Consider This from NPR - ICE wants more detention centers. These towns don't

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

In red states and blue states, in suburbs and cities and in rural communities, officials from the Department of Homeland Security are scouting out real estate.Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants to significantly expand its detention capacity, to help support President Trump’s mass deportation agenda.NPR’s Jasmine Garsd and Kate Dario of New Hampshire Public Radio have been talking with people in communities slated to host mass detention facilities. They’ve found fierce, bipartisan opposition to the plans.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.  Email us at [e-mail] episode was produced by Connor Donevan, with audio engineering by Ted Mebane. It was edited by Eric Westervelt and Sarah Handel. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

In red states and blue states, in suburbs and cities and rural communities, officials from the Department of Homeland Security are scouting real estate, like outside Orlando, where a local reporter for WFTV was tipped off to a tour. Now, you can see it's just a massive vacant warehouse. Around 1130, we saw several federal officials as well as contractors arrive here. And in Kansas City, where KSHB 41 was on the scene. We had received this tip that ICE agents were going to. to be out here touring a facility. We didn't know where, but then we saw a bunch of cars out here in the parking lot. Immigration and customs enforcement wants to significantly expand its detention capacity to help support President Trump's mass deportation agenda. Here is how White House borders are. Tom Homan put it last year. With us hiring at a massive rate, more boots on the ground, we mean arrest and more

criminals, which means we need more bets. It's not just criminals, though. For decades, administrations of both parties allowed many immigrants out on bond while their cases moved through the immigration court system. If they had longstanding ties to the community and no criminal record, they were candidates for release. The Trump administration implemented a new policy last summer that mandates detention for virtually any immigrant arrested by ICE without legal status. That has meant the number of immigrants in ICE custody has soared from roughly 40,000 at the start of Trump's term to roughly 70,000 now. And the push to build, expand, and retrofit more facilities to detain these immigrants has ignited fierce and often bipartisan opposition.

A majority of these locations wouldn't pass for any other venue, even possibly for a homeless shelter. That is the Republican mayor of Columbia, South Carolina, Daniel Rickaman. Are they sanitary? Do they have the beds? Do they have the facilities for restrooms? or they have places that they can provide the meals that are to standards that we would require anybody, including jails, to keep up with. Consider this. To achieve his goal of mass deportations, Trump needs to build an infrastructure for mass detention. Communities across the country are saying they don't want to be part of it. From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly.

It's Consider This from NPR. Trump's approval rating on immigration has steadily declined as voters have watched his mass deportation agenda and the backlash to it play out in America's streets. A recent Pew poll found that large-scale detention of immigrants is especially unpopular. So what happens when an ICE detention center is planned to pop up in your backyard? And Pierce Jasmine Garst has been looking into that along with Kate Dorrio with New Hampshire Public Radio. Welcome to you both. Hi. Hi, thanks for having me. Jasmine, first to you, you have been spending time in a few towns where these warehouses are being turned into detention centers. Take us there. Tell us what it looks like.

Yeah, so one town I spent time in is Roxbury, New Jersey. Roxbury is a conservative town on the edge of Lake Muscanette Kong, and it's very picturesque. And overlooking the town on a sort of cliff over the lake, there's this massive. massive warehouse, which ICE has purchased to turn into a detention center with nearly 500,000 square feet. So I drove up there for myself and I ended up talking to neighbors. I spoke to one young man, W. He's 22. The new detention center is like right across the street from his house. And he asked that we use only his first initial because he doesn't want retaliation from his new next-door neighbor. He describes himself as a nature lover, and he says this construction is so

invasive he's thinking of moving away. I walk out in the morning to large semi-trucks from my front porch. We just see the glowing lights. It's industrial health. It is what I don't want to see in the future of America. And Mary Louise, this is something that we're seeing play out more and more in towns across the country because what's happening is last year Congress gave ICE facilities $45 billion over four years to expand attention. Ice is now projected this year to have 16 new facilities to hold around 1,500 people each and six other new large facilities to hold up to 10,000 people. And a lot of these are this, warehouses that are slated to be reconverted. And tell me a little bit more about some of the concerns that people are raising, along with big trucks and glowing lights, as we just heard.

