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The owner of a Texas warehouse earmarked as a detention centre for illegal immigrants has refused to sell or lease the property to the US government in a backlash against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown.
Majestic Realty, owner of the facility in Hutchins, Texas, said it had been approached by the US Department of Homeland Security about a potential sale.
But the company said it “has not and will not enter into any agreement for the purchase or lease of any building to the [DHS] for use as a detention facility”.
The decision came after local outcry against DHS’s plans that reflect mounting public concern about the president’s campaign against undocumented immigrants and particularly the heavy-handed tactics adopted by agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“Everyone sees what’s happening now,” said Eric Folkerth, senior pastor at Kessler Park United Methodist Church in Dallas, who has been involved in local efforts to halt the scheme. “There have been enough reports about people with no criminal record being detained, and people just don’t want this kind of thing in their town.”
The anger at ICE’s deployment in American cities reached new heights last month when federal agents shot dead two US citizens protesting the agency’s methods in the northern city of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
According to a poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research earlier this month, about six in 10 adults said Trump had “gone too far” in sending federal immigration agents into US cities.
Other surveys find approval of the president’s handling of immigration has plummeted to an all-time low.
The DHS has been seeking ways to expand its capacity for detaining, processing and deporting migrants found to be living in the US illegally, and was allocated billions in new funds to rent or build facilities under Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill”.
The Hutchins warehouse was one of four new locations in Texas the department identified as potential sites. It has purchased properties in San Antonio and El Paso, according to local media.
Local news reports said the Hutchins facility would have housed up to 9,500 detainees — more than the total population of the city, which is 12 miles from central Dallas.
An ICE spokesperson said the department had “no new detention centres to announce at this time”.
“Every day, DHS is conducting law enforcement activities across the country to keep Americans safe,” they continued. “It should not come as news that ICE will be making arrests in states across the US and is actively working to expand detention space.”
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem “aims 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 said.
But as soon as the local community got wind of the plan for Hutchins, opposition began to build. Folkerth said that activists bombarded Majestic Realty with emails and phone calls urging them to desist from any deal with DHS. “People got through to them,” he said. “It really was the public pressure.”
A recent town hall meeting in Hutchins, footage of which has circulated widely on social media, provided another platform for locals to express their misgivings about the detention facility. “ICE can’t be allowed to secretly haul in migrants like cattle into Hutchins,” one angry resident told city councillors.
At the same meeting, Hutchins’ mayor Mario Vasquez expressed his opposition to the plan. “If you think that anybody up here is on board with it you’re in the wrong building,” he said. “We’re building a community here. This don’t [sic] match what we’re trying to do here.”
Vasquez later welcomed Majestic Realty’s decision. “God answered our prayers.”
Jasmine Crockett, the Democratic congresswoman from Texas, said she was “relieved” that the warehouse’s owner had ruled out a sale or lease to the DHS.
“A detention facility of this scale would have placed significant strain on local infrastructure, stretched emergency services and raised legitimate public safety and humanitarian concerns,” she said. “These are not decisions . . . that should ever be imposed on a community without its consent.”
Majestic said it was “grateful” for its “long-term relationship” with the city of Hutchins and its mayor and “look forward to continuing our work to find a buyer or lease tenant that will help drive economic growth”.
