Yet another of the planned ICE mega-detention facilities has fallen through, with the property owner refusing to sell a Hutchins, Texas, warehouse for the Trump administration’s planned use.
BNG was the first national news outlet to report on the location of the planned facility south of Dallas the U.S. Department of Homeland Security wanted to buy to house more than 9,000 detained immigrants. This was to be one of a network of at least seven such massive prisons, including three others in Texas.
On Monday, Feb. 16, Majestic Realty Co. said DHS had contacted them about purchasing the 1-million-square-foot property. The California-based company said it will not allow the property to be used as a detention facility for migrants.
Ed Roski Jr.
Majestic Realty is owned by Los Angeles Lakers and Kings co-owner and Republican donor Ed Roski Jr.
“We’re grateful for the long-term relationship we have with Mayor Mario Vasquez and the city of Hutchins and look forward to continuing our work to find a buyer or lease tenant that will help drive economic growth,” the company said in a statement.
This is a victory for opponents of the planned human warehouse — which has been compared to Nazi concentration camps — including city officials in Hutchins, a small community with limited infrastructure.
“Stopping this detention center from coming to our community began with the faith community organizing under the leadership of the Clergy League for Emergency Action and Response in partnership with Faith Commons,” said George Mason, founder of Faith Commons and an advocate for immigrant justice in Dallas. “Faith leaders made the moral argument against warehousing human beings. Coalitions of community leaders, politicians and social justice organizations came together to thwart the fated and unwelcome plan in Hutchins.”
According to The Marshall Project, this is one of several places across the nation where community resistance has skuttled deals for DHS to purchase massive warehouses: “City councils across the country, including in El Paso, Texas; Merrillville, Ind.; and Durant, Okla. have passed resolutions questioning or resisting plans to use warehouses for immigration detention.
- In Kansas City, Mo., the city council voted 12-1 in January to block federal detention center permits. Platform Ventures, the company that was selling the property, announced it would not go forward with the sale.
- In Salt Lake County, Utah, county Mayor Jenny Wilson pledged to use “all available legal and policy avenues” to oppose a DHS warehouse there. Shortly after, the owner of the property announced it had “no plans” to sell or lease the building to the federal government.
- In Ashland, Va., a warehouse owned by Canadian billionaire Jim Pattison was in the process of being sold to DHS in late January. After news broke, Pattison was hit with threats of a customer boycott of his Canadian grocery store chain and from advertisers suspending their contracts with his company. Within a couple of days, Pattison’s development company issued a statement that the transaction would not be going forward.
- In Byhalia, Miss., plans for a detention warehouse were stopped after Republican Sen. Roger Wicker raised concerns directly with DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.
Mario Vasquez
In Hutchins, “God answered our prayers,” said Mayor Mario Vasquez. He told the company using the warehouse for detention would “devastate” his town.
According to the Dallas Morning News, DHS already has purchased properties in El Paso and San Antonio for human warehouses.
The American Immigration Council reports when Trump took office in January 2025, about 40,000 people were being held in U.S. immigration detention. By the end of December, that number had risen by almost 75%, with more than 68,000 people held in immigration detention across the United States — in a system capable of holding only 70,000 people.
Reports of overcrowding and inhumane conditions in these detention facilities abound, and Congressional representatives have been fighting to maintain their right for spot inspections — which Noem wants to stop.
The administration “originally hoped to have nearly 108,000 immigration detention beds online by January 2026,” AIC reported. “And while the administration has not met this ambitious goal, the rapid and ongoing expansion of immigration detention has wrought enormous changes on immigration enforcement, trapping hundreds of thousands of noncitizens in an increasingly opaque world of remote jails and private prisons, where ICE can exert ever-greater pressure on the people it is jailing to give up, accept deportation and forego any chance to remain in the United States.”
Further, this immigrant detention system “is now on track to rival the entire federal criminal prison system by the end of President Trump’s second term in office. This expansion is fueled by an unprecedented increase in funding provided by Congress in President Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.”