By the time President Trump ousted Kristi Noem from the Division of Homeland Safety earlier this month, her workforce had already launched into a spending spree that included excess of the brand new luxurious jet and the self-promotional advertisements that bought her in hassle on the White Home. Over the previous a number of months, the division has bought 11 massive warehouses across the nation that it plans to transform into megajails, some with house for as much as 10,000 detainees. The acquisitions kicked off a $38 billion makeover of the detention system that has been overseen by Noem’s chief adviser and alleged lover, Corey Lewandowski.
Trump set March 31 as Noem’s final day, and Lewandowski is anticipated to go away together with her. (Each have denied an affair.) Their workforce has been racing to accumulate properties and convert the warehouse websites, however two senior DHS officers with information of the plan informed me they now anticipate a slowdown—and {that a} “pause” wouldn’t be a nasty factor. “They’ve had a ridiculous timeline to hurry all the pieces by means of,” mentioned one of many officers, who, like others I spoke with, was not approved to publicly focus on the warehouse plan with reporters. “Now all people’s sort of going again to the drafting board and speaking about resetting.”
The administration’s “ICE Detention Reengineering Initiative” was first pitched final spring however stalled for months whereas DHS centered on deportations and a recruitment drive to rent 10,000 ICE officers, the 2 officers informed me. However because the White Home demanded extra detention house final fall, Noem’s workforce ordered ICE to expedite the warehouse plan. It requires ICE to streamline its deportation course of by buying detention facilities from federal contractors it has lengthy relied on and opening its personal megajails in retrofitted warehouses.
Some county governments and native lawmakers have adopted resolutions to attempt to preserve ICE out of their communities or block conversion plans. DHS leaders had anticipated Republican-controlled jurisdictions to welcome the development of warehouse jails of their communities and have been shocked by what the 2 senior officers described as NIMBYism. Then got here the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January, additional eroding public help for the mass-deportation marketing campaign and elevating questions in regards to the administration’s ways. Officers fear that backlash might make it harder to get permits for water and sewer connections and different modifications at warehouses designed to carry merchandise, not individuals. “The timing of Minneapolis couldn’t have been worse,” one of many DHS officers informed me. Now the change in management at DHS provides a brand new variable, one which places the timeline for the warehouse conversions unsure.
The destiny of the warehouses is prone to come up on Wednesday in the course of the affirmation listening to for Trump’s choose to switch Noem, Senator Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma. Mullin seems to have a simple path to affirmation, as Republicans are within the majority and no less than one Democrat, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, is pledging to help him. However some GOP lawmakers proceed to have questions on Noem’s spending and Lewandowski’s function in awarding contracts. (Lewandowski, who has been serving in a brief function as a “particular authorities worker,” insists he’s prevented conflicts of curiosity and has performed nothing improper.) Mullin will possible face bipartisan calls to pledge a cautious evaluate of how the division is spending the roughly $170 billion in additional funding it acquired from Trump’s One Huge Stunning Invoice Act final summer season.
DHS officers broadly describe that cash as a onetime alternative to remake a dysfunctional ICE detention system, which has relied for years on a unfastened community of personal amenities and native and county jails the place the federal authorities rents beds at various charges. Immigrant-advocacy teams and attorneys say the long-troubled system has been stretched past its breaking level by overcrowding and inhumane circumstances—allegations that ICE denies. At the very least 31 detainees died in ICE custody final yr, the very best whole in twenty years, and no less than a dozen extra detainees have died for the reason that starting of 2026. Advocacy teams, appalled by the warehouse plan, say it’s a merciless scheme to additional dehumanize immigrants held for civil—not prison—violations.
Revamping the detention system is vital to attaining Trump’s objective of deporting 1 million individuals every year, DHS officers informed me. The variety of detainees in custody has elevated from 39,000 when Trump took workplace in January 2025 to a excessive of greater than 70,000 final month, though the quantity has now dipped to about 63,000 detainees, in line with inner knowledge shared with me. The warehouses, if accomplished, would improve capability to greater than 92,000, ICE paperwork present. The division informed me in a press release that “ICE goals to work with officers on each side of the aisle to broaden detention house to assist ICE legislation enforcement perform the biggest deportation effort in American historical past.”
A number of veteran ICE officers I requested in regards to the plan mentioned they have been skeptical it might succeed. ICE officers have usually most well-liked working with personal detention contractors, which give the company extra flexibility and deal with the federal government like an vital shopper. The warehouses might turn out to be white elephants if there’s a change in ICE insurance policies and the detainee inhabitants decreases.
