Dismantling Detention

Dismantling Detention

The Trump administration is converting warehouses across the country into mass immigration detention facilities, part of a broader agenda to detain and disappear our neighbors on a massive scale. This resource breaks down what we're demanding, how communities are fighting back, and how you can take action.

QUICK OVERVIEW:

  • The Trump administration is expanding the detention of human beings at a scale that’s hard to comprehend. They are buying up warehouses, reopening shuttered facilities, and funneling billions of dollars into a mass detention infrastructure. Normalizing this scale of detention is a deliberate strategy straight from the authoritarian playbook. Warehouse facilities are built for storing products, not people. They expose those detained to unsafe, inhumane conditions, harm the communities where they’re sited, and lock states and localities into long-term detention infrastructure with no community input. We demand an end to this expansion and the closure of every detention site.
  • This fight is winnable. Communities across the country have already stopped more than a dozen proposed sites, in red states and blue. Property owners have walked away from deals under public pressure. City councils have passed moratoriums. Republican senators have come out against proposed facilities in their own states. We’ve even seen a federal judge halt construction at a site ICE had already purchased in Maryland. The mass deportation agenda is deeply unpopular, and organized communities are proving it can be stopped.
  • Indivisibles nationwide are putting our megaphone and our people power behind the partners who are already on the ground. Immigrant-led organizations and local communities have been fighting detention expansion for years. Our role is to add fuel to a fire they have been stoking. If we show up visibly and publicly, we can block proposed sites from being built. We can hold existing facilities accountable. We can make Trump’s detention agenda too politically toxic to sustain.
  • Our position is clear. Cancel the warehouse detention plan and stop every conversion immediately. Reject all public funding, permits, and local resources that enable ICE to expand detention. Require full transparency and real community consent before any federal detention action moves forward. Decisions about detention cannot be made behind closed doors.
  • Communities across the country are taking action. People in cities and towns everywhere are showing up visibly and publicly to demand an end to detention expansion. Whether there is a detention center in your backyard or not, there is a role for you in this fight.

READY TO TAKE ACTION NOW?

National Day of Action Stop ICE Warehouse Detention

If you’re ready to act now, here are quick links to find or host an action in your community on April 25th and to access the tools and resources we’ll need to fight detention expansion long term. Otherwise, read on for everything you need to know about this fight and how you can get involved.

📅 Join the April 25th Communities Not Cages National Day of Action. Find an event here or, if there’s no event near you, sign up to host one. 

✅ More Ways to Take Action. Find resources, tactics, and tools to fight detention expansion in your community.

All actions taken under this campaign are nonviolent and lawful. A core principle of Indivisible and our partners is a commitment to nonviolent action. All participants are expected to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation and to act lawfully at all events.

THE WONKY DETAILS

THE PROBLEM

Image captured on April 17, 2026. This map is provided by Project Salt Box. Indivisible has not independently verified the accuracy of the information displayed.
  • The Trump administration is pursuing a mass detention expansion at a massive scale. ICE is currently detaining more than 70,000 people and has stated plans to expand to 100,000. To get there, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has scouted or purchased approximately 23 warehouses nationwide, with individual facilities designed to hold between 1,500 and 10,000 people each. Trump’s MAGA allies in Congress funded this agenda with over $170 billion for DHS, including $45 billion specifically for detention expansion.
  • These are not facilities designed for people. They are former industrial buildings, built for storing products, located in industrial zones. They lack the basic infrastructure required for human habitation: adequate water, sewer, ventilation, heating and cooling, and life-safety systems. They are purchased or fast-tracked in ways that bypass local land-use decisions and community input. Often they sit in working-class communities and communities of color already burdened by industrial activity. 
  • The harms to surrounding communities are real. Detention facilities increase surveillance and enforcement in the neighborhoods around them. They strain local infrastructure, including roads, water systems, and emergency services. They lock states and localities into long-term detention infrastructure they did not choose and cannot easily undo. And they tie local communities to an industry built on caging people.
  • ICE’s existing detention system already has a well-documented history of neglect and abuse. In 2025 alone, 32 people died in ICE custody, the deadliest year the agency has seen in more than two decades. People died of seizures, heart failure, stroke, and respiratory failure. In case after case, families reported that their loved ones had asked for medical care and been ignored. And because these sites often sit in industrial zones far from population centers, accountability is harder to demand and harder to enforce.

OUR CORE DEMANDS

These are the demands we are organizing around. They apply to every community fighting a proposed or existing detention site.

  1. Cancel the warehouse detention plan and stop every conversion immediately.
    • Local governments must abandon any plan to convert a warehouse into an immigration detention or processing facility. Warehouses are not appropriate for human confinement. Expanding detention through industrial spaces deepens harm to people and communities. Any such project must be canceled in full, with no detention use allowed at that site.
  2. Reject all public funding, permits, and local resources that enable detention expansion.
    • Local governments must refuse to provide any funding, permits, services, or cooperation that would enable DHS or ICE to operate a detention facility. Public dollars and local infrastructure should not be used to cage people. These resources must instead go toward policies and services that support all members of our community.
  3. Require full transparency and real community consent before any federal detention action moves forward.
    • Local officials must demand full public disclosure of all plans, contracts, and intended uses of any proposed detention site. They must commit to opposing any project that moves forward without meaningful community input. All required environmental review laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act, must be fully followed. Decisions about detention cannot be made behind closed doors.

TAKE ACTION

📅 Join the April 25th National Day of Action. Find or host an action in your community on April 25th.

✅ More Ways to Take Action. Find resources, tactics, and tools to fight detention expansion in your community.

What else can you do?

  • Strengthen your local connections and neighborhood response systems. Join local mutual aid efforts, sign up for grocery deliveries, or find other ways to help your neighbors.
  • Create space for grief, solidarity, and collective action. 
  • Join or start a local rapid response network, so that your community is prepared to mobilize quickly against a new detention facility, a new surge in militarized enforcement from the regime, or other threats posed to you and your neighbors.
  • Paint murals, create art installations, host cookouts, and highlight joy in this fight to assert the dignity of our immigrant friends and family members. 
  • Support immigrant led organizations working on the ground; follow their lead and where appropriate propose tangible ways you could help with their next initiative.

Frequently Asked Questions

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