US Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to spend $38 billion on warehouse conversions

From the article:

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement expects to spend $38.3 billion on its plan to acquire warehouses across the country and retrofit them into immigrant detention centers that can hold tens of thousands of immigrants, according to agency documents provided to New Hampshire’s governor and published on the state’s website Thursday.

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Detainees would spend an average of three to seven days at the processing sites before being transported to the larger facilities, where they would be held about 60 days before being deported, according to the document. The additional detention space is necessary, the document states, due to ICE’s hiring of more agents and an expected surge in arrests.

The documents offer the most complete picture to date of the Trump administration’s plan to overhaul immigrant detention using buildings that were originally designed for industrial purposes — an expansive effort aimed at boosting ICE’s ability to arrest more immigrants and deport them faster. Rather than moving people around the country to any detention center with available beds, the new system of warehouses is designed to funnel them into a series of large-scale holding centers where they will await deportation, ICE documents show.Ask The Post AIDive deeper

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The Washington Post first reported on an earlier, draft solicitation document in December.

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In recent weeks, ICE has spent more than $690 million acquiring at least eight industrial buildings in Maryland, Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania and Michigan, according to real estate deeds and internal ICE records reviewed by The Post. The agency has confirmed its interest in at least four additional buildings in Georgia, New Hampshire, New York and New Jersey, according to statements made by local officials in those places.Ask The Post AIDive deeper

The government plans to hire contractors to carry out extensive renovations, turning vacant shells into holding facilities featuring lobbies, recreational space, dormitories, courtroom spaces and cafeterias. At a building ICE plans to acquire in Merrimack, New Hampshire, the agency expects to spend $158 million retrofitting the facility, according to an ICE economic impact assessment Ayotte posted to her website.

It’s not clear which companies will be hired to renovate and operate the new facilities. George Zoley, the founder and executive chairman of ICE detention contractor Geo Group, said on a quarterly earnings call with Wall Street analysts Thursday that his company wants to be supportive of the new initiative, but cautioned that renovating warehouses would be “more complicated than you may think.”

Geo Group once converted a warehouse into a holding center for 500 people about 30 years ago — nothing like the enormous size of the facilities being proposed now, Zoley said. “The operational implications of how you manage such a facility, particularly a large-scale facility, is going to be concerning,” Zoley said.

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At least two other proposed deals — in Kansas City, Missouri, and in Virginia — have also fallen through.

These cancellations have revealed how the agency has pursued the projects. The owner of the Kansas City warehouse, a firm called Platform Ventures, said Thursday that it had begun negotiating a deal to sell its warehouse after being approached by a “third-party private enterprise” that it did not name.

Platform Ventures said it learned DHS was the buyer only once the deal got closer. When the public also learned about the buyer, the city council quickly passed a five-year ban on all new nonmunicipal detention facilities. The company said Thursday that it exited negotiations because it said “the terms no longer met our fiduciary requirements for a timely closing.”