ICE purchases Pennsylvania warehouse for $87.4 million as deportation infrastructure expands

Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $87.4 million in cash for a 518,000-square-foot warehouse in Hamburg, Pennsylvania on January 29, the latest in a string of facility acquisitions as the Trump administration scales up its deportation capacity. The building, located in Upper Bern Township along Interstate-78, previously operated as a logistics center and, before that, hosted rodeos and demolition derbies as Mountain Springs Arena.

The Hamburg purchase is one of four warehouses ICE acquired in January alone, with the agency spending nearly $380 million that month on properties in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Arizona. According to Bloomberg, the Trump administration is seeking to purchase 23 such facilities nationwide. The Hamburg location could reportedly house around 1,500 migrants.

ICE has not officially confirmed the intended use of the properties and did not respond to requests for comment. But the timing tells its own story.

The Numbers Behind the Expansion

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem laid out the administration's first-year results in a statement that frames the warehouse acquisitions as infrastructure catching up to policy success:

"In President Trump's first year back in office, nearly three million illegal aliens have left the U.S. because of the Trump administration's crackdown on illegal immigration, including an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations and more than 675,000 deportations."

According to the Daily Mail, those figures represent a dramatic acceleration from prior years. The 2.2 million self-deportations alone suggest that enforcement credibility—the belief that illegal presence will actually result in removal—has been restored after years of erosion. When illegal immigrants believe the law will be enforced, many choose to leave voluntarily. When they believe it won't, they stay.

Noem's statement extended beyond immigration enforcement to the broader security portfolio:

"In the last year, fentanyl trafficking at the southern border has also been cut by more than half compared to the same period in 2024."

"The U.S. Coast Guard alone seized enough cocaine to kill more than 177 million Americans."

The fentanyl reduction matters because it directly contradicts the left's preferred narrative that enforcement doesn't work and that only "addressing root causes" can stem the flow of drugs and people across the border. A more than 50 percent reduction in fentanyl trafficking suggests that physical interdiction and credible enforcement do, in fact, reduce smuggling operations.

Building Capacity for the Long Term

The warehouse acquisitions represent something the previous administration never seriously attempted: building the physical infrastructure necessary to sustain immigration enforcement at scale. You cannot deport 675,000 people without somewhere to process and hold them. You cannot maintain enforcement credibility without the capacity to back up that credibility.

ICE also purchased a warehouse in Tremont, Pennsylvania for more than $119 million. That facility, a former Big Lots distribution center that closed when the company filed for bankruptcy, could hold up to 7,500 detainees according to Bloomberg's reporting. Additional properties were acquired in Hagerstown, Maryland and Surprise, Arizona.

The Tremont acquisition has drawn local attention. Joyce Wetzel, who owns Kids-R-Kids Childcare Center less than half a mile from the warehouse, spoke to local media about the purchase:

"I don't like it, but there's nothing you can do. I'm trying to reassure my parents and my staff that we should be okay."

Wetzel's reaction is understandable. Nobody wants federal detention infrastructure in their backyard. But her concern—and her resignation to the reality—illustrates a broader truth that immigration restrictionists have understood for years: enforcement requires facilities, and facilities have to go somewhere.

The Geography of Enforcement

The Hamburg warehouse sits less than a mile from an Amazon fulfillment center, with a 10,000-acre hunting area to the north. It's accessible via Interstate-78, making it logistically practical for transport operations. The Tremont facility occupies space vacated by retail bankruptcy—a reminder that while some parts of the economy contract, others expand to meet different needs.

These aren't random purchases. The administration is building a distributed network of processing capacity that can handle sustained enforcement operations without the bottlenecks that plagued previous efforts. When detention space runs out, enforcement slows. When enforcement slows, illegal crossings accelerate. The facilities break that cycle.

Fiscal Discipline Amid Expansion

Noem's statement included a figure that rarely accompanies government expansion:

"Meanwhile, we have saved taxpayers more than $13.2 billion here at DHS."

Spending $380 million on warehouses while claiming $13.2 billion in savings sounds contradictory until you consider what illegal immigration actually costs. Every illegal immigrant who self-deports rather than remaining in the country reduces long-term costs for schools, hospitals, courts, and social services. Every fentanyl shipment interdicted reduces the downstream costs of addiction treatment, emergency services, and lost productivity.

The facilities are capital investments. The savings are operational. Both can be true simultaneously.

What Enforcement Actually Looks Like

For years, open-borders advocates portrayed immigration enforcement as either impossible or immoral—often both. They argued that deportation was impractical at scale, that self-deportation was a myth, and that the only humane approach was some form of mass amnesty combined with vague promises to "address root causes" in Central America.

The first-year numbers demolish that argument. Nearly three million people have left the country. Fentanyl trafficking has dropped by more than half. The administration isn't just talking about enforcement—it's building the infrastructure to make it permanent.

Noem summarized the stakes plainly:

"Countless lives have been saved, communities have been strengthened, and the American people have been put first again."

That last phrase matters. Immigration policy for decades operated as if the interests of illegal immigrants and the interests of American citizens were morally equivalent—or worse, as if American interests should be subordinated to humanitarian abstractions. The current approach inverts that priority structure.

The Infrastructure of Credibility

Two dozen individuals were seen touring the Hamburg warehouse on January 15, two weeks before the purchase was finalized. One identified himself as an ICE official. The quiet acquisition process—no press releases, no public comment—reflects an administration focused on execution rather than announcement.

This is what serious governance looks like. You don't hold press conferences about warehouse purchases. You buy the warehouses, staff them, and use them. The results speak for themselves.

The 23 facilities the administration is reportedly seeking would create a national infrastructure capable of processing deportations at a pace previous administrations claimed was impossible. Each facility represents thousands of detention beds. Each bed represents enforcement capacity. Each deportation represents a law enforced.

For communities like Hamburg and Tremont, the facilities may be unwelcome neighbors. But the alternative—continued illegal immigration, continued fentanyl deaths, continued erosion of the rule of law—is worse.

The warehouses are filling a void that federal policy created over decades of non-enforcement. The Trump administration is simply building what should have existed all along.