ICE is abandoning its plan to turn a massive northwest Salt Lake City warehouse into a detention facility that would have held up to 10,000 people, according to reporting from the Salt Lake Tribune, KUER, KSL, Axios Salt Lake City, and Fox 13. The Department of Homeland Security, which bought the building in March for $145 million, now plans to sell or transfer the property entirely.
A $145 Million Bet That Fell Apart
The purchase was one of the boldest moves in the federal government’s detention expansion push. In March 2026, DHS paid $145 million for the sprawling industrial warehouse on Salt Lake City’s northwest side, with plans to convert it into an immigration detention center for between 7,500 and 10,000 detainees — a facility that would have ranked among the largest in the United States.
The plan ran into trouble almost immediately. Lawsuits piled up, including claims that the government skipped the environmental review required under the National Environmental Policy Act before committing to the project. Local residents and officials mounted sustained opposition, arguing the city never asked for — and never wanted — a 10,000-bed detention complex in their backyard.
New Leadership, New Direction
The reversal comes under new DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin, who multiple outlets report is dropping the warehouse strategy altogether. Rather than fight through the legal challenges, the agency now plans to sell or transfer the building, according to the reports. No completed sale has been announced.
That decision effectively ends one of the most ambitious single-site detention proposals in the country — months of litigation and local resistance ended with the federal government walking away from its own investment.
The Money Question
The abandonment leaves taxpayers holding the receipt for a $145 million warehouse the government now says it does not want. Even if a sale eventually recovers part of that cost, the buy-first, answer-questions-later sequence raises an uncomfortable question: who signs off on spending nine figures on a facility before the legal challenges around it are resolved?
Government watchdogs have long warned about exactly this pattern — major federal property acquisitions made ahead of required reviews, leaving agencies exposed when courts or communities push back.
What This Means for Americans
For Salt Lake City residents who spent months fighting the project, the news lands as a rare turnaround, even if no one in Washington is framing it that way. The building sits empty, the plan is shelved, and the detention expansion fight now moves to other cities weighing similar proposals. For taxpayers everywhere, it is a $145 million reminder that how the government buys can matter as much as what it buys.
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