Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) may be moving forward with its reported plans to buy up vacant Amazon-style warehouses to create “mega” detention centers, new procurement records reviewed by the Lever reveal.
On Friday, the agency inked a new $29.9 million contract for “concept design” for “processing centers and mega centers throughout the United States.” This document appears to be the first step toward realizing the agency’s alleged plans to retrofit warehouse space as detention facilities for immigrants in its custody, a development that NBC reported last month, citing internal agency sources.
The “mega detention centers,” utilizing warehouse space, could theoretically be more than twice as large as ICE’s current detention centers on average, per the NBC report. Already, ICE maintains a vast network of hundreds of detention centers across the country, most privately operated, which currently hold around 65,000 people. These facilities range from small temporary holding sites to prisons that jail hundreds of people.
“ICE is committed to safe, secure, and humane environments for all of those in its custody,” an ICE spokesperson wrote in a statement to the Lever. “The agency constantly evaluates its detention needs and contract structures based on operational needs.”
In its ongoing effort to supercharge deportations, the Trump administration has activated dozens of new facilities to hold detainees and floated a variety of novel tactics to track down immigrants — including hiring private bounty hunters, as the Lever has reported. A central goal is expanding detention capacity, which the agency is set on doubling to 100,000 detainees by the end of the year.
ICE has billions at its disposal as it expands, thanks to the unprecedented multibillion-dollar windfall the agency received from the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” GOP megabill earlier this year, which nearly tripled its annual budget. That has…
Auteur: Katya Schwenk
