ICE wants to warehouse people in Michigan, according to new report

Industrial warehouses weren’t built for people, but new reporting shows ICE plans to detain immigrants inside them—including at a proposed processing site in Highland Park, Michigan. 

MICHIGAN—Here’s a question all Michiganders should be asking ourselves: 

At what point does immigration enforcement stop being about the law and when does it turn into something else altogether?

Because recent reporting from The Washington Post reveals that the Trump administration is now planning to detain immigrants inside industrial warehouses—facilities designed for boxes, pallets, and freight, not people. And one of the places on that list is here in Michigan.

@gandernewsroomIndustrial warehouses weren’t built for people. But new reporting shows ICE plans to detain immigrants inside them—including at a proposed processing site in Highland Park, Michigan. Local officials say they were blindsided.♬ original sound – The Gander

Here’s the deal: 

According to internal ICE documents that were reviewed by The Washington Post, the Trump administration is actively planning a massive, nationwide expansion of immigrant detention by converting industrial warehouses into new holding facilities. 

Some of these sites would hold 5,000 to 10,000 people at a time. Others—what ICE calls “processing centers”—would still detain up to 1,500 people each. And one of those processing sites listed in the documents is located in Highland Park, Michigan. 

The goal, according to ICE officials, is to speed up deportations by moving people through detention as efficiently as possible—treating the process more like a shipping operation, except with people instead of packages. One ICE official even compared it to Amazon Prime. 

And let’s be clear about what this actually means:

Warehouses are built to store things—not people. They’re often poorly ventilated because they’re designed for short-term storage, not human life. And they’re usually isolated, far from families, lawyers, and public oversight. 

Even ICE’s own documents acknowledge that these buildings would need to be heavily modified just to make them barely livable for detainees.

Advocates say the whole concept is dehumanizing because it essentially reduces human beings to inventory that can be stacked, staged, and shipped out. Officials at the ACLU of Michigan are already sounding the alarm over the Trump administration’s latest warehousing plan. 

And here’s a fact that often gets lost in the rhetoric: Only about 5% of people detained by ICE in late 2025 had a violent criminal conviction. So, it isn’t like these are violent criminals being removed from our communities. These are neighbors, parents, workers, and people who are just waiting on paperwork. And now, under this new plan, they’d be locked inside warehouses—all because it’s faster, cheaper, and easier. 

Highland Park is also one of the smallest, poorest cities in Michigan—about 8,400 people, surrounded by Detroit, with limited political power and limited resources. And out of all the places ICE could’ve listed in Michigan, this is where the plan landed.

Civil rights advocates say that’s not a coincidence. 

Because when the federal government decides to warehouse human beings, they say it doesn’t drop those facilities just anywhere. It puts them where political power is limited, where residents already carry the weight of disinvestment, and where local officials are expected to absorb the decision, not challenge it.

According to local leaders, no one asked them about this. Highland Park Mayor Glenda McDonald told the Detroit News earlier this week that city officials haven’t heard a word from ICE or the Department of Homeland Security. They still don’t know which warehouse is being considered for the processing center. They don’t even know what the timeline would be. They found out the same way everyone else did—by reading the news.

So what’s really going on? Well, this isn’t just about immigration enforcement. 

It’s about what we’re willing to accept in our own backyard. Warehousing human beings in buildings designed for freight strips people of dignity. Doing it quietly, without warning, strips communities of their voice. And when virtually none of the people in ICE custody have violent criminal convictions, this stops being about public safety and starts being about political power.

Highland Park didn’t volunteer for this. Its leaders weren’t consulted. Its residents weren’t asked. But it ended up on the list anyway. And if that can happen here, it can happen anywhere. 

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