ICE to spend $38bn turning warehouses into detention centers, documents show | ICE (US Immigration and Customs Enforcement)
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) expects to spend an estimated $38.3 billion on a plan to purchase warehouses across the country and place them in new immigration detention centers with capacity for tens of thousands of detainees. documents The agency sent it to the governor of New Hampshire.
The documents, published on the state’s website on Thursday, show that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) predictions Merrimack will spend $158 million to retrofit a new detention facility in New Hampshire and spend an estimated $146 million more to operate the facility in its first three years.
According to an overview of the plans reported for the first time Washington PostImmigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will purchase 16 buildings across the United States, each housing 1,000 to 1,500 people at a time, and convert them into regional processing centers. Eight other large-scale detention centers would house 7,000 to 10,000 people at a time and serve as “primary sites” for deportations. Detainees would spend an average of three to seven days in processing facilities before being transferred to larger facilities where they would be held for approximately 60 days before deportation.
According to the document, a new model to increase detention space is needed due to increased ICE hiring and an expected increase in arrests. The number of people in ICE custody is the second of the Trump administration.
These facilities “will enable ICE to conduct mass deportations while ensuring the safe and humane civil detention of aliens in ICE custody,” the documents said. The effort will rely on billions of dollars appropriated by Congress through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act to “fully implement a new detention model by the end of Fiscal Year 2026,” according to the documents.
The records provide the clearest view yet into the Trump administration’s strategy to reshape immigration detention by converting buildings originally built for industrial use; It’s a broad initiative aimed at strengthening ICE’s capacity to apprehend more immigrants and remove them more quickly.
According to ICE’s planning documents, instead of transporting detainees across the country based on open bed space, the redesigned system would direct individuals to a network of large centralized facilities where they would remain until deportation.
It seems contradictory Remarks on when the economic impact analysis for the proposed Merrimack facility was delivered to New Hampshire governor Kelly Ayotte.
Ayotte, a Republican, said in a press release that DHS first provided the documents to his office on Thursday. His remarks appeared to contradict testimony from ICE’s acting director, Todd M Lyons, who said at a Senate hearing earlier the same day that DHS representatives had discussed the project with the governor and provided him with an “economic impact summary.”
Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey issued a statement expression He opposes the creation of an ICE agency detention center in Merrimack, calling it “an outrageous and absolutely wrong move.”
The statement said, “ICE is shooting people to death on the streets. Mothers are being removed from cars and kept separate from their children.” “US citizens have been stopped, detained, and even killed. Peaceful protesters have been attacked. Parents are afraid to send their children to school, go to church, get healthcare, and report crimes. None of this makes people safer; it makes us all less safe.”
He continued: “We must oppose ICE’s tactics and not allow it to expand. We absolutely must not allow ICE to build new human warehouses when they cannot be trusted to keep people safe and uphold due process.”
