Editor’s Note: This post is from our data newsletter, the Rural Index, headed by Sarah Melotte, the Daily Yonder’s data reporter. Subscribe to get a weekly map or graph straight to your inbox.
Across the country, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been purchasing warehouses for accelerating detention operations, a trend concentrated in metropolitan areas but increasingly reaching a handful of rural communities, where the loss of property tax revenue can hit far harder. Once federally owned, properties become tax-exempt, stripping income from municipalities and school districts that might rely on already-thin tax bases.
What the Trump administration is doing to undocumented immigrants – or anyone suspected of being one – is abhorrent. Enacting violence on innocent people is wrong regardless of whether it carries economic consequences. I want to be clear about that. At the Daily Yonder, we’ve reported on these abuses and will continue to bring them to light.
At the same time, it’s also essential to examine the broader, often underreported impacts of Trump’s policies. Part of that work means bringing transparency to how those policies hurt rural communities. One area I focus on is rural economics, and Trump’s policies are hurting rural economies.
Since Trump’s 2025 budget reconciliation bill added more than $170 billion in additional spending for immigration-related activities, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been making purchases for hundreds of millions of dollars across the nation to expand its immigration detention operations. Bloomberg called it one of the largest expansions in detention capacity in our nation’s history.
Proponents of expanding detention centers often cite the supposed boost to local economies, particularly through job creation. But a 2023 report by the Innovation Law Lab, an advocacy organization focused on ending mass incarceration, found that these centers don’t always deliver on those promises. That’s in part because they hire workers from outside the community and prioritize profit maximization.
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The map above shows nonmetropolitan, or rural, communities that either have existing detention facilities or where ICE has recently purchased warehouses for use as detention centers.
Data for this analysis comes from Project Saltbox, an organization that focuses on holding the DHS accountable to the public.
There are 62 facilities in rural counties, 54 of which are existing detention centers, not new purchases. At least 30 of these sites are county jails contracted by ICE to hold immigration detainees. These facilities are in blue on the map.
There is one new purchase in a rural county, shown in red. In rural Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, ICE bought a $120 million warehouse to convert into a detention facility. Local losses are expected to exceed $1 million in annual tax revenue. The purchase has also sparked fierce local pushback, with concerns that the area’s sewage plant is too small and state officials warning the facility could violate drinking water and pollution laws.
There are also two prospective warehouse purchases in rural America. One of these facilities is in rural Starke, Florida, where ICE plans to house detainees from across the country, including individuals arrested for misdemeanor immigration violations.
The other prospective site is at a former Big Lots distribution center in rural Durant, Oklahoma, in Bryan County. In an effort to resist indiscriminate property purchases by the federal government, Durant City Council passed an ordinance that would require a permit for a detention center. The Choctaw Tribal Council also passed a resolution to ban placement of an ICE facility in Durant. Although these resolutions might not necessarily hold up in court, public pressure campaigns have successfully shut down ICE activity in places like Kansas City, Missouri.
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