Trump’s ‘Prison Camp’ Threat Sparks Widespread MAGA Backlash
“To welcome such a facility over the welcome of human beings is to question the values that shape our community,” one resident said.
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
The Trump administration wants to expand immigration detention facilities nationwide, but even diehard supporters aren’t buying it.
As White House deputy chief of staff and chief architect of aggressive immigration policy, Stephen Miller, pushed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to target 3,000 arrests per day, the administration’s plans to convert industrial buildings into detention facilities began to take shape.
According to The Washington Post, internal documents show that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is seeking to acquire buildings in 23 towns across at least eight states, but the move is facing pushback in communities—even in places that voted for President Donald Trump, 79, in the most recent election.
In Virginia’s Hanover County, which Trump carried by 26 points in 2024, more than 500 protesters gathered after the county received a last-minute DHS letter notifying officials—without consultation—that a more than 40-acre warehouse would be occupied and rehabilitated “in support of ICE operations.”
“To welcome such a facility over the welcome of human beings is to question the values that shape our community,” Marc Stevenson, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia, told the Virginia Mercury about the proposed detention center.
The site’s owner halted the sale less than 48 hours after the protests, releasing a one-sentence statement confirming that the deal with DHS “will not be proceeding.”
Bipartisan opposition against detention facilities has been seen in MAGA country.
Alex Kormann/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images
Similarly, in Oklahoma City—the capital of Oklahoma, which voted for Trump by a 66.2 percent majority—Republican Mayor David Holt announced that a potential detention center deal has also fallen through. Holt thanked the property owners for confirming they are “no longer engaged” with the DHS, following widespread local opposition.
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In Roxbury, New Jersey, another area the president won in 2024, a grassroots protest movement emerged even before the DHS formalized its purchase attempt, as residents mobilized after The Washington Post revealed a draft solicitation to convert a local 470,000-square-foot warehouse into a detention center.
“That’s a very familiar, left-leaning starting point,” Tom Kelleher, who has been involved in the protests near the warehouse site, told The Jersey Vindicator. He added, “But wherever you are on the political spectrum, a prison in your town means your home value goes down. Roxbury becomes ‘the town with the jail.’”
A sign is raised in support of Renee Good and Alex Pretti at a candle light vigil during a peaceful protest in support of a 37-year-old man shot and killed by immigration officers in Minneapolis was under way Saturday evening along Olvera Street in Los Angeles.
Gina Ferazzi/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag
Responding to a Daily Beast request for comment, an ICE spokesperson said: “Secretary Noem has stated that she is willing to work with officials on both sides of the aisle to expand detention space to help ICE law enforcement carry out the largest deportation effort in American history.”
The spokesperson added that the “sites will undergo community impact studies and a rigorous due diligence process to make sure there is no hardship on local utilities or infrastructure prior to purchase.”
The backlash from MAGA against what MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow has termed “prison camps” comes amid high nationwide tensions over ICE tactics, fueled by the January deaths of two U.S. citizens at the hands of federal agents in Minnesota.
According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in late January, 64 percent of Americans oppose the policy of holding large numbers of immigrants in detention centers while their cases are decided.
Kristi Noem was given the moniker “ICE Barbie” for her love of dolling up on publicity stunts pushing the U.S. crackdown on migrants.
ALEX BRANDON/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Meanwhile, in mid-January, the number of people in detention hit a record 73,000 as the Associated Press reported that ICE has already doubled its facility network.
In January, as the Trump administration rolled out a $45 billion expansion of detention facilities funded by the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” ICE purchased a series of industrial properties: a $102 million warehouse in Washington County, Maryland; an $84 million site in Berks County, Pennsylvania; and a facility in Surprise, Arizona, for more than $70 million.
If the proposal to convert warehouses in 23 towns into detention centers is finalized, the resulting network would accommodate more than 80,000 detainees, the Post reported.
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