Kristi Noem Bought 11 Warehouses to Use as ICE Jails. Now What?

By the time President Trump ousted Kristi Noem from the Department of Homeland Security earlier this month, her team had already embarked on a spending spree that included far more than the new luxury jet and the self-promotional ads that got her in trouble at the White House. Over the past several months, the department has purchased 11 large warehouses around the country that it plans to convert into mega-jails, some with space for up to 10,000 detainees. The acquisitions kicked off a $38 billion makeover of the detention system that has been overseen by Noem’s chief adviser and alleged lover, Corey Lewandowski. Trump set March 31 as Noem’s last day, and Lewandowski is expected to leave with her. (Both have denied an affair.) Their team has been racing to acquire properties and convert the warehouse sites, but two senior DHS officials with knowledge of the plan told me they now expect a slowdown—and that a “pause” wouldn’t be a bad thing. “They’ve had a ridiculous timeline to rush everything through,” said one of the officials, who, like others I spoke with, was not authorized to publicly discuss the warehouse plan with reporters. “Now everybody’s kind of going back to the drawing board and talking about resetting.” The administration’s “ICE Detention Reengineering Initiative” was first pitched last spring but stalled for months while DHS focused on deportations and a recruitment drive to hire 10,000 ICE officers, the two officials told me. But as the White House demanded more detention space last fall, Noem’s team ordered ICE to expedite the warehouse plan. It calls for ICE to streamline its deportation process by purchasing detention centers from federal contractors it has long relied on and opening its own mega-jails in retrofitted warehouses. Some county governments and local lawmakers have adopted resolutions to try to keep ICE out of their communities or block conversion plans. DHS leaders had expected Republican-controlled jurisdictions to welcome the construction of warehouse jails in their communities and were surprised by what the two senior officials described as NIMBYism. Then came the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis in January, further eroding public support for the mass-deportation campaign and raising questions about the administration’s tactics. Officials worry that backlash could make it more difficult to get permits for water and sewer connections and other modifications at warehouses designed to hold products, not people. “The timing of Minneapolis could not have been worse,” one of the DHS officials told me. Now the change in leadership at DHS adds a new variable, one that puts the timeline for the warehouse conversions in doubt. The fate of the warehouses is likely to come up on Wednesday during the confirmation hearing for Trump’s pick to replace Noem, Senator Markwayne Mullin, a Republican from Oklahoma. Mullin appears to have an easy path to confirmation, as Republicans are in the majority and at least one Democrat, Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, is pledging to support him. But some GOP lawmakers continue to have questions about Noem’s spending and Lewandowski’s role in awarding contracts. (Lewandowski, who has been serving in a temporary role as a “special government employee,” insists he’s avoided conflicts of interest and has done nothing improper.) Mullin will likely face bipartisan calls to pledge a careful review of how the department is spending the roughly $170 billion in extra funding it received from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer. DHS officials broadly describe that money as a onetime opportunity to remake a dysfunctional ICE detention system, which has relied for years on a loose network of private facilities and local and county jails where the federal government rents beds at varying rates. Immigrant-advocacy groups and attorneys say the long-troubled system has been stretched beyond its breaking point by overcrowding and inhumane conditions—allegations that ICE denies. At least 31 detainees died in ICE custody last year, the highest total in two decades, and at least a dozen more detainees have died since the beginning of 2026. Advocacy groups, appalled by the warehouse plan, say it’s a cruel scheme to further dehumanize immigrants held for civil—not criminal—violations. [Read: Why Trump changed his mind on Kristi Noem] Revamping the detention system is key to achieving Trump’s goal of deporting 1 million people each year, DHS officials told me. The number of detainees in custody has increased from 39,000 when Trump took office in January 2025 to a high of more than 70,000 last month, although the number has now dipped to about 63,000 detainees, according to internal data shared with me. The warehouses, if completed, would increase capacity to more than 92,000, ICE documents show. The department told me in a statement that “ICE aims to work with officials on both sides of the aisle to expand detention space to help ICE law enforcement carry out the largest deportation effort in American history.”   