Pressroom

Washington, DC — According to documents obtained by the New York Times, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is planning to sell or get rid of seven detention warehouses, a significant shift in the agency’s cruel mass detention and deportation agenda. Immigrant advocacy groups and local community organizers across the country are calling this development a major win in opposition to the Trump administration’s massive expansion of immigrant detention.

In December 2025, ICE announced it was purchasing and planning to convert warehouses nationwide into new immigrant detention and processing facilities. Communities across the country swiftly denounced the plans, bringing together people from across political ideologies and beliefs to organize against these facilities and block their usage. In Hutchins, TX, Oklahoma City, Merrimack, NH, and Kansas City, MO, local communities successfully blocked warehouse purchases. Coordinated community organizing against purchased ICE detention warehouses include local campaigns in Hagerstown, MD, Social Circle, GA, Romulus, MI, Tremont, PA, and Surprise, AZ.

Building on local community organizing, in April, Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (MI-12) introduced the Ban Warehouse Detention Act, drafted in partnership with Detention Watch Network, which would prohibit the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), including ICE, from establishing, operating, expanding, converting, or renovating any warehouse or similar building or structure for the purposes of detaining people. The bill would also prevent the administration from establishing any new immigrant detention models.

There are at least four detention warehouses that still pose the imminent risk of opening, including in Surprise, AZ, Socorro, TX, San Antonio, TX, and Hagerstown, MD. While the future of ICE’s detention warehouse model is unclear, ICE's overall intention to have the ability to detain 100,000 people remains unchanged, whether it's in warehouse facilities or other types of detention centers. But ICE's intentions are matched by widespread opposition and their move to offload warehouses illustrates the growing national consensus that people across the country do not want ICE in their communities. Far and wide, people are against immigrants being locked up in abusive ICE detention centers, and will fight tooth and nail to keep their communities safe. Instead of relying on a carceral economy, people want elected leaders to champion projects that bring investment to support all families, including housing, education, and healthcare.

Immigrant justice advocates organizing against detention warehouses issued the following statements:

Nanci Palacios Godinez, Membership and Organizing Director at Detention Watch Network, said: “All immigration detention is inherently inhumane and rife with abuse, and yet the warehouse model being pursued by ICE is particularly horrifying. People are not commodities to be shipped, discarded, and profited off of in detention warehouses or any detention facility — full stop. Local communities are making it clear from coast to coast – they don’t want detention centers or warehouse detention. People are uniting together, uplifting their shared values to welcome people and keep everyone safe, calling on businesses to take a stand, and demanding ICE out of their communities. And communities are winning – the fight against ICE detention is growing. We demand an end to Trump’s cruel mass detention expansion and that detention facilities be shut down for good.”

Amilcar Valencia, Executive Director of El Refugio who supported the fight against the Social Circle detention warehouse in Georgia, said: “ICE ending the proposed detention warehouse in Social Circle is a direct result of the community uniting together to fight back against it, including a historic lawsuit against ICE. There is immense power in neighbors joining neighbors to advocate for the dignity of all people, to reject dehumanization, and to call for taxpayer dollars to be invested in projects and programs that support the community as a whole, like public infrastructure and essential social services. Our state knows firsthand that immigrant detention centers are inherently inhumane and abusive whether at the Stewart Detention Center, Irwin Detention Center, Folkston Detention Center or Deyton Detention Center – we won’t stop until they all shut down for good.”

Anna Fisher of No Detention Centers in Michigan, who supported the fight against the Romulus, Michigan detention warehouse, said: “We want to be very clear: the problem was never that Romulus is the wrong town for a detention center. A cage is wrong in Romulus and in Baldwin, where hundreds of our immigrant neighbors held at the GEO Group’s North Lake Processing Center launched hunger and labor strikes earlier this year, and it would be just as wrong in any other community DHS might target. Along with the Coalition to Shut the Camps and many other groups and community members, we fought this not just because of where it was, but because of what it is. If ICE tries to open a detention camp anywhere in this state, it will meet the same coalition, the same neighbors, and the same answer: not here, and not anywhere. We will keep fighting until North Lake is closed and the system of immigration detention has been abolished in Michigan and beyond." 

Brent Peak, Co-Chair of Northwest Valley Indivisible, leading the fight against the detention warehouse in Surprise, Arizona that still poses an imminent threat, said: “We are one of four sites still in the fight against ICE’s proposed detention warehouses and we are not letting up. We have organized neighbors against ICE detention because we know that people shouldn’t be subjected to abuse while they navigate their immigration case, and that community safety deteriorates when ICE is present. The Surprise community uniting together to reject the detention warehouse proposal catalyzed Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes to take action and sue ICE. We continue to call on the Surprise City Council to publicly support Attorney General Mayes’ lawsuit and to finally act on the overwhelming demand of the community to block the proposed ICE detention warehouse."

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Detention Watch Network (DWN) is a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing, and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States.​