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In a change of course, the Trump administration’s plans to detain tens of thousands of immigrants in Amazon-style warehouses have been massively scaled back. As Truthout reported earlier this year, local communities mobilized swiftly to stop these massive detention sites, some capable of holding up to 10,000 people with no infrastructure to manage the waste and water needs.

In January 2026, an internal memo was leaked revealing a list of some two dozen places where the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) had purchased or was seeking to buy large warehouses to hold immigrant detainees. Now, after spending nearly $1 billion buying up 11 warehouses at a 134 percent markup over assessed value, the Trump administration is ditching the idea.

Truthout talked to activists on the ground in Romulus, Michigan; Roxbury, New Jersey; and Social Circle, Georgia, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) warehouses have been stopped, as well as Surprise, Arizona, where one has been paused pending an environmental analysis.

“This is a great victory for the whole movement and communities who are organizing against the detention expansion here in Georgia,” said Amilcar Valencia, executive director of El Refugio, an organization that assists families with loved ones at the Stewart Detention Center south of Atlanta, where they are based. “Georgia’s Social Circle was one of the largest facilities, able to detain up to 9,000 people, which is incredible to know that human beings would be detained in a facility that is not meant for people, but for packages.”

Detention Watch Network, which coordinated a national campaign against the proposed ICE warehouses, shared a statement with Truthout noting that ICE’s move to offload warehouses “illustrates the growing national consensus that people across the country do not want ICE in their communities. Far and wide, people are against immigrants being locked up in abusive ICE detention centers, and will fight tooth and nail to keep their communities safe.”

As Opposition Grows, Oklahoma Organizers Share How They Halted an ICE Warehouse

Those on the front lines agreed: It was not bipartisanship, lawsuits, or the wisdom of elected officials, but sustained community activism that forced the federal government to abandon the warehouses.

One former Trump official admitted as much. John Fabbricatore, who has been a commentator on Fox News and worked as senior adviser to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, told The New York Times that the warehouses were a quick effort to “scale up” mass deportations, but failed because “the left was able to throw up immediate roadblocks.”

The brazenness of the Trump administration’s occupation of Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis provoked a popular response. Stopping ICE warehouses became a way for communities to fight back.

Many of these warehouses were built during the COVID-19 pandemic to meet the boom in online shopping but have since sat empty. They are located in many city centers or nearby and became easy targets for activists.

It was not bipartisanship, lawsuits, or the wisdom of elected officials, but sustained community activism that forced the federal government to abandon the warehouses.

It was not bipartisanship, lawsuits, or the wisdom of elected officials, but sustained community activism that forced the federal government to abandon the warehouses.

In January 2026, rumors of an ICE warehouse in Romulus, Michigan, about 20 minutes outside of Detroit,........

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