The Trump administration is studying the possibility of purchasing large warehouses originally designed for large shipping companies like Amazon to use as detention centers for immigrants arrested by ICE, NBC News reported Friday, citing two unnamed government sources.
Key data
Described by a Department of Homeland Security official as “mega detention centers,” the warehouses would be repurposed to serve as detention centers and greatly increase the number of people who could be detained at once.
According to the report, among the options being considered are warehouses designed for Amazon but never used by Amazon (the company has denied any involvement in this plan), suggesting that facilities of between 600,000 and millions of square feet are being considered.
Current detention centers are not nearly as large: One in Tacoma, Washington, is 277,000 square feet, while another in El Paso, Texas, is 153,000 square feet, and a facility in the Florida Everglades known as “Alcatraz of the Alligators” has about 158,000 square feet of housing space.
A White House official told NBC that Immigration and Customs Enforcement would pay for the warehouses with money allocated in Trump’s big spending bill (which increased the budget for immigration detention by $45 billion over the next three years), and that the warehouses would be owned directly by the federal government, not contracted through states or private prisons.
It’s unclear how much the warehouses could cost or where exactly they would be located, but NBC reported that areas near southern airports, where immigrants are most frequently deported, are the most likely.
White House representatives referred questions to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond to Forbes’ request for comment on Friday.
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big number
66,000. That’s the number of detainees who were in ICE custody this week, CBS News reported, a record number. It is estimated that by January, that number could reach 107,000, according to the Migration Policy Institute.
Key background
During his campaign, President Donald Trump promised to toughen immigration policies and carry out the largest mass deportation operation in US history. Since then, the Department of Homeland Security reports it has deported more than 527,000 undocumented immigrants, with arrests concentrated in Texas, California and Florida. Immigration enforcement operations are expected to ramp up during the remainder of Trump’s term, as his omnibus spending bill (which he called his “Big, Beautiful Bill”) allocates approximately $14 billion to immigration detention over the next three years, three times the agency’s detention budget of $3.9 billion in 2025.
In addition to arresting immigrants on the streets during ICE raids across the country, Trump has implemented major policy changes. His administration has revoked legal protections for approximately 60,000 people from Nicaragua, Honduras and Nepal, deployed thousands of military personnel to detain people crossing the border illegally, and imposed new restrictions on asylum seekers. He has also tried to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants, a plan that was blocked by a federal judge.
This article was originally published by Forbes US
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