Several veteran ICE officials I asked about the plan said they were skeptical it could succeed. ICE officials have generally preferred working with private detention contractors, which give the agency more flexibility and treat the government like an important client. The warehouses could become white elephants if there’s a change in ICE policies and the detainee population decreases. “If the goal is to not have endless illegal immigration, those centers will be obsolete in three to five years,” a longtime ICE official told me. “The amount of money going into them is abhorrent.” During the peak of DOGE fever last spring, ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons told an audience of government contractors at an industry expo in Phoenix that his agency needed a change in thinking, and should seek to operate as efficiently as e-commerce giants like Amazon. Deportations should be carried out “like Prime, but with human beings,” Lyons said, according to comments reported by the Arizona Mirror. ICE critics condemned his statement. It was a preview of the plan the agency’s leaders were already putting together to emulate the distribution model of online retailers. Warehouses were not Stephen Miller’s initial preference, according to one of the DHS officials with knowledge of the plan. Miller, the architect of Trump’s mass-deportation plan, had long advocated for the creation of temporary detention sites using military bases and tent camps in Texas and other southern states. But ICE officials wanted a system that would be more evenly distributed across the nation, with mega-jails closer to northern and coastal cities where the Trump administration seeks to make millions of immigration arrests. By consolidating its detainee population into fewer locations and owning the facilities, ICE could streamline operations and buffer itself from shifting politics in Congress and seesawing annual budgets, DHS officials told me. The agency eventually plans to operate eight large-scale detention centers and 16 processing sites, and acquire another 10 facilities where it already holds detainees but doesn’t have ownership. [Read: The wrath of Stephen Miller] ICE officials considering options for a rapid expansion determined it would be too onerous and time-consuming to expand their existing contracts at hundreds of locations, which would add relatively few beds. The ICE team that came up with the warehouse plan envisioned a timeline of 12 to 18 months for purchasing the properties and converting them into detention facilities that could meet federal standards. Their proposal went to Noem’s office in late spring 2025 and “sat for months,” one official told me. Noem and Lewandowski instead sought deals with Republican state governors to lease small numbers of beds at state-run prisons and jails, giving them glib names: the “Cornhusker Clink” in Nebraska and the “Louisiana Lockup” at the notorious Angola state prison. But the detainee population last fall swelled as Trump officials encouraged sweeps of Democrat-run cities and curbed the ability of judges to allow immigrants facing deportation to post a bond. When the White House pressured DHS to increase detention capacity, Noem’s team ordered ICE to expedite the warehouse-conversion plan, the two DHS officials told me. A report by the commercial-real-estate industry site CoStar found that the government paid an average of 11 to 13 percent above market rates for 10 of the properties, buying one warehouse in Georgia for 33 percent above its market value, and another in Pennsylvania for 27 percent more. A DHS official told me the government followed standard procedures for assessing value. The department denied that Noem’s team initially stalled the contracts before reversing course. “Any delays in getting new ICE detention facilities up and running have come from activist judges with bogus environmental rulings or pushback from communities,” the department wrote in a statement to me. Last Wednesday a federal court in Maryland issued a temporary restraining order blocking construction work at the newly acquired ICE warehouse near Hagerstown, saying the government failed to conduct an environmental-impact study. The site has already been targeted by protesters, and ICE is bracing for more possible demonstrations as it awards renovation contracts and detainees begin to arrive. ICE has backed off its plans in some jurisdictions. It canceled the acquisition of a warehouse in Mississippi at the request of Senator Roger Wicker, a Republican. The same thing happened in New Hampshire after Governor Kelly Ayotte, a Republican, joined Democrats in opposition. But the buying continues, with the department last Wednesday purchasing a warehouse in Salt Lake City for more than $145 million. One of the DHS officials told me that if any of the first 11 warehouses—purchased for a combined total of more than $1 billion—couldn’t be turned into detention sites, they would remain useful as federal properties that can be converted into office space or training facilities. A White House official told me the administration looks forward to Mullin’s “speedy confirmation” and “continuing to implement the President’s agenda in the most efficient and effective way possible.” If Mullin is confirmed as the new DHS secretary, he’ll need to launch a more concerted effort to sell the plan to state and local jurisdictions, three DHS officials told me. “They’re figuring out a way to better inform the public and the communities and the governor's offices and local officials, so they’re more involved,” one DHS official told me. ICE has started working on a Frequently Asked Questions page about the warehouses, the person said, but it’s not finished yet.