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FEATURING STACY SUH - A woman was caught on video in early February setting fire to a warehouse in Kansas City, Missouri, rumored to be considered for use as an ICE detention facility. The sale of the facility fell through. While that particular incident was an unorthodox means of opposing ICE’s rapid expansion of detention centers, communities around the country have been using more traditional means to counter detention centers–and they’ve been winning. 

The residents of Hutchins, a small town near Dallas, Texas, successfully stopped the sale and lease of a million square foot warehouse to ICE. A similar story played out in South Fulton, Georgia. 

Stacy Suh is the program director at Detention Watch Network, a national coalition building power through collective advocacy, grassroots organizing and strategic communications to abolish immigration detention in the United States. They are also a co-founder of Survived and Punished, a national organization working to end the criminalization of domestic and sexual violence survivors. Stacy spoke with Sonali Kolhatkar about the success stories of communities stopping ICE detention expansions.

ROUGH TRANSCRIPT:

Sonali Kolhatkar: Before we get to the way in which communities have been fighting back, remind us of just how many facilities ICE already runs around the country. People might have heard of the now infamous facility in Dilley, Texas where young children are being held, or the one in Florida that was nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz.” But there are centers all around the country, many of which, of course predate the increase in funding that ICE got before this rapid expansion enabled by the increase in budget from the Big Beautiful Bill. How many detention centers had ICE been running? 

Stacy Suh: So, currently there are over 200 detention centers across the country, and the Trump administration has been using every tool at its disposal to target, detain and deport as many people as possible in every area of public life. So, all across the country, there has been massive detention expansion, and it is no coincidence that even prior to this administration coming into power, that the US boasted the largest immigration detention system in the entire world. 

And with the summer [2025] funding that you mentioned that boosted billions of dollars to ICE, ICE now is the largest law enforcement agency in the US. And the budget actually rivals that of many of the world's militaries. 

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