'This is huge': Expert gobsmacked as ICE abandons its mega-warehouse expansion plans

[LetMyPeopleVote]

I am really proud of the efforts of Rachel Maddow in informing the public about these warehouses. Rachel did an amazing job making sure people knew about these prisons. The use of these warehouses as prisons never made sense. There was no good way to provide sanitation and water to these political prisoners.

'This is huge': Expert gobsmacked as ICE abandons its mega-warehouse expansion plans #RawStory

— #TuckFrump (@realtuckfrumper.bsky.social) 2026-06-19T01:34:28.000Z

https://www.rawstory.com/ice-warehouses/

President Donald Trump's Immigration and Customs Enforcement has quietly started to "abandon" one of its big projects, The New York Times reported on Thursday — and one legal expert is gobsmacked at the reversal.

Specifically, after ICE spent around $1 billion to buy up nearly a dozen mega-warehouses that it planned to convert into detention centers, they are now trying to offload seven of them, either to other federal agencies or to private buyers.

This move, noted the report, "is a rejection of a signature initiative under the previous homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, who pushed the boundaries of what the government can do to aggressively round up potential deportees," as newly appointed Secretary Markwayne Mullin "has said publicly that he wants the agency to be quieter about how it carries out immigration enforcement."

American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick posted on X that the turnabout is a massive deal.

"This is HUGE," said Reichlin-Melnick. "After spending over $1 BILLION on the purchase of multiple commercial warehouses that ICE planned to convert into the largest jails/prisons in the nation, ICE is now largely abandoning the idea and will aim to sell off multiple warehouses at a loss."

Even before now, there were signs the federal government was abandoning the idea of converting warehouses to immigrant jails, and it ran into massive problems.

For one, in some cases ICE was prevented from buying warehouses in the first place because local owners opposed selling, or in one case in Oklahoma, a tribal nation bought it first to stop them. They also had to contend with lawsuits, including one brought by Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. Watch Rep. Wendy Thomas on the Rachel Maddow show speak out about the proposed Merrimack ICE human warehouse:

These protests worked

Link to tweet

[Tim S]

2. Like most of the Trump administration, this is what you get when you replace experts with yes-men...

Failure & abandoned projects.

[2naSalit]

3. It was all about...

Laundering taxpayer funds into someone else's bank account.

[popsdenver]

7. Exactly

they were all purchased at many, many, many, times over their REALworth as a gift/grift to the Rich Republican owners...........

I can only imagine that the Republicans are doing THOUSANDS of other things like this, hidden from sight, by their Smoke and Mirrors., and assisted , with the full co-operation, of the Republican owned/operated mass media.

They are having to cut all the social programs, etc, etc etc in order to conserve the money to do this.......and I predict that it will only get progressively/aggressively worse in the future months at an increasing rate......... so as to continue to accomplish the massive transfer of wealth and power to the top 1%.......

[Whip-poor-will]

4. Trump team stupidity

The grift went down on the billion ,whether we keep or close them now.

Who couldn't see "concentration" writ large with this genius move in the clown administration

[malaise]

5. A huge win

K & R

[WestMichRad]

6. We should celebrate that they're merely wasting a lot of money with this move

… rather than establishing yet more concentration camps to use on us.

[FakeNoose]

8. We still need to vigilant! They'll look for a way to build (or outsource) prisons when we aren't looking

Good job everyone ... we deserve to call this a "win." For now.

[struggle4progress]

9. It sure sounds like a continuous ginormous public rip-off

[GoodRaisin]

10. Krasnov was planning for future capacity to imprison not only immigrants but

anyone who opposed him after he officially declared himself dictator. He was going to go after Democrats next. Maybe he’s figured out he’s not going to live long enough now to enjoy an extended dictatorship and all his new prisons. For example, if he’s been told he’s slowly dying from congestive heart failure (which I think is most likely) that would take all the fun out of it for him.

[tanyev]

11. I doubt that Kristi and Corey cared one whit about providing adequate sanitation and water.