehouses vary in size, with an average size of around 800,000 square feet. The largest is in Wilmington, Delaware, at 3.8 million square feet. For comparison, an ICE detention center in Tacoma, Washington, houses 1,500 immigrants in 277,000 square feet.

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

The warehouses would be entirely owned by ICE and not turned over to the private prison industry or states, as is the case with other facilities, DHS and White House officials said.

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

An NBC News poll released earlier this month found that 51% of voters said the Trump administration had met their expectations on border security and immigration, while 44% said it had not met their expectations. Additionally, 39% of registered voters said they viewed ICE favorably, while 50% said they viewed it unfavorably. A Pew Research Center survey this summer indicated that “the Trump administration’s overall approach to immigration is viewed more negatively than positively, with 42% approving and 47% disapproving,” adding that sentiment was largely divided along party lines.

Since Trump returned to office in January, after campaigning on a promise of mass expulsions of immigrants, his administration has tried different approaches to detention centers, with varying success.

Trump accused the military earlier this year of detaining immigrants in tents at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but plans to detain tens of thousands of immigrants there did not materialize.

The administration then turned to large-scale detention of immigrants in tents at Fort Bliss, Texas. This effort has faced obstacles during procurement and construction, but now houses more than 2,000 immigrants. The administration also recently announced the creation of new state-run immigration detention centers in Florida, Louisiana and Indiana.