ICE Is Buying Up Mega Warehouses Across America
And that’s just the cost of purchasing the buildings: ICE also has to pay to turn them into prisons with bathrooms, beds, restaurants and recreational facilities. A third warehouse purchase in El Paso, Texas, could become one of the largest prisons in the United States when completed, housing 8,500 beds.
ICE plans to use up to 23 warehouses across the country to detain immigrants in even more cities, including Minnesota, Indiana, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia. The new strategy represents a change for ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, which relies on numerous tent camps, such as the notorious “Alligator Alcatraz» in South Florida.
Residents who live near the proposed prisons oppose the project, and demonstrators showed up in Hagerstown to protest on Jan. 20 despite freezing temperatures. In Oklahoma City, the owners of a warehouse retreated of an agreement Thursday to build an ICE facility, following local backlash against the project. Similarly, the owners of a Salt Lake City warehouse announced they had “no plans to sell or lease the property in question to the federal government” after protesters introduced himself in their offices.
