ICE To Spend $38.3B Buying Warehouses And Turning Them Into Detention Centers

The Trump administration expects to spend $38.3B to acquire warehouses across the country and turn them into detention facilities for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The plan, called the ICE Detention Reengineering Initiative, was revealed on Thursday by two Department of Homeland Security documents published by New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s office and paints the clearest picture to date of the federal government's real estate acquisition blitz to support its aggressive deportation campaign.

DHS has been buying empty warehouses since late last year, spending $200M on two properties in Pennsylvania and acquiring a facility built for Amazon in Hutchins, Texas, that is expected to be retrofitted to house 9,500 detainees. The memos shared with Ayotte’s office are specifically geared to ICE’s acquisition of a 43-acre industrial facility at 50 Robert Milligan Parkway in Merrimack, New Hampshire.

That building would be converted into a processing facility designed to house 1,000 to 1,500 detainees for stays of three to seven days, according to the documents. It would be one of 16 processing facilities across the country that ICE plans to acquire and retrofit.

While those facilities are expected to house up to 1,500 people, ICE also plans to acquire eight warehouses for “Large-Scale Detention Facilities,” which will serve as primary locations for deportations, capable of holding up to 10,000 people for about 60 days at a time. In addition, it plans to buy 10 existing centers where migrants are already being detained on a contract basis.

“For ICE to sustain the anticipated increase in enforcement operations and arrests in 2026, an increase in detention capacity will be a necessary downstream requirement,” the planning document says. “ICE plans to activate all facilities by November 30, 2026, ensuring the timely expansion of detention capacity.”

The acquisition initiative is designed to increase ICE's detention capacity to 92,600 beds, which DHS says is necessary after the agency hired 12,000 new employees who have been deployed to communities across the nation to round up immigrants lacking permanent legal status. 

Design-build contractors will design and renovate these facilities to be “safe, energy efficient, and compliant with all relevant federal, state, and local laws,” according to the document.

The warehouses — which were designed for storage and shipment of goods, not people — need expensive renovations to add wastewater infrastructure, water supply and fire protection. ICE conducted thorough due diligence before the acquisitions, including for applicable permits, zoning and infrastructure issues, according to the document, which didn't provide further details. 

“Our engineers believe the proposed solutions listed above, and the contingencies, will provide no adverse effect on the community and surrounding properties for each facility identified,” the document says.

ICE has spent at least $690M on eight warehouses across the U.S., according to The Washington Post, which first reported the agency’s strategy of purchasing industrial properties rather than relying on private companies to own and lease them. 

The department’s recent industrial acquisitions include properties in Maryland, Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania and Michigan. It continues to search for additional properties in Georgia, New Hampshire, New York and New Jersey.

Details of its acquisition efforts are emerging amid pushback by local and state politicians, some of whom said they have been blindsided by ICE's purchases. Some of the planned acquisitions have been derailed under protest.

Spokespeople for ICE and DHS didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

At the Merrimack facility, the price DHS plans to pay is still unclear. A second ICE document it shared with Ayotte says ICE will spend $158M retrofitting the facility and $146M on operations in the first three years. 

However, in the same paragraph in the document about the Merrimack facility, it also says the facility will have “ripple effects to the Oklahoma economy,” providing as many as 265 jobs every year.

The error likely relates to ICE’s planned purchase of an Oklahoma City warehouse, which DHS in late December notified local officials of its intent to buy. But the property’s owner backed out of the sale in late January after public outcry and pressure from the city's Republican mayor, David Holt, asking the federal government to let the city decide if a detention facility would be beneficial.

If the Merrimack facility is representative of ICE’s other acquisitions, the agency will need to spend as much — if not more — renovating the properties as it will to acquire them.

The buildings need to be updated to include toilets, beds, dining and recreation areas to operate as detention centers. It is unclear who the government plans to hire to complete the renovations.

Amid the department’s real estate expansion plans, aimed at streamlining the Trump administration's goal of deporting 3,000 unauthorized immigrants a day, tensions between the municipalities and the federal government are rising.

Some local officials have raised concerns about whether their water and sewer infrastructure would be able to support thousands of detainees and are pleading with DHS to adhere to local requirements despite federally owned real estate being exempt from local permitting rules.

The bipartisan outcry over immigration officials' actions in Minneapolis — notably the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens — has coincided with multiple deals to sell warehouses to ICE falling apart after the proposed sales became public. 

Platform Ventures pulled out of a deal with DHS after learning it was the potential buyer for its Kansas City warehouse, saying in a statement that the process didn’t meet requirements for a “timely closing.” 

The city also took matters into its own hands, quickly passing a five-year ban on nonmunicipal detention facilities.

After facing questions over its involvement with ICE, Canada-based Jim Pattison Developments backed out of a deal to sell one of its warehouses in Virginia to ICE. The company said in a statement it was not aware of the buyer at the time of negotiations, The New York Times reported.

Funding for ICE’s new detention strategy comes from $45B allocated specifically to expand detention center capacity in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed in July. That funding isn't affected by an expected government shutdown of DHS.