'Communities Not Cages': 200+ Actions Across US Protest ICE Warehouse Detention
"Warehouse facilities are built for storing products, not people."
Communities across the United States are mobilizing on Saturday to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement's aggressive expansion of warehouse detention projects nationwide, as deaths in ICE custody continue to soar under the Trump administration.
Saturday's day of action is expected to include over 200 demonstrations, from Atlanta, Georgia to Salt Lake City, Utah to Alexandria, Louisiana, according to organizers, who said the events will elevate local opposition to President Donald Trump's mass detention and deportation agenda. The groups behind the day of protests include the Disappeared In America coalition, Detention Watch Network, Indivisible, MoveOn, Public Citizen, and Workers Circle.
"Detention is deadly," said Nanci Palacios, organizing and membership director at Detention Watch Network. "People in immigration detention are describing it as ‘hell on earth’ because it is. What we’re seeing now is heightened cruelty under the Trump administration. People are not commodities to be shipped, discarded, and profited off of in detention warehouses or any detention facility—full stop. We demand an end to Trump’s cruel mass detention expansion and that detention facilities be shut down for good.”
Enabled by tens of billions of dollars in funding that congressional Republicans and Trump approved last summer, ICE has been buying up commercial warehouses and moving to convert them into detention centers with the capacity to hold up to 10,000 people. Business Insider reported earlier this month that since January, ICE "has spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying at least 11 massive facilities in eight states," including Utah, Georgia, and New Jersey.
But the American Immigration Council noted earlier this year that "local advocacy and outrage" have blocked ICE attempts to purchase at least a dozen warehouses.
Saturday's actions aim to build on that local opposition. “Communities are fed up with ICE’s brutality, chaos, and terror," said Katie Bethell, executive director of MoveOn Civic Action. "Across the country, everyday people are rising up against the Trump administration’s plans to cage tens of thousands of immigrant kids and families in their backyards."
"Backlash to ICE converting warehouses into massive detention centers has been swift, vocal, and growing," Bethel said. "We will not stop protesting until contracts and expansion plans are canceled. With gas prices skyrocketing, healthcare premiums exploding, and the cost of living growing exponentially unaffordable, we need elected leaders to invest in our communities, not in cages.”
Leah Greenberg, co-director of Indivisible, added that "warehouse facilities are built for storing products, not people."
"Converting them into detention centers exposes our neighbors to unsafe, degrading, and inhumane conditions, harms surrounding communities, and locks states into long-term infrastructure without public input," Greenberg added.
Nearly 50 people have died in ICE custody during Trump's second term in the White House, which has seen a massive and lawless expansion of immigrant detention and deportation efforts.
Ahead of Saturday's demonstrations, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) introduced legislation that would prohibit ICE from "establishing, operating, expanding, converting, or renovating any warehouse or similar building or structure for the purposes of detaining people." Tlaib's office noted that "ICE is actively scouting, purchasing, and planning to convert approximately 23 warehouses nationwide into new immigration detention and processing facilities," which would "rapidly increase detention capacity to 92,600."
"We do not want ICE cages in our communities," said Tlaib. "ICE and [Customs and Border Protection] are murdering people in the streets, tearing families apart, abducting our neighbors, and locking them in cages. Now they are attempting to buy and convert warehouses across our country into massive prison camps to expand their operations, despite strong local opposition in communities like mine."
"This will only increase the serious human rights abuses and trauma on immigrant families, including medical neglect, inhumane conditions, and rising deaths," Tlaib continued. "The Ban Warehouse Detention Act would stop this expansion by prohibiting the use of warehouses for immigration detention."