“If the objective is to not have countless unlawful immigration, these facilities can be out of date in three to 5 years,” a longtime ICE official informed me. “The amount of cash going into them is abhorrent.”
During the height of DOGE fever final spring, ICE Performing Director Todd Lyons informed an viewers of presidency contractors at an trade expo in Phoenix that his company wanted a change in pondering, and may search to function as effectively as e-commerce giants like Amazon. Deportations ought to be carried out “like Prime, however with human beings,” Lyons mentioned, in accordance to feedback reported by the Arizona Mirror. ICE critics condemned his assertion. It was a preview of the plan the company’s leaders have been already placing collectively to emulate the distribution mannequin of on-line retailers.
Warehouses weren’t Stephen Miller’s preliminary choice, in line with one of many DHS officers with information of the plan. Miller, the architect of Trump’s mass-deportation plan, had lengthy advocated for the creation of momentary detention websites utilizing navy bases and tent camps in Texas and different southern states. However ICE officers needed a system that will be extra evenly distributed throughout the nation, with megajails nearer to northern and coastal cities the place the Trump administration seeks to make hundreds of thousands of immigration arrests. By consolidating its detainee inhabitants into fewer places and proudly owning the amenities, ICE might streamline operations and buffer itself from shifting politics in Congress and seesawing annual budgets, DHS officers informed me. The company finally plans to function eight large-scale detention facilities and 16 processing websites, and purchase one other 10 amenities the place it already holds detainees however doesn’t have possession.
ICE officers contemplating choices for a speedy enlargement decided it could be too onerous and time-consuming to broaden their present contracts at a whole lot of places, which might add comparatively few beds. The ICE workforce that got here up with the warehouse plan envisioned a timeline of 12 to 18 months for buying the properties and changing them into detention amenities that might meet federal requirements. Their proposal went to Noem’s workplace in late spring 2025 and “sat for months,” one official informed me.
Noem and Lewandowski as an alternative sought offers with Republican state governors to lease small numbers of beds at state-run prisons and jails, giving them glib names: the “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska and the “Louisiana Lockup” on the infamous Angola state jail. However the detainee inhabitants final fall swelled as Trump officers inspired sweeps of Democrat-run cities and curbed the power of judges to permit immigrants going through deportation to submit a bond. When the White Home pressured DHS to extend detention capability, Noem’s workforce ordered ICE to expedite the warehouse-conversion plan, the 2 DHS officers informed me.
A report by the commercial-real-estate trade website CoStar discovered that the federal government paid a mean of 11 to 13 % above market charges for 10 of the properties, shopping for one warehouse in Georgia for 33 % above its market worth, and one other in Pennsylvania for 27 % extra. A DHS official informed me the federal government adopted customary procedures for assessing worth.
The division denied that Noem’s workforce initially stalled the contracts earlier than reversing course. “Any delays in getting new ICE detention amenities up and operating have come from activist judges with bogus environmental rulings or pushback from communities,” the division wrote in a press release to me. Final Wednesday a federal court docket in Maryland issued a brief restraining order blocking building work on the newly acquired ICE warehouse close to Hagerstown, saying the federal government didn’t conduct an environmental-impact research. The positioning has already been focused by protesters, and ICE is bracing for extra attainable demonstrations because it awards renovation contracts and detainees start to reach.
ICE has backed off its plans in some jurisdictions. It canceled the acquisition of a warehouse in Mississippi on the request of Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican. The identical factor occurred in New Hampshire after Governor Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, joined Democrats in opposition. However the shopping for continues, with the division final Wednesday buying a warehouse in Salt Lake Metropolis for greater than $145 million. One of many DHS officers informed me that if any of the primary 11 warehouses—bought for a mixed whole of greater than $1 billion—couldn’t be was detention websites, they might stay helpful as federal properties that may be transformed into workplace house or coaching amenities.
A White Home official informed me the administration seems to be ahead to Mullin’s “speedy affirmation” and “persevering with to implement the President’s agenda in probably the most environment friendly and efficient means attainable.” If Mullin is confirmed as the brand new DHS secretary, he’ll have to launch a extra concerted effort to promote the plan to state and native jurisdictions, three DHS officers informed me.
“They’re determining a technique to higher inform the general public and the communities and the governor’s workplaces and native officers, in order that they’re extra concerned,” one DHS official informed me. ICE has began engaged on a Steadily Requested Questions web page in regards to the warehouses, the particular person mentioned, nevertheless it’s not completed but.
