How ICE Is Breaking Laws as It Rushes to Jail Immigrants in Former Mega-Warehouses
The facilities and their plumbing were never built for so many people. Nearby water systems are at risk – and Earthjustice is fighting back.
Across the U.S., the Trump administration is buying up industrial warehouses where it wants to hold tens of thousands of detained immigrants.
This plan is cruel and inhumane. It is also a public health disaster in the making. The warehouses and their sewage systems were never designed to accommodate so many people. In one town in Maryland, ICE plans to convert a facility built with only four toilets to house 1,500 detainees, and it presents no strategy for managing wastewater flow into the Potomac River and other nearby waterbodies.
In this case and others, the administration skirted around a legally required environmental review process that would surface these health hazards. Litigation that Earthjustice supported with an amicus brief has halted construction on the Maryland facility while the case moves through court.
We are challenging detention centers that are moving forward unlawfully in several other locations across the country, and we are monitoring many more. Read on to learn about the Trump administration’s reckless actions and how we’re fighting back.
Why is ICE buying warehouses and putting people in them?
The budget Trump signed into law last year will increase ICE’s funding from $10 billion to $100 billion by 2029. The flood of money came with a directive to deport 1 million people per year.
To meet that goal, ICE is deporting people indiscriminately. It is also seeking to rapidly expand its capacity to hold detainees by converting warehouses into detention centers.
Acting ICE director Todd Lyons has described wanting to be able to move immigrants around the country as quickly as an e-commerce company ships packages.
Where is ICE buying warehouses?
Places where the agency has made or proposed purchases include:
- Glendale and Surprise in Arizona
- Groveland, Orlando, and Starke in Florida
- Social Circle and Jefferson in Georgia
- Merrillville, Indiana
- Alexandria and Port Allen in Louisiana
- Hagerstown, Maryland
- Romulus, Michigan
- Roxbury, New Jersey
- Newport, Oregon
- Tremont and Hamburg in Pennsylvania
- Baytown, El Paso, Los Fresnos, and San Antonio in Texas
(Design by Casey Chin)
What are the environmental hazards of these plans?
Two recent cases are illustrative:
Near Hagerstown, Maryland, ICE wants to incarcerate 1,500 people in a warehouse originally built for cargo storage and equipped with just four toilets.
The detention center would nearly double the amount of wastewater going into the local sewage system. The Department of Homeland Security has not described any plans to upgrade this infrastructure.
Without those needed upgrades, the proposed project will very likely cause sewage overflow into local rivers including the Potomac. Just a few months ago, a similar overflow of sewage into the Potomac from a different source led D.C. to declare a state of emergency due to E. coli, MRSA, and other bacteria.
On top of these risks, water pollution from the Hagerstown facility would threaten aquatic species, including two kinds of protected mussels. Diesel exhaust from trucks bringing construction materials and detainees to the site would make the air dirtier in a region that already ranks in the 97th percentile for particulate matter pollution.
The Roxbury, New Jersey warehouse that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is wanting to turn into a migrant processing and detention center. (New Jersey Attorney General’s Office)
In Roxbury, New Jersey, ICE wants to put as many as 1,500 detainees and 1,000 staff in a former warehouse that would similarly strain the local sewage system – in an area that provides more than 70% of New Jersey residents with drinking water. A local municipal engineer has estimated that this facility could generate 187,500 gallons of sewage a day.
State and federal law have designated the region, which is known as the New Jersey Highlands, as an essential area for agriculture and wildlife. As in Maryland, the surrounding community is already recognized as overburdened under state law.
Overcrowding and inadequate medical care have resulted in outbreaks of tuberculosis, measles, and other infectious illnesses at ICE facilities across the U.S. These diseases do not stay confined to detainees; they spread to the local community.
Demonstrators hold signs as they protest the construction of an immigrant detention center in the Everglades on June 28, 2025. Earthjustice has filed a legal challenge to the facility. (Giorgio Viera / AFP via Getty Images)
How is Earthjustice fighting back?
The National Environmental Policy Act mandates the government to assess the environmental impact of major projects before greenlighting them. With many of the warehouse projects across the country, the Trump administration gave no meaningful environmental consideration at all before rushing forward.
Earthjustice filed amicus briefs challenging the Maryland and New Jersey warehouse conversion projects, supporting lawsuits by these state governments. We’ve seen promising developments in both cases: A judge has halted construction on the Maryland detention center, and the Trump administration agreed to pause the New Jersey project shortly before arguments were set to begin.
In Maryland, we represent the Potomac Riverkeeper Network, Hagerstown Area Religious Council, and Washington County Indivisible; in New Jersey, we represent New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance in partnership with NJ Appleseed, concerned Roxbury residents, and other local community environmental groups.
This work builds on our previous legal challenge to an ICE detention center in the Florida Everglades. In that case, Florida tried to obscure the federal government’s role in funding the detention center’s construction.
Alongside our partners, we filed a public records lawsuit — and won. We forced Florida to reveal that it asked for $1.4 billion from the federal government to build the center — and therefore it should have gone through federal environmental review.
In multiple other states, we are working with local partners and preparing legal actions against detention center projects that are moving forward unlawfully.