The federal government plans to offload a few more properties it purchased during its planned $38.8B buying binge to acquire vacant warehouses across the country to convert into immigrant detention facilities.

The Department of Homeland Security is transferring three warehouses, located within the small El Paso County city of Socorro, to the General Services Administration to offload amid a pivot in strategy in how the government plans to increase its detention facility bed capacity, Rep. Veronica Escobar, representing the 16th District in El Paso, announced on Tuesday.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $123M to an entity linked to St. Louis-based Flint Development in February for three buildings totaling 826K SF with plans to turn them into an 8,500-bed facility.

The St. Louis-based developer spent $79.3M to build the warehouses, which were originally built to hold nuts harvested from nearby pecan groves, El Paso Matters reported.

Socorro residents were quick to oppose the plans, arguing that the small city didn't have the infrastructure to handle what would be one of the country's largest detention centers.

"The community has also faced challenges with water, wastewater, and general infrastructure, making the purchase of these facilities for detention a terrible idea to begin with, threatening their ability to execute on their future plans and growth," Escobar said in a statement.

"My team and I have worked diligently to elevate these issues within DHS and ICE and ensure that the voices of our community were heard."

DHS spent more than $1B between December and April acquiring 11 industrial properties across the country under then-Secretary Kristi Noem, funded by $45B in last year's One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

The effort to buy and convert vacant warehouses to house more than 90,000 immigrants was led by Noem, but the White House replaced her with former Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin at the beginning of March. DHS paused the program and launched a probe to investigate how contracts were awarded.

Following Noem's ouster, DHS decided in June it would reverse course on its expansion strategy, planning to either sell seven of the 11 properties acquired or transfer them to other branches of government.

Since then, the government has turned back to private prison operators to expand capacity. DHS paid Tennessee-based CoreCivic $2.2B for four facilities in California, Minnesota and Kansas and has also agreed to pay the company and Geo Group $240M a year to reactivate shuttered facilities.

ICE arrested more than 238,000 people within the first seven months of the year, marking the highest total under President Donald Trump's second administration, The Washington Post reported, amid a renewed push for deportations.