ICE wants more detention centers. These towns don't

0:00Kate Dario:In red states and blue states, in suburbs and cities and rural communities, officials from the Department of Homeland Security are scouting real estate, like outside Orlando, where a local reporter for WFTV was tipped off to a tour.

0:16Jasmine Garsd:Now you can see it's just a massive vacant warehouse.

0:19Kate Dario:Around 1130, we saw several federal officials as well as contractors arrive here. And in Kansas City, where KSHB 41 was on the scene.

0:27Jasmine Garsd:We had received this tip that ICE agents were going to be out here touring a facility. We didn't know where, but then we saw a bunch of cars out here in the parking lot.

0:35Kate Dario:Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants to significantly expand its detention capacity to help support President Trump's mass deportation agenda. Here is how White House boarders are. Tom Homan put it last year.

0:47Jasmine Garsd:With us hiring at a massive rate, more boots on the ground, we're arresting more criminals, which means we need more bets.

0:54Kate Dario:It's not just criminals, though. For decades, administrations of both parties allowed many immigrants out on bond while their cases moved through the immigration court system. If they had longstanding ties to the community and no criminal record, they were candidates for release. The Trump administration implemented a new policy last summer that mandates detention for virtually any immigrant arrested by ICE without legal status. That has meant the number of immigrants in ICE custody has soared. From roughly 40 ,000 at the start of Trump's term to roughly 70 ,000 now. And the push to build, expand, and retrofit more facilities to detain these immigrants has ignited fierce and often bipartisan opposition.

1:42Jasmine Garsd:A majority of these locations wouldn't pass for any other venue, even possibly for a homeless shelter.

1:49Kate Dario:That is the Republican mayor of Columbia, South Carolina, Daniel Rickiman.

1:53Jasmine Garsd:Are they sanitary? Do they have the beds? Do they have the facilities for restrooms? Do they have places that they can provide the meals that are to standards that we would require anybody, including jails, to keep up with?

2:09Kate Dario:Consider this. To achieve his goal of mass deportations, Trump needs to build an infrastructure for mass detention. Communities across the country are saying they don't want to be part of it.

2:25Kate Dario:From NPR, I'm Mary Louise Kelly.

2:53Jasmine Garsd:in your corner and get 50 % off your first coaching session at strawberry.me slash NPR.

3:06Kate Dario:It's Consider This from NPR. President Trump's approval rating on immigration has steadily declined as voters have watched his mass deportation agenda and the backlash to it play out in America's streets. A recent Pew poll found that large-scale detention of immigrants is especially unpopular. So what happens when an ICE detention center is planned to pop up in your backyard? And Piers Jasmine Garst has been looking into that, along with Kate Dario with New Hampshire Public Radio.

3:38Jasmine Garsd:Welcome to you both. Hi. Hi. Thanks for having me.

3:41Kate Dario:Jasmine, first to you. You have been spending time in a few towns where these warehouses are being turned into detention centers. Take us there. Tell us what it looks like. Yeah.

3:52Jasmine Garsd:So one town I spent time in is Roxbury, New Jersey. Roxbury is a conservative town on the edge of Lake Muscanet Kong. And it's very picturesque. And overlooking the town on a sort of cliff over the lake, there's this massive warehouse, which ISIS purchased to turn into a detention center with nearly 500 ,000 square feet. So I drove up there for myself and I ended up talking to neighbors. I spoke to one young man, W. He's 22. The new detention center is like right across the street from his house. And he asked that we use only his first initial because he doesn't want retaliation from his new next door neighbor.

4:38Jasmine Garsd:He describes himself as a nature lover. And he says this construction is so invasive, he's thinking of moving away. I walk out in the morning to large semi trucks from my front porch. We just see the glowing lights. It's industrial hell.

4:57Kate Dario:It is what I don't want to see in the future of America.

5:01Jasmine Garsd:And Mary Louise, this is something that we're seeing play out more and more in towns across the country. Because what's happening is last year, Congress gave ICE facilities$45 billion over four years to expand attention. ICE is now projected this year to have 16 new facilities to hold around 1 ,500 people each and six other new large facilities to hold up to 10 ,000 people. And a lot of these are this, warehouses that are slated to be reconverted.

5:34Kate Dario:And tell me a little bit more about some of the concerns that people are raising, along with big trucks and glowing lights, as we just heard. And then on the flip side, I mean, I have to assume a new detention facility will bring new jobs to a town. Did you find anybody who likes all this?

