U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is moving away from a plan to use large warehouse facilities to detain up to 10,000 people at a single site, according to multiple reports. The change involves offloading some warehouses that had been purchased for immigrant detention purposes. The decision represents a retreat from an earlier push tied to a broader effort to rapidly increase detention capacity this year.
The reporting frames the warehouse approach as part of a larger $38-billion expansion plan associated with former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. Under the earlier concept, large-scale sites would allow detainee capacity to be expanded quickly. The current development indicates that ICE will not proceed with at least some of those warehouse-based plans, though details about how many facilities will be sold or repurposed were not included in the provided accounts.
Overall, the sources agree that ICE is reducing its reliance on warehouse detention and is taking steps to sell or transfer some of the properties acquired for that purpose.
