Feds buying immigration warehouses because goal is housing at least 136,000 people. [View all]

By Jamiles Lartey

Down an industrial row in Surprise, a suburb of Phoenix, there’s little of the unexpected: Beverage trucks zip in and out of one boxy grey warehouse to the right. At another site to the left, the open lot is stacked with rows of chemical storage tanks.

Then there’s one (400,000 square-foot) building sitting empty. In late January, the Department of Homeland Security bought it for $70 million in cash, part of a reported $38 billion shopping spree for millions of square feet of commercial real estate to be retrofitted as immigration detention bedspace. Bloomberg reported late last month that DHS is eyeing nearly two dozen sites that, if fully completed, could add enough capacity to double the current detention population of about 68,000.

Over a hundred local residents spoke out against the effort during a five-hour Surprise city council meeting earlier this month, raising concerns that ran the gamut. Some people worried about some detainees with a criminal history being held in the community. Some pointed to the possible strain on water, sewer, electrical infrastructure, traffic and emergency services. One speaker cited lost revenue — the federal government is exempt from local taxes. But most people offered broader condemnations of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown, and simply didn’t want that project to be part of the town’s legacy.

... Earlier this week, in the shadow of the sprawling warehouse building in Surprise, I sat down with Lisa Everett, a local conservative political activist who has been among the loudest critics of the plan. A three-time Trump voter, Everett told me she was a strong supporter of tightening the U.S. border, and deportation efforts that target people with violent convictions, but that she had profound issues with the broader immigration dragnet.

Could the conservative ice be cracking? Everett asks the perfect question: If deportation is the point, why is all the housing necessary? We should all be asking our U.S. House and Senate members that question.

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2026/02/14/ice-arizona-texas-georgia-warehouse