ICE plans to spend $38.3B turning warehouses into detention centers

ICE is preparing to spend $38 billion this year on a "new detention center model" that will hold nearly 100,000 people, Report informs via Axios.

Expanding immigration detention is a major part of the deportation pipeline and will fuel President Trump's pledge to deport millions of people. But the plans are facing local pushback.

ICE is going on a buying spree for warehouse spaces, estimated to cost $38.3 billion out of the $45 billion from the "One, Big, Beautiful Bill" passed last year.

A new ICE memo, shared with the New Hampshire Governor's Office on Thursday, states that it plans to buy "non-traditional facilities built specifically to support ICE's needs."

ICE plans to buy eight "mega centers," 16 processing centers and 10 more facilities that ICE's enforcement division already uses.

The memo was released hours after a Senate hearing where Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) questioned the acting ICE director about his plans to expand immigration detention in her home state. The Washington Post first reported on the memo.

Across all the new buildings, DHS plans to have capacity for 92,600 people, according to the memo.

The processing centers will accommodate between 1,000 and 1,500 people for 3–7 days, according to the memo.

The larger facilities will hold 7,000–10,000 people for about 60 days on average and will be the "primary" sites to hold people before their deportations.

Only 21 of the 220 current ICE detention centers hold more than 1,000 people, according to ICE data.

The largest detention site currently operating is in El Paso, Texas. It held less than 3,000 on average in the first weeks of February.