Pressroom

Nationwide — The Trump administration is ruthlessly pursuing a multi-layered immigration detention expansion plan, skyrocketing the number of people in detention. Looming large is the imminent threat of using warehouses to detain up to 92,600 more people, but people across the country are fighting back to make sure ICE warehouses stay out of their communities - and they are winning.

Reporting shows that ICE is actively scouting, purchasing, and planning to convert approximately 23 warehouses nationwide into new immigration detention and processing facilities. To date, there are nineteen warehouse sites that have been purchased by ICE, or are pending opening, and at least nine facilities whose sale or opening has been canceled due to local community opposition. Communities are courageously taking on ICE to fight detention warehouses from entering their community and winning in Utah, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Virginia, Mississippi, and more.

This week, after local residents in Hutchins, Texas mobilized to voice their opposition to a reported warehouse detention center being considered their town, Majestic Realty Co., who owns the facility, confirmed that they will not be selling the warehouse to ICE to use as a detention center.

In Georgia, following widespread backlash to the news of two potential warehouse facilities near Atlanta, Democrats introduced legislation this week that would block the opening of large-scale warehouse ICE facilities in the state.

Stacy Suh, Program Director from Detention Watch Network issued the following statement:

“All immigration detention is inherently inhumane and rife with abuse, and yet the warehouse model currently being pursued by ICE is particularly horrifying. Confining people in large-scale, makeshift warehouse detention will exponentially increase the likelihood for abuse and death in ICE custody, as ICE cuts people off from their loved ones and support networks, and subjects them to conditions that are meant for storing products, never people. People are not commodities to be shipped, discarded, and profited off of.

Local communities are making it clear from coast to coast – they don’t want detention centers or warehouse detention, and they will fight tooth and nail to block ICE. 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. Communities want local leaders to champion projects that bring investment to support all families like education, healthcare and housing for everyone to thrive, not ICE detention.”

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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.