And then on the flip side, I mean, I have to assume a new detention facility will bring new jobs to a town. Did you find anybody who likes all this? Yeah, there's all kinds of concerns. You know, there's the ethics of these centers and the conditions inside. You know, since October, we've had 24 deaths in ICE detention. And in the case of this town of Roxbury, there's just a huge concern over. water resources and increased sewage. I should point out that I was unable to find anyone in this town who supported this.

They have a weekly Roxbury town hall meeting and the mood has gotten really tense. Even though the town council says it's against this project, the people I spoke to said they feel their leaders aren't really doing enough. Here's one townsperson, Susanna Oliveri, she's a local and here she is confronting the council. Several real and valid suggestions have been made by people in this room, by concerned citizens, and all have been ignored. Instead, the vocal pro-ice council members sitting here today are rolling out the red carpet at the ICE detention center. Are you guys even doing anything? Are you just helping them unpack and carry in their boxes, too?

The mayor of Roxbury declined an interview. Kate, I want to bring you in here from New Hampshire because I understand some communities, have put a stop to these sites. Tell us what happened in the town of Merrimack. Yeah, so Merrimack, which isn't far from the Massachusetts border, found itself thrust into this conversation on Christmas Eve when the Washington Post reported it was on a list of towns where new detention facilities would be built around the country. From that moment across party lines, there was significant pushback against this plan. Merrimack, like New Hampshire overall, is a pretty purple place, but this was a rare issue that united people with totally

different political ideologies, often citing different reasons for their opposition. Here are Merrimack residents Becky Tancreed and Megan Burke, who showed up to oppose the plan at a protest in January. I asked them how they felt when they heard the plan to construct a detention center in their town. Surprises a word. I couldn't believe it. It's just against everything that we stand for. It's inhumane and no one deserves that treatment. It just doesn't make sense. Throughout this, everyone complained that DHS was providing almost no information, and for weeks they refused to even confirm the plan. But then in late February, after two months of frustration and confusion, Republican Governor Kelly Ayotte met with former

Homeland Security Secretary Christy Noem in D.C. And then announced the plan was not going forward. Not going forward. So a win there for local control. What lessons, Kate, have activists in Merrimack taken from all this? And are they sharing those lessons? Like, are groups that oppose these new detention sites talking to each other? Yeah, so one organizer told me engaging people who may not normally make noise was crucial to this fight. And people also worked across party lines. And different communities across the country that were on this list started working together once this initial report came out. And now a grassroots group called No Ice NH is trying to use its success as a model, sharing its strategies and experiences with other groups in other states who are still fighting.

This is so interesting because it sounds like you both three. reporting are finding local bipartisan opposition. But I'm curious, does that translate into any real cross-party bipartisan federal effort to rein in ICE detention? Jasmine? No. First of all, I should say both Kate and I have reached out to ICE, and the spokesperson told us that these aren't going to be warehouses, that they're going to be, quote, well-structured detention facilities, and that in Roxbury alone, it's expected to bring 1,300 jobs. Now, to your question, on a federal level, several bills have been proposed by Democrats, but, you know, they've gone nowhere in the Republican-controlled Congress. And so local activists

I've spoken to say that their strategy right now is delay, delay, delay, and make it very expensive for the federal government to build these. Kate, how about you? Yeah, following the Merrimack fight, New Hampshire's entire four-member congressional delegation, all of them Democrats, introduced legislation requiring ICE to get feedback from communities and approval from state and local officials before building any new immigrant detention facility. It would certainly give local officials a lot more leverage to approve or reject new proposals. But as Jasmine notes, these ideas face very long odds in the Republican-controlled House and Senate. As reporter, Kate, Dario with New Hampshire Public Radio and Jasmine Garst with NPR's immigration team, thanks to you both. Thanks.

Thanks for having me. This episode was produced by Connor Donovan with audio engineering by Ted Mebane and Hanuk Loven. It was edited by Eric Westervelt and Sarah Handel. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's considered this from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.