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Public opposition to the Trump administration’s plan to use industrial warehouses as immigrant detention camps has halted at least a dozen proposals — and now, signs suggest that his enforcement agents are feeling the pressure at hidden detention sites across the country.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been repeatedly violating detention laws at nearly 200 facilities across the country, according to an investigation by the Colorado Times Recorder. People are forced into strip mall shops, office buildings, and various administrative government complexes that lack adequate showers, toilets, bedding, food, and other basic necessities.
COURIER reviewed ICE operations and identified 64 holding sites the agency has attempted to obscure from public view. Unlike traditional offices, these locations are unmarked buildings not listed in ICE’s online directories, and can only be found using specific search terms. Even then, the listed information is often incorrect — the Portland, Maine, office, for example, is described as the Boston Field Office. Many of these sites are clustered around areas of heavy ICE activity, such as behind Home Depots or outside airports used for deportation flights.
All 64 sites can be found here.
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Unlike authorized detention sites, like prisons, ICE offices and other spaces rented by DHS are only permitted for temporary holds — meaning someone should only be there long enough to be processed and booked into the system — until they are transferred somewhere with the infrastructure to provide humane living conditions. In practice, however, agents have increasingly been holding toddlers, seniors, and hundreds of others in these offices well beyond the 72-hour limit.
The violation isn’t new, by any means. Autumn Gonzalez, a volunteer attorney with the grassroots group NorCal Resist, says she’s been alerting immigrants of ICE’s tactics for over a decade. While there are no official detention centers in Northern California, there are three known sites where people are held for days on end: the ICE field office in San Francisco, an unmarked office building in Redding, and the federal courthouse in Sacramento.
“Our role there is that we can quickly get an attorney down there to assist the person who’s detained. As long as we have this on-the ground presence and we see what’s going on, which otherwise these detentions would be happening and these people would not have that access to an attorney before they’re moved to another location,” said Gonzalez. “I know they [ICE] don’t like us being there, and they harass our volunteers and try to scare them away. So, hopefully we’re having some kind of impact, making them think twice about whether or not to detain someone.”
Similar to the fierce local backlash against warehouse detention proposals, community protests outside ICE’s unmarked field detention sites have begun to wear on ICE agents’ morale. Once it was discovered that an office space in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was being used to hold immigrants — some as young as two years old — protests formed outside the building every month, according to TV9 reporter Jackson Valenti.
Eventually, the crowds grew large enough that agents felt uncomfortable, so they erected a fence to separate themselves from the protestors.
“We are taking proactive steps to enhance security at the Cedar Rapids ICE facility,” a spokesperson told TV9. “Simply put, if everyone respected the law and our property, measures like this wouldn’t be necessary.”
Undeterred, protestors have continued demonstrating, and the fence has been turned into a memorial for individuals who have been killed in ICE custody.
More than 200 coordinated protests are planned for a national day of action on April 25, where millions are expected to march in opposition to the Trump administration’s mass detention agenda. In addition to public demonstrations, initiatives like DEFIANCE.News’ GTFO ICE are developing rapid response networks to train community members on ways to effectively prevent ICE from setting up shop in their neighborhoods.
“We have really good data now to show that, the earlier communities find out about these efforts to convert warehouses into ICE prisons, the likelier they are to stop them,” said Miles Taylor, founder of Defiance. “Hands down, the most effective tactic has been crowd canceling these facilities, shining a light on it.”
So far, 13 warehouse sales have been canceled due to public pressure, and elected officials in Arizona, Georgia, and other states are utilizing bureaucratic maneuvers to prohibit ICE from operating detention camps in their municipalities.
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