1. United States
2. N.Y.
3. Letter

I am writing to urge you to investigate and halt the Immigration and Customs Enforcement expansion that is placing detention warehouses and offices throughout our communities without public oversight or transparency. Federal records obtained by WIRED reveal that ICE and the Department of Homeland Security have conducted a secret, months-long campaign to rapidly expand ICE's physical presence with more than 150 leases and office expansions in nearly every state. The General Services Administration has been instructed to disregard usual government lease procurement procedures and hide lease listings, invoking the "unusual and compelling urgency" statute to bypass the Competition in Contracting Act, which normally requires open competition for federal building procurements. This expansion includes warehouse facilities explicitly intended for immigrant detention. DHS is pursuing a warehouse in Chester, New York as a detention center, with three ICE offices within 90 minutes in Roseland, Woodbury, and New Windsor. York, Pennsylvania has an office 80 minutes from a $90 million warehouse for processing and detention. Alexandria, Louisiana has an office 16 minutes from the Alexandria Staging Facility deportation hub. These warehouse detention facilities represent a dangerous shift toward mass incarceration infrastructure in our communities. Since January 2025, ICE has more than doubled to 22,000 officers and received nearly $80 billion through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. A September 10, 2025 memorandum stated the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor would grow to more than 3,500 attorneys and 1,000 support staff within three months. This massive expansion is occurring without congressional oversight or community input. The placement of ICE facilities near schools, childcare centers, hospitals, and places of worship creates fear in our communities and undermines public safety. Families avoid seeking medical care, children fear going to school, and communities lose trust in institutions meant to serve them. I urge you to demand full transparency on all ICE expansion plans, oppose funding for warehouse detention facilities, and require congressional approval before any further expansion proceeds. Our communities deserve to know what is being built in our neighborhoods.