The Trump administration is planning to warehouse more than 80,000 immigrants in industrial storage facilities in a dramatic expansion of its detention system treating human beings as logistics problems to be processed and moved along like packages.
According to a draft solicitation reviewed by the Washington Post, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to establish seven large-scale warehouses holding 5,000 to 10,000 people each, with 16 smaller facilities holding up to 1,500. The warehouses would be strategically positioned near major logistics hubs in Virginia, Texas, Louisiana, Arizona, Georgia and Missouri, creating a “feeder system” where newly arrested detainees cycle through processing sites before being staged for deportation.
ICE Acting Director Todd M. Lyons articulated the administration’s operational philosophy bluntly: “We need to get better at treating this like a business,” he said earlier this year. “Like Prime, but with human beings.”
The plan raises serious practical and ethical concerns. Commercial real estate experts warn that warehouses — designed for storage and shipping — are fundamentally unsuitable for human habitation. They typically lack adequate ventilation, temperature controls, and proximity to plumbing and sanitation infrastructure needed to support thousands of residents.
Tania Wolf, an advocate with the National Immigration Project, captured the brutal nature of the proposal, in her opinion: “It’s dehumanizing,” she said. “You’re treating people, for lack of a better term, like cattle.”
Current conditions already reflect systemic problems. ICE currently holds more than 68,000 people — a record — with nearly 48 percent having no criminal convictions or pending charges. The Fort Bliss tent encampment, ICE’s largest existing facility, employed less than two-thirds of its contracted security personnel, according to government inspectors.
Former ICE Chief of Staff Jason Houser warned that staffing such massive facilities will prove challenging, requiring specialized training and federal security clearances. “We can always find more warehouses,” Houser noted. “The ability to operate the facilities safely is always limited by staffing.”
The administration has already awarded a $30 million contract for facility design, sparking backlash from the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, whose leadership withdrew involvement after the tribe’s business partner pursued the contract against tribal wishes. Tribal Chairman Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick stated the tribe would “ensure that our nation’s economic interests do not come into conflict with our values in the future.”
The warehouse plan follows the administration’s $45 billion detention expansion initiative, which revived dormant prisons, repurposed military bases, and built remote tent encampments. The administration has deported more than 579,000 people this year.
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