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On the campaign trail more than a year ago, Donald Trump proclaimed, “On Day 1, I will launch the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America.” Almost immediately after being sworn into office for the second time, the president made it clear that this was not just a grandiose campaign promise, but a call to action that quickly and drastically exceeded expectations. Fifteen months into the second Trump administration, data tells us that not only have arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement risen drastically compared to during the Biden administration, but agents are disproportionately arresting immigrants without criminal records, and targeting refugees, green-card holders, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program recipients, and even U.S. citizens. More horrifyingly, a record number of people have died while in ICE custody in fiscal year 2026. Despite this brazen unlawfulness, Trump is forging full speed ahead and his endgame is coming into clear view: a dystopian United States, stripped of any immigrants and littered with warehouses detaining everyone the administration deems un-American.

These stakes sound hyperbolic, but they were illustrated very clearly on Tuesday in the Senate testimony of the director of immigration studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, David J. Bier, who noted that the Department of Homeland Security has “joked” about deporting 100 million people. In an exchange with Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy, Bier clarified what such an effort would actually mean. “I think that advocating 100 million deportations is ethnic cleansing,” Bier noted. “When I talk about population purge, I talk about the fact that they’re trying to deport U.S.-born citizens, people born here. They’re trying to deport them as well. So it’s not a mass deportation agenda, it is also an agenda intended to reduce the population in the United States, including U.S.-born people.”

Amid all this, Homeland Security has been quietly snapping up warehouses across the country after the One Big Beautiful Bill Act awarded the agency $45 billion to build new immigration detention centers. It wasn’t until February, when internal agency documents were made public, that a coherent plan was revealed: the “ICE Detention Reengineering Initiative.” It details how ICE intends to spend $38.3 billion to develop “non-traditional” facilities—industrial warehouses—into detention facilities. “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 document concluded. This plan seemingly represents the sentiment behind acting ICE director Todd Lyons’ comments last year in which he explained that he’d like to revamp America’s immigration system to be one “like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.” While the White House has reportedly been seeking to downplay this deportation agenda publicly amid a political backlash to its failed Minneapolis “surge,” the warehouses put lie to the notion that the administration is backing down in any way.

So far, ICE has spent roughly $895 million on 10 warehouses all over the country, with seven sales still in progress, according to data compiled by Project Salt Box, a public advocacy group tracking DHS’ warehouse project. These purchase decisions are being made by fiat, as federally owned property is often exempt from local permitting and zoning rules. ICE has, more often than not, left local leaders in the dark about its plans. Mayors and town councils are finding out after the fact, when purchase agreements are nearly final, with virtually no opportunity to offer input on whether a community has the resources to support a detention center, let alone address residents’ concerns about having such a facility in their backyards.

Americans, whether they voted for Trump or not, almost all seem to agree that they do not want these detention centers in their neighborhoods. Quickly understanding the strain a massive facility housing thousands of people would have on a locale’s water and sewage systems, the negative environmental impacts, and a possible hit to property values, plus the morality of playing a part in a mass detention scheme, Americans have found yet another reason to coalesce against ICE. Successful public outcry has gotten ICE or property owners to back out of a warehouse sale in about half of recent cases, with Project Salt Box identifying at least 12 warehouse sales that were canceled, including in conservative-leaning areas like Hutchins, Texas; Ashland, Virginia; and Kansas City, Missouri. In blue Maryland, meanwhile, lawmakers are trying to pass a series of emergency bills that would restrict DHS by limiting where detention facilities can operate in the state.

The reality is that though one community may succeed in pushing out a detention center, the story doesn’t end there. “They are going to go somewhere else. They may have already gone somewhere else,” Eric Folkerth, a pastor who protested the Hutchins ICE purchase, told local media.

Roxbury, New Jersey, is a town that has been actively organizing against an immigrant detention center since January, shortly after the Washington Post revealed the small conservative town was on DHS’ list for a warehouse. So far, its efforts have been unsuccessful, despite a Republican mayor, all-GOP town council, and an electorate that decisively voted for Trump two years ago all collectively telling DHS officials an immigrant detention center is not welcome in Roxbury. City officials even offered the warehouse owner, Dalfen Industrial, 10 years’ worth of tax abatement, totaling about $20 million, if they agreed not to sell their warehouse to DHS. The offer was turned down.

