In an effort to carry out President Donald Trump’s goal of mass deportations of undocumented immigrants, the federal government is creating a network of immigrant detention centers across the country in a plan outlined by documents released by New Hampshire’s governor last week.
On Thursday, Gov. Kelly Ayotte released two documents she said she received from the Department of Homeland Security — which houses Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, the agencies conducting the deportations — that lay out the blueprint for “the Detention Reengineering Initiative.”
The plan calls for spending $38.2 billion allocated by Congress in this past summer’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act to acquire and retrofit warehouses or other sites across the country into eight “large scale detention centers” and 16 “processing sites.” That’s in addition to 10 existing “turnkey” facilities ICE already operates. In total, ICE is attempting to create 92,600 beds across all the facilities. The documents specify that this isn’t a temporary measure and that the sites will “serve as ICE’s long-term detention solution.”
The regional processing sites will house an average daily population of 1,000 to 1,500 detained immigrants for an average of three to seven days, while the large-scale detention centers will be capable of holding 7,000 to 10,000 immigrants for average stays of less than 60 days. The idea is that immigrants detained by ICE will be processed at one of the regional sites before being transferred to a large-scale detention center to await deportation. The federal government is seeking contractors to create and operate these facilities.
In the documents, ICE calls this “a new detention model” that “aims to meet the growing demand for bedspace and streamline the detention and removal process, focusing on non-traditional facilities built specifically to support ICE’s needs.” ICE plans to have the new facilities operational by Nov. 30.
“These facilities will ensure the safe and humane civil detention of aliens in ICE custody, while helping ICE effectuate mass deportations,” the documents read. “This new model will allow ICE to create an efficient detention network by reducing the total number of contracted detention facilities in use while increasing total bed capacity, enhancing custody management, and streamlining removal operations.”
The documents specify that contractors will be responsible for (in collaboration with ICE personnel) providing food, clothing, hygiene products, bedding, and recreation; ensuring medical, dental, mental health, and emergency care; facilitating legal access through things like visitation spaces and law libraries; providing religious spaces; operating food services, security and detention, transportation, detainee processing, custodial/laundry services, IT, recreational space, dormitories, courtroom spaces, intake/processing zones, cafeterias, as well as amenities for ICE and contractor staff like office spaces and exercise facilities.
Detention facilities where ICE and CBP are already operating have been plagued by allegations of inhumane treatment.
In the first six weeks of 2026, six people died in ICE custody nationwide, according to the ACLU of New Hampshire. Multiple lawsuits have been filed by civil rights groups representing immigrants in Maryland, California, and Chicago over inhumane treatment in federal immigrant detention centers. At Florida’s infamous Everglades Detention Facility — which officials have dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” — human rights advocates described “inhuman and unsanitary conditions including overflowing toilets with fecal matter seeping into where people are sleeping, limited access to showers, exposure to insects without protective measures, lights on 24 hours a day, poor quality food and water, and lack of privacy — including cameras above the toilets.” Advocates also cite “medical care (that) is inconsistent, inadequate, or denied all together,” and treatment that “amounts to torture,” according to a December report from Amnesty International.
What we know about the New Hampshire facility
The documents went into specific detail about the regional processing site planned for Merrimack.
The documents describe a roughly 325,000-square-foot detention facility with a projected 400 to 600 beds at 50 Robert Milligan Parkway. ICE said it will spend $158 million retrofitting the vacant warehouse that currently sits there and an additional $146 million to operate the facility for the first three years.
It’s unclear which contractor the federal government will hire to retrofit the facility and to assist in operations.
ICE estimates the retrofit phase of the project will create 1,252 jobs and each year of operation will create 265 jobs. That would generate, ICE says, $119 million during retrofit and $36.6 million annually once the facility is operational in associated labor income in Merrimack. It would also bring in $31.2 million during retrofit in local, state, and federal tax revenue and $10.7 million annually, ICE said.
Reports of the facility first emerged in a Washington Post story in December, and the news was met with protests in Merrimack and pushback from local officials. In January, state documents obtained and released by the ACLU of New Hampshire confirmed the plans. Ayotte said at the time that was the first official confirmation of the facility she received. However, last week during a U.S. Senate hearing in Washington, D.C., Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, said his team had discussed the facility with Ayotte and provided her with an economic impact summary. Ayotte immediately denied this in a statement, calling it “simply not true.” Later that day, Ayotte released documents she said she’d just received from the federal government.
The original documents included a reference to “the Oklahoma economy.” However, after the Bulletin and other news organizations reported on the error, Ayotte released a new set of updated documents with the same figures but without the Oklahoma reference.
Asked if this was a copy-and-paste error and what the error says about the veracity of the numbers in the documents, a DHS spokesperson wrote in an email to the Bulletin: “The initial Economic Impact Review for an ICE facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire that was sent to Gov. Ayotte’s office had a single typo in an opening line. ICE immediately sent a corrected report to the Governor’s office the moment we were made aware of the typo. The report was obviously intended for New Hampshire, and that fact is clear throughout.”
DHS did not respond to follow-up questions about when the document was initially sent to Ayotte.