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Down an industrial row in Surprise, a suburb of Phoenix, there’s little of the unexpected: Beverage trucks zip in and out of one boxy grey warehouse to the right. At another site to the left, the open lot is stacked with rows of chemical storage tanks. If you’ve seen one industrial park in the U.S., you’ve really seen them all.
Then there’s one building sitting empty. In late January, the Department of Homeland Security bought it for $70 million in cash, part of a reported $38 billion shopping spree for millions of square feet of commercial real estate to be retrofitted as immigration detention bedspace. Bloomberg reported late last month that DHS is eyeing nearly two dozen sites that, if fully completed, could add enough capacity to double the current detention population of about 68,000.
Over a hundred local residents spoke out against the effort during a five-hour Surprise city council meeting earlier this month, raising concerns that ran the gamut. Some people worried about some detainees with a criminal history being held in the community. Some pointed to the possible strain on water, sewer, electrical infrastructure, traffic and emergency services. One speaker cited lost revenue — the federal government is exempt from local taxes. But most people offered broader condemnations of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown, and simply didn’t want that project to be part of the town’s legacy.
“It is disheartening that the first time our small town makes national news, it is not for who we are, but for something that threatens the dignity and safety of our own people,” a woman said.
The Surprise forum reflected debates happening in local government meetings across the country, and conversations that are making for strange bedfellows and unexpected coalitions. Earlier this week, in the shadow of the sprawling warehouse building in Surprise, I sat down with Lisa Everett, a local conservative political activist who has been among the loudest critics of the plan. A three-time Trump voter, Everett told me she was a strong supporter of tightening the U.S. border, and deportation efforts that target people with violent convictions, but that she had profound issues with the broader immigration dragnet.
She said the crackdown is sweeping up tax-paying, nonviolent community members and expanding detention into indefinite limbo, raising a blunt question: If deportations are the goal, why build so many beds?
Like Everett, many other Trump supporters have taken issue with the prospect of a local detention center — though for many of them, their objections have been more about the impacts on the community than about the people held inside. For Everett, it’s both.
That stance has pushed her into unlikely company. Everett has recently been coordinating with the local chapter of Indivisible, a left-leaning national grassroots network founded in opposition to Trump’s first presidency. That alliance, and her broader immigration advocacy, led to Everett being censured by local Republican leaders. She told me she’s undeterred.
“I won’t stay silent when people’s dignity is being stripped from them,” Everett said.
When I asked what she thought the odds were of stopping the planned detention center here, Everett stopped to stifle tears as her voice cracked. “I'm afraid we’ll have it here. I don’t think there’s anything we can do.”
Her pessimism mirrors City Hall’s posture. On Wednesday, Mayor Kevin Sartor sent a letter to DHS requesting information on the building’s intended use, along with impact studies on what it will mean for the city. But the letter was extremely deferential, acknowledging in multiple places that “we can’t interfere with federal operations.”
Other Arizona officials are exploring more aggressive legal stances. This week, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, said she was considering suing the federal government under a state law that allows state officials to try to block any “public nuisance” that is at odds with “the comfortable enjoyment of life or property” by the community.
As in some of the local efforts to restrain and scrutinize the administration’s operation in Minneapolis, any attempt to stop the feds by using state law in Arizona will be an uphill battle. The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution places federal law above state and local statutes. But Mays isn’t the only state or local official looking to throw legal roadblocks in front of the warehouse detention plans.
City councils across the country, including in El Paso, Texas, Merrillville, Indiana, and Durant, Oklahoma, have passed resolutions questioning or resisting plans to use warehouses for immigration detention.
In Kansas City, Missouri, the city council voted 12-1 in January to block federal detention center permits. Like other local efforts, it’s not clear that the ordinance would have ultimately held up in court, but it won’t have to. Platform Ventures, the company that was selling the property, announced on Thursday that it would not be going forward with the sale, following a public pressure campaign.
A similar dynamic played out this week in Salt Lake County, Utah, where county Mayor Jenny Wilson pledged to use “all available legal and policy avenues” to oppose a DHS warehouse there. Shortly after, the owner of the property announced it had “no plans” to sell or lease the building to the federal government, according to MS NOW.
Across the country, this has been an increasingly effective approach by communities looking to stymie warehouse detention centers. In Ashland, Virginia, a warehouse owned by Canadian billionaire Jim Pattison was in the process of being sold to DHS in late January. After news broke, Pattison was hit with threats of a customer boycott of his Canadian grocery store chain, and from advertisers suspending their contracts with his company. Within a couple of days, Pattison’s development company issued a statement that the transaction would not be going forward.
In some cases, political pressure higher up the proverbial food chain has also been effective. Plans for a detention warehouse in Byhalia, Mississippi, were scratched after Republican Sen. Roger Wicker raised his concerns directly to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. Wicker wrote in a letter to the agency that the conversion would foreclose economic growth opportunities in an otherwise up-and-coming region of the state.
Similarly, in Hutchins, south of Dallas, local officials worry that DHS’s purchase of a 1-million square foot building will, among other things, imperil the local treasury. The property was generating about $1.8 million in annual tax revenue that the federal government would not have to pay, potentially jeopardizing the city’s ability to pay back a bond. Similar concerns have followed proposed sites in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and Chester, New York.
In other places, financial, legal and public pressure mechanisms may give way to simple infrastructure problems. A massive planned warehouse detention facility in Social Circle, Georgia, could triple the town’s current population of 5,000. City Manager Eric Taylor has told multiple news outlets that the local infrastructure, specifically water and sewer, is nearly maxed out and cannot handle this kind of additional load.