I attended a recent protest outside of Roxbury’s City Hall, where one woman told me, “This will destroy this city.” She was worried that if ICE’s detention center plans went through, “Roxbury will be known as the concentration town.”

Over 1,000 residents from in and around Roxbury showed up to that protest on Feb. 28, and as they lined the long interstate where the small City Hall office was located, the sound of honking cars was nearly constant as drivers showed their support. And anyone could easily see the warehouse in question from the protest, just a few blocks up the street. The massive 470,000-square-foot facility was nestled in a quiet neighborhood, surrounded by homes and towering trees. One small house with a sand-colored roof had a sign stuck in the grass toward the end of its long, winding driveway: “Immigrants are welcome here.”

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A stone’s throw away from the Roxbury warehouse was a Mexican bakery serving delicacies like conchas and empanadas. Inside, the staff spoke imperfect English, but all wore smiles on their faces as they bustled around the establishment, tending to their customers. Did they know what was coming, right across the street?

I didn’t ask. I ordered a coffee, sat back in a worn wooden chair, and took in the warm glow of the string lights above me, arranged like a canopy over the entire restaurant. Latin music played in the background, loud enough to hear but soft enough to have a conversation with the person across from you.

The inside of this bakery was warm and welcoming, filled with diverse patrons who were happily sharing a meal together, in the shadow of the would-be concentration camp right next door. But the United States right outside that door felt cold and angry, with a president who refuses to stop tearing people away from each other.

We hope you learned a thing or two from this edition of Executive Dysfunction, and if you enjoyed reading it, please consider supporting our legal journalism by becoming a Slate Plus member!

Elsewhere in Jurisprudence

In the most recent episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick unpacks how Christian nationalism made its way into the U.S. government with Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. In the 1950s, Christian nationalism successfully got “God” inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance and national motto, and even on U.S. dollars. By the 1980s, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled on a series of consequential cases that changed the definition of “religious freedom,” further eroding the separation of church and state. The Roberts court then paved the way for the Trump administration’s full embrace of Christian nationalism that we’re seeing today.

In the most recent episode of Amicus, Dahlia Lithwick unpacks how Christian nationalism made its way into the U.S. government with Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. In the 1950s, Christian nationalism successfully got “God” inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance and national motto, and even on U.S. dollars. By the 1980s, the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled on a series of consequential cases that changed the definition of “religious freedom,” further eroding the separation of church and state. The Roberts court then paved the way for the Trump administration’s full embrace of Christian nationalism that we’re seeing today.

In the Slate Plus bonus episode of Amicus, Dahlia and Mark Joseph Stern discuss Attorney General Pam Bondi’s newly proposed rule that attempts to block state bar associations from investigating Justice Department lawyers who are accused of state ethics violations. Bondi’s rule is a blatant attempt to slow-walk and even stop state bar investigations into her DOJ attorneys.

In the Slate Plus bonus episode of Amicus, Dahlia and Mark Joseph Stern discuss Attorney General Pam Bondi’s newly proposed rule that attempts to block state bar associations from investigating Justice Department lawyers who are accused of state ethics violations. Bondi’s rule is a blatant attempt to slow-walk and even stop state bar investigations into her DOJ attorneys.

As we await a decision in the Supreme Court case Chiles v. Salazar, Matt R. Salmon, friend of Slate, psychiatrist, and author of Pride & Prejudice: Healing Division in the Modern Family, explains the dangers of undoing a Colorado law that bans conversion therapy. As someone who personally experienced conversion therapy, Salmon argues that words spoken during therapy aren’t simply “First Amendment-protected” speech, but medical treatment that is subject to the same standards as any other medical intervention— “and when that treatment is based on deception, as in the case of ‘conversion therapy,’ it becomes fraud.” The court is set to rule on Chiles by the end of this term.

As we await a decision in the Supreme Court case Chiles v. Salazar, Matt R. Salmon, friend of Slate, psychiatrist, and author of Pride & Prejudice: Healing Division in the Modern Family, explains the dangers of undoing a Colorado law that bans conversion therapy. As someone who personally experienced conversion therapy, Salmon argues that words spoken during therapy aren’t simply “First Amendment-protected” speech, but medical treatment that is subject to the same standards as any other medical intervention— “and when that treatment is based on deception, as in the case of ‘conversion therapy,’ it becomes fraud.” The court is set to rule on Chiles by the end of this term.

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