5:50Jasmine Garsd:Yeah, there's all kinds of concerns. You know, there's the ethics of these centers and the conditions inside. You know, since October, we've had 24 deaths in ICE detention. And in the case of this town of Roxbury, there's just a huge concern over water resources and increased sewage. I should point out that I was unable to find anyone in this town who supported this. They have a weekly Roxbury town hall meeting and the mood has gotten really tense. Even though the town council says it's against this project, the people I spoke to said they feel their leaders aren't really doing enough. Here's one townsperson, Susanna Oliveri.

6:30Jasmine Garsd:She's a local and here she is confronting the council. Several real and valid suggestions have been made by people in this room, by concerned citizens, and all have been ignored. Instead, the vocal pro-ICE council members sitting here today are rolling out the red carpet at the ICE detention center. Are you guys even doing anything or are you just helping them unpack and carry in their boxes too? The mayor of Roxbury declined an interview.

6:57Kate Dario:Kate, I want to bring you in here from New Hampshire because I understand some communities have put a stop to these sites. Tell us what happened in the town of Merrimack.

7:08Jasmine Garsd:Yeah, so Merrimack, which isn't far from the Massachusetts border, found itself thrust into this conversation on Christmas Eve when The Washington Post reported it was on a list of towns where new detention facilities would be built around the country. From that moment across party lines, there was significant pushback against this plan. Merrimack, like New Hampshire overall, is a pretty purple place, but this was a rare issue that united people with totally different political ideologies, often citing different reasons for their opposition. Here are Merrimack residents Becky Tancred and Megan Burke, who showed up to oppose the plan at a protest in January.

7:44Jasmine Garsd:I asked them how they felt when they heard the plan to construct a detention center in their town. Surprise is a word. I couldn't believe it. It's just against everything that we stand for. Like, it's inhumane and no one deserves that treatment. It just doesn't make sense. Throughout this, everyone complained that DHS was providing almost no information. And for weeks, they refused to even confirm the plan. But then in late February, after two months of frustration and confusion, Republican Governor Kelly Ayotte met with former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in D.C. and then announced the plan was not going forward.

8:19Kate Dario:Not going forward. So a win there for local control. What lessons, Kate, have activists in Merrimack taken from all this? And are they sharing those lessons? Like are groups that oppose these new detention sites talking to each other? Yeah.

8:32Jasmine Garsd:So one organizer told me engaging people who may not normally make noise was crucial to this fight. And people also worked across party lines. And different communities across the country that were on this list started working together once this initial report came out. And now a grassroots group called No Ice NH is trying to use its success as a model, sharing its strategies and experiences with other groups in other states who are still fighting.

8:58Kate Dario:This is so interesting because it sounds like you both, through your reporting, are finding local bipartisan opposition. But I'm curious, does that translate into any real cross-party bipartisan federal effort to rein in ICE detention, Jasmine? No.

9:16Jasmine Garsd:First of all, I should say both Kate and I have reached out to ICE and the spokesperson told us that these aren't going to be warehouses, that they're going to be, quote, well-structured detention facilities, and that in Roxbury alone, it's expected to bring 1 ,300 jobs. Now, to your question, on a federal level, several bills have been proposed by Democrats, but, you know, they've gone nowhere in the Republican-controlled Congress. And so local activists I've spoken to say that their strategy right now is delay, delay, delay, and make it very expensive for the federal government to build these.

9:54Jasmine Garsd:Kate, how about you? Yeah. Following the Merrimack fight, New Hampshire's entire four-member congressional delegation, all of them Democrats, introduced legislation requiring ICE to get feedback from communities and approval from state and local officials before building any new immigrant detention facility. It would certainly give local officials a lot more leverage to approve or reject new proposals. But as Jasmine notes, these ideas face very long odds in the Republican-controlled House and Senate.

10:20Kate Dario:That is reporter Kate Dario with New Hampshire Public Radio and Jasmine Garst with NPR's immigration team. Thanks to you both.

10:27Jasmine Garsd:Thanks. Thanks for having me.

10:30Kate Dario:This episode was produced by Connor Donovan with audio engineering by Ted Meebane and Hannah Glovna. It was edited by Eric Westervelt and Sarah Handel. Our executive producer is Sammy Yenigan. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.

10:51Jasmine Garsd:Want to hear this podcast without sponsor breaks? Amazon Prime members can listen to Consider This sponsor-free through Amazon Music. Or you can also support NPR's vital journalism and get Consider This Plus at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org.