Over the past several weeks, Trump immigration officials have been prospecting for empty warehouses to retrofit as “mega” detention centers for the tens of thousands caught up in the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation dragnet. The lucrative deals to acquire the warehouses are being quietly facilitated by a handful of powerful, politically connected real estate brokers — including one with financial ties to Donald Trump’s secretary of commerce, Howard Lutnick.
Outcry over these deals has focused largely on the warehouse owners — some of whom have backed out after public pressure and, in at least one case, claimed they were unaware of the prospective buyer’s identity. But these multimillion-dollar deals are handled directly by real estate brokers, who promote properties and close sales.
The payoff for the sales agents, who collect commissions on each deal, could potentially be worth millions of dollars, supplying the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), ICE’s parent agency, with highly sought-after infrastructure while bailing out the commercial real estate owners, who have struggled to sell their properties over the past year under the weight of macroeconomic headwinds and Trump’s tariff war.
“Given that commercial real estate is sucking wind right now, just about the only way to make money is to leverage political connections to become involved in the heavily political spaces of AI data centers and deportation infrastructure,” said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a government watchdog group tracking conflicts of interest.
DHS has purchased several of these facilities in recent weeks, including one in Arizona for $70 million and one in Maryland for more than $100 million. Other deals, however, have been held up by public backlash.
At an Oklahoma City Council meeting last month, dozens of residents testified in opposition to ICE’s proposal to buy a million-square-foot
Auteur: Luke Goldstein
