Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn is pretty hyped that she just got confirmation from the Department of Homeland Security that the agency “will not move forward with the proposed ICE facility” in Lebanon, Tennessee.
Weird. You’d think that Blackburn would be all in on having an Immigration and Customs Enforcement mass detention facility in her beloved state, given how much she praised ICE agents as “heroes” after one of them murdered Minneapolis resident Renee Good. The primary role of those “heroes” is to arrest, assault, abduct, and imprison immigrants. Why wouldn’t you want the most visible fruit of their labors—sprawling warehouse prisons—in your state?
ICE had said that the warehouse in Lebanon would bring 7,216 jobs to the area, contribute $829.5 million in gross domestic product, and bring in more than $167 million in tax revenue. How dare Sen. Blackburn block the good people of Tennessee from all these jobs and money!
Blackburn is being NIMBY as hell here, obviously. But there is one reason she has a right to be irked: ICE officials didn’t actually tell anyone that they purchased a giant warehouse in Lebanon, which is kind of a weird thing to do when you are busy touting all the economic benefits to the surrounding community. Why would you keep that on the down low?
Blackburn can join New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte, a fellow Republican who was also happy to announce earlier this week that after she had a little chat with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, there would no longer be an ICE mega-prison in the Granite State.
Of course, Ayotte then showered praise on Noem for “continued cooperation between DHS and New Hampshire law enforcement to secure our northern border, keep dangerous criminals off our streets, and ensure our communities are safe.”
So, gotta secure the border, gotta keep those dangerous immigrant criminals off the streets—but definitely cannot incarcerate them in Merrimack, New Hampshire. Got it, governor!
Blackburn and Ayotte are in bad company with GOP Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who also reached out to Noem to explain that his state, of course, should not have to bear the burden of the brutal immigration mass incarceration scheme the Trump administration has going, even though Wicker otherwise adores it.
And let’s not forget that Maine Sen. Susan Collins engaged in some maximum brow-furrowing to make sure that ICE thugs didn’t invade her state. You will not be surprised to learn that the Republican Collins did not see fit to remark on the brutality of ICE’s actions in Minnesota while getting her precious state out from under the same threat.
Related | Republicans love Trump's ICE agenda—unless it's in their state
This is going to keep happening, both because ICE has so much money to spend on warehouses and because many of them were actually slated to open in red states. That might be because the administration figured that states that loooooove private prisons would also adore ICE facilities, but it turns out that is not the case!
Pretty much everybody hates the idea of these concentration camps being in their backyard. That’s why pressure on companies initially inclined to sell to ICE or run warehouses for ICE has worked in multiple states. Even the most craven capitalists apparently don’t want to be known as your friendly local concentration camp owner.
The Trump administration is trying to get around this problem by just not telling local or state governments where or when they’ve purchased facilities, in the hopes that they can somehow just get them built out … before anyone notices?
It seems unlikely they’re going to be able to stand up a prison for 5,000+ people without the city or county figuring it out. Some warehouses are even being purchased through third-party brokerages so that no one is even aware it’s ICE.
Surprise, Arizona was the site of a secret purchase, and even Paul Gosar, one of the dumbest, hardest-right members of Congress, was a wee bit, um, surprised about the whole thing and demanded “transparency” from Noem.
But after she sent Gosar a fact-free letter promising that totally, yes, DHS will absolutely do everything by the book and all incarceration will be super safe and humane, Gosar effusively thanked her and then pivoted to somehow blaming the Democrats and the shutdown, because of course.
President Donald Trump’s brutal immigration agenda is spectacularly unpopular. And while Republicans are happy to fantasize about mega-warehouses holding immigrants in desperately terrible conditions, they just don’t want the whole unseemly mess in their backyards.
Lisa Needham 2026-02-25T23:30:05Z From Daily Kos
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