Socorro, Texas — In a Texas town on the edge of the Rio Grande and a tall metal border wall, rumors spread about this federal order Immigration Officials wanted to buy three huge warehouses Convert it to a detention center.
like Local officials scrambled To find out what was happening, a document was filed showing that the Department of Homeland Security had already signed a $122.8 million deal to buy 826,000 square feet (76,738 square meters) of warehouses in Socorro, a 40,000-person bedroom community outside El Paso.
“No one from the federal government bothered to pick up the phone or even send us any kind of correspondence to let us know what was going to happen,” said Rudy Cruz Jr., the mayor of the majority-Hispanic town of low-slung ranch homes and trailer parks, where orchards and irrigation ditches share the landscape with strip malls, truck stops, recycling plants and distribution depots.
Socorro is among at least 20 communities containing large warehouses across the United States that have become hidden targets of the $45 billion Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Expanding detention centers.
like Public support For the agency and President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration campaign dangles, Local communities object to mass arrests and raise concerns that the facilities will strain water supplies and other services while reducing local tax revenues. In many cases, mayors, county commissioners, governors and members of Congress learned of ICE’s ambitions only after the agency had purchased or leased space for detainees, leading to shock and frustration even in areas that supported Trump.
“I feel like they do these things in silence so they don’t face opposition,” said Cruz, whose wife was born in Mexico.
ICE, part of the Department of Homeland Security, purchased at least seven warehouses in Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Texas, signed documents show. Other deals have been announced but have yet to be finalised, although buyers have spoiled sales at eight locations.
The Department of Homeland Security objected to calling the sites warehouses, stressing in a statement that they would be “extremely well-organized detention facilities that meet our normal detention standards.”
The process was messy at times. ICE admitted last week that it made a “mistake” when it announced the purchase of warehouses in Chester, New York, and Roxbury, New Jersey. Then Roxbury announced on Friday that the sale there had ended.
DHS confirmed it was looking for more detention places but did not disclose the individual locations before the acquisitions. Some cities learned that ICE was scouting the warehouses through reporters. Others received a report through a spreadsheet circulated online among activists, and its source was not clear.
The scope of the warehouse project was not confirmed until February 13, when the governor’s office in New Hampshire, where there is backlash over a planned 500-bed processing center, released a document from ICE showing the agency’s plans to spend $38.3 billion. To raise the capacity to 92 thousand beds.
Since Trump took office, the number of people detained by ICE has risen to 75,000 from 40,000, spread across more than 225 locations.
ICE can use warehouses to consolidate and increase capacity. The document describes a project that includes eight large-scale detention centres, capable of holding between 7,000 and 10,000 detainees each, and 16 smaller regional case processing centres. The document also refers to the acquisition of 10 existing “ready-to-use” facilities.
The project is financed by Tax bill and big spending cuts Which was passed by Congress last year The Department of Homeland Security’s budget has nearly doubled. To build detention centers, the Trump administration is using military contracts.
These contracts allow for too much secrecy and allow DHS to move quickly without following usual processes and safeguards, said Charles Tiefer, professor emeritus of law at the University of Baltimore School of Law.
In Socorro, ICE-owned warehouses are so large that 4 1/2 Walmart Supercenters can fit inside them, contrasting with the remnants of austere Spanish Colonial architecture that defines the city.
At a recent City Council meeting, public comments extended for hours. “I think a lot of innocent people got caught,” said Jorge Mendoza, an El Paso County retiree whose grandparents immigrated from Mexico.
Several speakers raised concerns about Three recent deaths At an ICE detention facility at nearby Fort Bliss Army Base.
Even communities that supported Trump in 2024 were surprised by ICE’s plans and raised concerns.
In Pennsylvania’s rural Berks County, Commissioner Christian Leinbach called the district attorney, the police chief, the jail warden, and the county’s emergency services chief when he first heard that ICE might buy a warehouse in Upper Bern Township, 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) from his home.
Nobody knows anything.
A few days later, a local land records official told him that ICE had bought the building – Promoted By the developers as a “state-of-the-art logistics center” – for $87.4 million.
“There was no warning at all,” Leinbach said during a meeting in which he raised concerns that converting the warehouse to a federal facility would mean losing more than $800,000 in local tax dollars.
ICE has touted the income taxes its workers will pay, although the facilities themselves will be exempt from property taxes.
In Georgia’s social circle, which also strongly backed Trump in 2024, officials were stunned by ICE’s plans for a facility that could hold 7,500 to 10,000 people after first learning about it through a reporter.
The city, which has a population of just 5,000 and is concerned about the infrastructure needs of such a detention center, did not hear from DHS until after the $128.6 million sale of the 1-million-square-foot (92,900-square-meter) warehouse was finalized. Like Socorro and Berks County, the community department questioned whether the water and sewer system could continue.
ICE said it did its due diligence to ensure the sites did not overwhelm city facilities. But the social department said the agency’s analysis was based on a sewage treatment plant that had not yet been built.
“To be clear, the City has repeatedly communicated that it does not have the capacity or resources to meet this request, and no proposal submitted to date has demonstrated otherwise,” the city said in a statement. statement.
In the Phoenix suburb of Surprise, officials sent a scathing letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after ICE without warning bought a massive warehouse in a residential area about a mile from a high school. Arizona Attorney General Chris Mayes, a Democrat, has raised the possibility of going to court to declare the site a public nuisance.
Back in Socorro, people waiting to speak out against the ICE facility filed out of the City Council chambers, some standing next to murals honoring the World War II-era braceros program that allowed Mexican farmworkers to be guest workers in the United States. The program fueled Socorro’s economy and population before the administration of President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In the 1950s Mass deportations began targeting people who crossed the border illegally.
Eduardo Castillo, a former lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice, told city officials that challenging the federal government is scary but “not impossible.”
“If you don’t at least try, you will end up creating another inhumane detention facility in your jurisdiction and under your watch,” he said.
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Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri. Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, and Mark Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, also contributed.