Above photo: Alivarte.
The Trump administration has a perverse and degrading plan that has been in effect since last year and will expand even further in 2026. It is being implemented by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE): converting commercial warehouses into detention centers, which will join those already established on military bases until they cover the entire territory of the United States.
Reports from various US media outlets are explicit: ICE has already purchased, or is in the process of acquiring, a dozen commercial buildings or department stores since December, which would further increase the 212 immigrant detention centers it had at the beginning of 2026.
These acquisitions are located in states such as Texas, Mississippi, New York and Oregon, according to a recent USA Today report that also noted the opposition the practice encounters among residents and even politicians in the locations chosen for the project.
ABC News has reported on some of these multi-million dollar transactions, a lucrative deal for private companies. One facility near Phoenix, Arizona, was acquired for $70 million; another in a county north of Baltimore, Maryland, for $102.4 million; and one in Berks County, Pennsylvania, for $87.4 million.
The expanded “needs” of the repressive body that is already being called Trump’s Gestapo, and whose violence in arrests and repression of protests has caused more than one death, “are justified,” there are thousands of arrests, imprisonment and deportations of men, women and children, including some born in the United States, or with long years of residence and work in that country.
The racism and xenophobia of Trumpism now condemn them, and an ICE spokesperson, as coldly as its acronym suggests, stated: “It should come as no surprise that ICE is conducting arrests in states across the United States and is actively working to expand detention space.” These figures are in the agency’s records: In January 2025, there were 107 detention centers housing immigrants. By the end of the year, that number had reached 212, including private prisons, county jails, state prisons, and temporary tent facilities on military bases. Now, warehouses are being added to the list.
In all of them, immigrants are not people, they are disposable things. Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons defined it last year at a border security event in Arizona, according to USA Today: “We need to get better at treating this like a business,” and even added that he wanted to see a deportation process similar to that of merchandise “like Amazon Prime, but with human beings.”
Keep in mind that some of these warehouses will hold up to 8,000 immigrants, presumably undocumented; therefore, it is not difficult to imagine the overcrowding and inhumane conditions, physical and even sexual abuse, medical neglect and inadequate food to which they will be exposed, as found in some of these concentration camps, reflected in a report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
It is enough to recall the murder, when he was brutally asphyxiated, of the Cuban immigrant Geraldo Lunas Campos in the field of the Fort Bliss military base in Texas, where there have been three similar deaths in just two months, and the cold-blooded murders of the American citizens Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, in January of this year.
Award for efficient ICE
This “efficiency” of ICE warrants a reward. Trump requested a base budget of $11.3 billion for 2026, and a 2025 law provides for $75 billion in supplemental funding distributed over four years. In total, ICE will have access to approximately $85 billion, thanks to Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”
An analysis by the American Immigration Council on the expansion of immigrant detention centers during Trump’s second term states that when he took office there were about 40,000 immigrants detained, and by the beginning of December there were already 66,000 people, in a system with a capacity of more than 70,000.
However, the Immigration Council noted, “this is just the beginning for the Trump administration, which, according to leaked plans, originally hoped to have nearly 108,000 beds in immigrant detention centers available online by January 2026.”
This is an ambitious goal that “explains” the interest in acquiring warehouses to detain the thousands of migrants caught in daily raids, and lock them up in remote jails and private prisons, where—adds a report by the American Immigration Council—ICE can exert increasing pressure on the incarcerated to surrender, accept deportation, and give up any possibility of remaining in the United States,” a system that “is now on track to rival the entire federal prison system by the end of President Trump’s second term.”
This sinister anti-immigrant, racist, and xenophobic plan, which attempts to “whiten” the U.S., has become a priority for the team of billionaires and white nationalists, or in other words, those intent on empowering fascism in that country.
Thus, the application of this massive repression by federal law enforcement agencies, including ICE, Border Patrol, the FBI, and the IRS, increased arrests by 600 percent in just the first nine months of Trump’s “misrule.”
The Council’s report also points out that the number of people without criminal records detained by ICE on any given day has increased by 2,450 percent during selective workplace checks, roving patrols, and collateral arrests of immigrants who diligently attended court hearings and official records, detained again without prior notice.
This corresponds to the order given to ICE on January 20: to maximize detentions and even prohibit legal procedures such as immigration judges releasing large groups of immigrants on bail, who are being held in mandatory detention.
The Trump administration has eliminated three immigration oversight sub-agencies and banned members of Congress from conducting lawful inspections; therefore, the detention system and the endemic abuses that characterize it are more hidden than ever, and rapid deportations are increasing, even separating families.
What could be happening in those concentration camps? An abc.net report detailed how lawyer Eric Lee was waiting to meet with a client at the Dilley Family Detention Center in Texas when suddenly guards stormed in and ordered all visitors to leave. Outside the barbed wire perimeter, Lee saw hundreds of detainees in colorful jackets protesting, “Let us out, let us out!” amid reports of contaminated food, overcrowding, and medical neglect at the facility.
There are thousands of families and many children trapped, including five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, who was recently released from the center after national outrage over his arrest with his father at the entrance to his home in Minneapolis.
Trump, who is very interested in being remembered for his presidential performance, can add to that resume being the destroyer of lives and of the more than illusory “American dream”.
