MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
DHS and ICE are moving aggressively to fulfill President Trump's mass deportation effort. That is despite the ongoing partial government shutdown. And it means a huge push to buy and build and expand detention facilities. On average, DHS is holding nearly 70,000 immigrants every day, a scale of detention not seen since the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. The administration's unprecedented expansion of migrant detention facilities, including plans for mega-warehouses, is igniting fierce opposition in communities across the political and geographic spectrum.
DANIEL RICKENMANN: A majority of these locations wouldn't pass for any other venue, even possibly for a homeless shelter.
KELLY: That is the Republican mayor of Columbia, South Carolina, Daniel Rickenmann.
RICKENMANN: Are they sanitary? Do they have the beds? Do they have the facilities for restrooms? Do they have places that they can provide the meals that are to standards that we would require anybody, including jails, to keep up with?
KELLY: To delve into the immigration detention push and the pushback against it, we're joined by NPR's Jasmine Garsd and New Hampshire Public Radio's Kate Dario. Welcome to you two.
JASMINE GARSD, BYLINE: Hi.
KATE DARIO, BYLINE: Hi. Thanks for having me.
KELLY: Jasmine, first to you. You have been spending time in a few towns where these warehouses are being turned into detention centers. Take us there. Tell us what it looks like.
GARSD: Yeah, so one town I spent time in is Roxbury, New Jersey. Roxbury is a conservative town on the edge of Lake Musconetcong. And it's very picturesque. And overlooking the town, on a sort of cliff over the lake, there's this massive warehouse which ICE has purchased to turn into a detention center with nearly 500,000 square feet.
So I drove up there for myself. And I ended up talking to neighbors. I spoke to one young man, W. He's 22. The new detention center is, like, right across the street from his house. And he asks that we use only his first initial because he doesn't want retaliation from his new next-door neighbor. He describes himself as a nature lover. And he says this construction is so invasive, he's thinking of moving away.
W: I walk out in the morning to large semitrucks. From my front porch, we just see the glowing lights. It's industrial hell. It is what I don't want to see in the future of America.
GARSD: And Mary Louise, this is something that we're seeing play out more and more in towns across the country because what's happening is last year, Congress gave ICE facilities $45 billion over four years to expand detention. ICE is now projected this year to have 16 new facilities to hold around 1,500 people each and six other new large facilities to hold up to 10,000 people. And a lot of these are this, warehouses that are slated to be reconverted.
KELLY: And tell me a little bit more about some of the concerns that people are raising, along with big trucks and glowing lights, as we just heard. And then on the flip side, I mean, I have to assume a new detention facility will bring new jobs to a town. Did you find anybody who likes all this?
GARSD: Yeah. There's all kinds of concerns. You know, there's the ethics of these centers and the conditions inside. You know, since October, we've had 24 deaths in ICE detention. And in the case of this town of Roxbury, there's just a huge concern over water resources and increased sewage.
I should point out that I was unable to find anyone in this town who supported this. They have a weekly Roxbury town hall meeting, and the mood has gotten really tense. Even though the town council says it's against this project, the people I spoke to said they feel their leaders aren't really doing enough. Here's one townsperson, Susana Oliveri. She's a local. And here she is confronting the council.
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SUSANA OLIVERI: Several real and valid suggestions have been made by people in this room, by concerned citizens, and all have been ignored. Instead, the vocal pro-ICE council members sitting here today are rolling out the red carpet at the ICE detention center. Are you guys even doing anything? Or are you just helping them unpack and carry in their boxes, too?
GARSD: The mayor of Roxbury declined an interview.
KELLY: Kate, I want to bring you in here from New Hampshire because I understand some communities have put a stop to these sites. Tell us what happened in the town of Merrimack.
DARIO: Yeah. So Merrimack, which isn't far from the Massachusetts border, found itself thrust into this conversation on Christmas Eve when The Washington Post reported it was on a list of towns where new detention facilities would be built around the country. From that moment, across party lines, there was significant pushback against this plan. Merrimack, like New Hampshire overall, is a pretty purple place. But this was a rare issue that united people with totally different political ideologies, often citing different reasons for their opposition.
Here are Merrimack residents, Becky Tancrede and Megan Burke, who showed up to oppose the plan at a protest in January. I asked them how they felt when they heard the plan to construct a detention center in their town.
BECKY TANCREDE: Surprise is the word (laughter). I couldn't believe it.
MEGHAN BURKE: It's just against everything that we stand for. Like, it's inhumane. And no one deserves that treatment. It just doesn't make sense.
DARIO: Throughout this, everyone complained that DHS was providing almost no information, and for weeks, they refused to even confirm the plan. But then, in late February, after two months of frustration and confusion, Republican Governor Kelly Ayotte met with former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in D.C. and then announced the plan was not going forward.
KELLY: Not going forward, so a win there for local control. What lessons, Kate, have activists in Merrimack taken from all this? And I - are they sharing those lessons? Like, are groups that oppose these new detention sites talking to each other?
DARIO: Yeah, so one organizer told me engaging people who may not normally make noise was crucial to this fight. And people also worked across party lines. And different communities across the country that were on this list started working together once this initial report came out. And now, a grassroots group called No ICE NH is trying to use its success as a model, sharing its strategies and experiences with other groups in other states who are still fighting.
KELLY: This is so interesting because it sounds like you both, through your reporting, are finding local, bipartisan opposition. But I'm curious, does that translate into any real cross-party, bipartisan federal effort to rein in ICE detention, Jasmine?
GARSD: No. First of all, I should say, both Kate and I have reached out to ICE. And a spokesperson told us that these aren't going to be warehouses, that they're going to be, quote, "well-structured detention facilities" and that in Roxbury alone, it's expected to bring 1,300 jobs. Now, to your question, on a federal level, several bills have been proposed by Democrats. But, you know, they've gone nowhere in the Republican-controlled Congress. And so local activists I've spoken to say that their strategy right now is delay, delay, delay and make it very expensive for the federal government to build these.
KELLY: Kate, how about you?
DARIO: Yeah, following the Merrimack fight, New Hampshire's entire four-member congressional delegation - all of them Democrats - introduced legislation requiring ICE to get feedback from communities and approval from state and local officials before building any new immigrant detention facility. It would certainly give local officials a lot more leverage to approve or reject new proposals. But as Jasmine notes, these ideas face very long odds in the Republican-controlled House and Senate.
KELLY: That is reporter Kate Dario with New Hampshire Public Radio and Jasmine Garsd with NPR's immigration team. Thanks to you both.
DARIO: Thanks.
GARSD: Thanks for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF BADBADNOTGOOD AND GHOSTFACE KILLAH SONG, "STREET KNOWLEDGE") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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