ICE Spent $700 Million on 7 Warehouses. Now It Wants to Get Rid of Them.

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: New York Times

June 18, 2026Updated 1:50 p.m. ET


The idea was meant to supercharge President Trump’s mass deportation plan.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement would purchase more than a dozen empty warehouses across the United States to massively expand its capacity to detain people deemed to be in the country illegally, which in turn would spike deportations. A year into Mr. Trump’s term, it had bought 11 facilities at a cost of $1 billion.

But in a major turnabout, the agency is planning to offload seven warehouses purchased for more than $700 million by either giving them to other federal agencies or selling them outright, according to documents obtained by The New York Times.

The decision to sharply scale back the warehouse plan 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. The new secretary, Markwayne Mullin, who had privately expressed skepticism about the plan, has said publicly that he wants the agency to be quieter about how it carries out immigration enforcement.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/18/us/politics/ice-warehouses-immigration.html

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No paywall (gift)

Waste. Fraud. Abuse.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. trump is really bad at real estate

Link to tweet

[progressoid]

2. And where is the The CBO? The GAO? House Oversight Committee?

[Cheezoholic]

5. Full of sycophants and that is the problem. This is an issue in our system that needs fixed

There is no accountability system in place with this regime. A huge red flag of an authoritarian party. This regime has fired everyone and replaced them with yes men who are probably getting crypto kickbacks for their complicity.

[progressoid]

14. Yep.

The idea of checks and balances that we were taught only works if people who are supposed to be checking and balancing have some semblance of morality.

[littlemissmartypants]

3. They are using money to buy smaller spaces in less conspicuous places already.

I recently read about a place in a strip mall that was purchased and the first thing they did was to block the front display windows so no one could see what they were doing inside while "renovating" the space.

This move to being clandestine is going to make them even more difficult to track while increasing the pain and effort of the families trying to locate loved ones.

They aren't going away.

They are taking the evil underground.

[Cheezoholic]

4. Who originally owned them, how much did they donate to repukes and how much bigger is their house now

You're right. Full on pay to play with our tax dollars. I wish the article would've followed the money.

[paleotn]

6. Transfer of fund to cronies.

The warehouse space was merely a "vehicle."

[live love laugh]

7. Money laundering at its best...

[pat_k]

8. So, violate constitutional rights, but do it "quieter"

The appalling conditions in the concentration camps are only possible because systematic barriers to the legal system have been erected as a matter of policy. And when access to the legal system is only possible with extraordinary effort, the people running the concentration camps, from the highest office to the lowest employee, know they can do ANYTHING, absolutely ANYTHING to the people held.

[Baitball Blogger]

9. Money must have already passed on to the lucky crony.

[eppur_se_muova]

10. ICE should have been targeted by DOGE ...

... that is, if DOGE had ever had anything to do with promoting efficiency, which it clearly did not.

[snot]

11. So much more efficient & better

Last edited Thu Jun 18, 2026, 06:44 PM - Edit history (1)

to spend the money on immigration judiciary and simply speed up the due processing of immigrant cases... but then more immigrants might be allowed to stay, the deterrent prospect of years in detention might be lessened, and profits to cronies for running detention centers might be reduced.

[ToxMarz]

12. They'll sell them to Khusners companies at 10 cents on the dollar

then 'realize' they need them and buy them back again for even more.

[Old Crank]

20. Noem already over paid

Between 4 an 10 times market value.
So any sale is a multimillion dollar loss.

[dalton99a]

13. Kick

[dlk]

15. What was Noem's real estate commission (kickback) for all of these large real estate purchases?

Inquiring minds would like to know.

[slightlv]

16. I take exception to this...

The idea was meant to supercharge President Trump’s mass deportation plan.

The plan has ALWAYS been to bankrupt the U.S. in any way they can. This, to me, just goes to prove it. They hide behind their deportation plans (i.e., racism) on everything...

[AverageOldGuy]

17. ". . . he wants the agency to be quieter about how it carries out immigration enforcement. . . . "

Silencers on their pistols???

[SpankMe]

18. I guarantee congress didn't allocate those funds

And SOCTUS will say he can divert that money from wherever to his gulags citing this unitary executive bullshit.

This was totally illegal. I want Dems to sue. I want speeches about this exact issue on the floor of the house or the steps of the capital every week.

We only hear about this on DU while it gets a quick mention at 10:30 p.m. on CNN and page 5 of any newspaper. Once.

[Bayard]

19. There are a number of reports on ICE paying double or more what these properties were worth,

For no apparent reason. They had usually been sitting empty for years. Stinks of corruption.

I'm afraid when we take back Congress that Dems will have to spend all their time on investigations.

[Old Crank]

21. They paid 4 - 10 times what they were asking for their sales.

Why? Hope we can get a new administration in to look this criminality over before the statute of limitaions runs out.

[purr-rat beauty]

22. Welcome to the laundromat

Those dollars ain't gonna wash themselves