WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security is expected to abandon plans to convert seven warehouses into immigration detention centers, according to a person familiar with the decision, reversing a key piece of the large-scale detention expansion pursued by the Biden and then Trump administrations under former Secretary Kristi Noem.
The warehouses will either be sold or used for other purposes, the person said. The DHS said in a statement that the agency is “moving swiftly to utilize EXISTING detention space with our state and county partners,” pointing to a shift away from building new detention capacity from scratch.
The properties were purchased as part of a broader $38 billion detention expansion that Noem spearheaded. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement bought 11 vacant warehouses over the winter, spending more than $1 billion, The Wall Street Journal reported. Noem had pressured immigration officials to try to open the new detention centers by the end of the year, but the warehouses largely weren’t zoned for detention and didn’t have working plumbing to support large detainee populations, the Journal reported.
At the time, the government said it planned to acquire and convert more than two dozen warehouses into detention centers and processing sites. Combined with 10 other existing facilities it planned to purchase, they would have collectively held more than 92,000 detainees.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who succeeded Noem after she was fired in March, paused the warehouse plan after he took office. The Journal reported last month that Mullin’s marching orders were to lower his agency’s profile.
The DHS Office of the Inspector General recently announced a probe of the warehouse-to-detention program. The purchases raised concern among officials across the administration, and critics pointed out that ICE could have expanded detention faster by purchasing unused public and private jail facilities, the Journal reported.
In addition to scrapping the seven warehouses, DHS is expected to allow the closure of Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz,” a soft-sided, state-run facility built on an abandoned airstrip in the Florida Everglades that Noem had relied on to increase detention capacity. Plans to open a detainee-processing facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire, were scrapped earlier after community protests.
The New York Times earlier reported on the change in ICE’s plans. The Wall Street Journal first reported Mullin’s pause in March and the expected scrapping of the seven warehouses.