ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning to roll out a new strategy nationwide, retrofitting large warehouses into detention centers and processing sites.
ICE Senior Advisor David Venturella told 9 Investigates on Friday that a vacant warehouse in Sunbridge could be the site of ICE’s next detention facility.
So far, there’s no indication of how officials with the City of Orlando or Orange County will respond, or whether any action will be taken.
ICE officials told us they toured the site on Friday and that, at this point, the idea of any detention center in Orlando is purely “exploratory.”
Some cities in other parts of the country are trying to block ICE from setting up extensive detention facilities in their jurisdictions.
On Thursday, Kansas City, Missouri’s council passed a five-year moratorium on non-municipal detention centers. The intention is to block ICE from building a proposed detention center within city limits.
In Roxbury, New Jersey, the council passed a resolution opposing ICE’s plan to convert a 470,000-square-foot warehouse into a processing site.
The two cities are among the 23 locations the Washington Post reported in December where ICE was looking to hire contractors.
Washington Post reporter Douglas MacMillan tells Eyewitness News ICE’s internal documents reveal the agency is considering setting up detention centers or processing sites in these cities.
“It appears that the federal government is quietly working with real estate brokers and building owners to assess the possibility of turning warehouses into detention centers, really without any meaningful input so far from the local governments that would be drastically affected by these plans,” MacMillan told Channel 9.
MacMillan noted that acting ICE Director Todd Lyons has previously said publicly that he wanted to see a deportation process “more like Amazon Prime, but with human beings,” according to reports.
“This plan for a hub-and-spoke model emerged, where they want to hold people in dozens of smaller facilities around the country that house 500 to 1,500 people for a few weeks to process them. Then they would be transported to larger warehouse facilities around the country,” MacMillan said.
MacMillan said the larger detention centers could hold up to 10,000 detainees each.
The preliminary draft list obtained by The Post did not include Orlando.
At this point, it’s unclear which cities are on ICE’s final list.
Several local leaders have pointed to the zoning of the potential Orlando site on Transport Drive.
It is currently zoned for industrial use, raising concerns that it was not built for human habitation.
Officials are questioning how the warehouse would meet code and zoning requirements if ICE moves forward with the plan.
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