A group of buildings in El Paso, next to apartment complexes and a pediatrician’s office. A towering office building in the Woodlands, across from a preschool. A sprawling, vacant warehouse South of Dallas. Each could be transformed into mega detention centers or headquarters for Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, according to an investigation by Wired.
The Department of Homeland Security has been covertly planning ICE expansions in dozens of states across the U.S., and Texas is their biggest target, according to federal documents obtained by Wired. At least eight Texas cities have been identified as places ICE is looking to expand by acquiring new offices or warehouses to use as detention centers, according to Wired and Bloomberg.
Reports on ICE expansions dropped amid increased calls to reign in the agency — and to shut down existing facilities.
Earlier this month, the DHS reported a measles outbreak at Dilley Immigration Processing Center near San Antonio — where hundreds of children are being detained.
Juan Nicolás, a 2-month-old, was rushed to the hospital on Monday night after spending nearly a month at Dilley. The infant was briefly hospitalized with bronchitis before he was sent back to Dilley, according to U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro.
Castro, who has visited the facility, and followed Nicolás’ case, is calling for Dilley to be “shut down immediately.”
And last week, as The Barbed Wire exclusively reported, the Texas lawmakers joined more than 40 other state legislators across the United States in demanding four major reforms to ICE, including efforts for more public oversight, like requiring agents to obtain warrants and adding body cameras to uniforms.
Yet, according to Wired, DHS has asked government officials to hide lease listings and disregard typical government leasing procedures in their efforts to expand immigration operations.
According to Bloomberg, DHS or ICE did not respond to their request for comment on the warehouse acquisitions. DHS also did not respond to Wired’s request for comment.
The General Services Administration, which oversees federal buildings, told Wired that they have been working with ICE to acquire new properties in a lawful manner.
“GSA is committed to working with all of our partner agencies, including our patriotic law enforcement partners such as ICE, to meet their workspace needs,” said Marianne Copenhaver, GSA associate administrator for communications, to Wired. “GSA is following all lease procurement procedures in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.”
In Eagle Pass, a building next to Sul Ross State University that already houses the Drug Enforcement Administration is being eyed by ICE, according to Wired. In El Paso, an office complex across the highway from a pediatrician, and next to a healthcare provider, is the site of a planned expansion. In Harlingen, a lease has been awarded for a building that’s a block away from a preschool, a church, and a post office.
In Irving, a large office building off of State Highway 114 near hotels, condos, and financial offices is a planned expansion site. In San Antonio, it’s a building that currently houses a Methodist Healthcare office. In the Woodlands near Houston, it’s an office building down the road from a preschool.
The planned expansions aren’t confined to residential offices, either. According to Bloomberg, ICE has also been spending millions on acquiring warehouses across the country, to be used as massive detention centers.
An El Paso warehouse was recently purchased by DHS that could hold over 8,500 beds, which if completed, could make it one of the largest detention centers in the country, according to Bloomberg. ICE was also reportedly planning a 9,500-bed facility for a warehouse in Hutchins, a 1,500-bed facility in San Antonio, and a 500-bed center in McAllen, totaling approximately 20,000 proposed detention center beds in Texas alone.
Not all of the planned expansions have been followed through on, though. The plans for the Hutchins facility, a vacant warehouse just outside Dallas, appear to be in limbo after public pushback to the reported expansion.
The Dallas Morning News reported that Dallas city officials said they had not received any deed indicating the property had been sold as of late January. Other Dallas residents expressed discontent with the idea of the detention center.
“We should not be housing human beings in a warehouse meant for packages,” said Eric Folkerth, a Dallas pastor, to the Dallas Morning News.
Majestic Realty Co., the company that owns the warehouse, said in a statement posted on X by Dallas Morning News reporter Aarón Torres that they would not be selling the warehouse to DHS.
“Majestic Realty Co. has not and will not enter into any agreement for the purchase or lease of any building to the Department of Homeland Security for use as a detention facility,” the statement reads.
If the 9,500-bed facility were to be set up there, it would be the largest detention center in the country. Currently, a 5,000-bed facility in El Paso, known as Camp East Montana, is the largest. Camp East Montana has faced allegations of mistreatment, negligence, and calls for a ceasing of operations after the deaths of three immigrants in custody and a tuberculosis outbreak.
People detained at Prairieland Detention Center in North Texas have complained of similarly bleak conditions. State Rep. Salman Bhojani, a Democrat from Euless, said in a press conference last month that Leqaa Kordia, who lawmakers have called a political prison after being detained in Prairieland for more than 300 days, didn’t have access to halal meals and proper heating, in “suffocating conditions” amid more than 60 detainees in a dorm built for 20 individuals. He said she’d been running “a high fever for several days.” She was later hospitalized.
According to a Feb. 13 ICE memo titled “Detention Reengineering Initiative,” the planned expansions will cost $38.3 billion and will be funded through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“For ICE to sustain the anticipated increase in enforcement operations and arrests in 2026, an increase in detention capacity will be a necessary downstream requirement,” the memo reads.
ICE intends to “activate” all of the new facilities by Nov. 30, according to the memo.
The El Paso warehouses for the planned 8,500-bed facility were bought by DHS in January for almost $123 million, according to El Paso Matters. An industrial warehouse in East San Antonio, meant to hold the 1,500 beds, was also purchased for $66.1 million by ICE in early February, according to the San Antonio Express-News, despite pushback from local officials.
“We should be very concerned about what such a facility does to our image nationally,” said Tommy Calvert, Bexar County commissioner, told the San Antonio Express-News.
An ICE spokesperson defended the expanded facilities in Texas in a statement to the Express-News.
“These will not be warehouses — they will be very well structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards,” the spokesperson said. “It should not come as news that ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S. and is actively working to expand detention space.”