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One of the 16 processing sites, which can each hold between 500 and 1,500 beds, is planned for Merrimack, New Hampshire.
A New Hampshire town has been reportedly blindsided by the Trump administration’s plans for a new immigration processing site, according to a draft plan reported by The Washington Post.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning to renovate industrial warehouses across the country to to hold more than 80,000 immigrant detainees, according to a draft solicitation obtained and reviewed by The Washington Post.
The plan includes at least seven large warehouses, which have between 5,000 and 10,000 beds, and 16 smaller processing sites. One processing site, which can hold between 500 and 1,500 beds, is planned for Merrimack, New Hampshire, according to the Post.
The renovated warehouses nationwide will speed up deportations by establishing a feeder system, sending detainees first to processing sites then to the larger warehouses where they will be staged for deportation, the Post reported.
The facility in Merrimack, a town of nearly 27,000 about an hour north of Boston, is the only one planned for New England.
Merrimack Town Manager Paul Micali told New Hampshire Public Radio that the town had no prior knowledge of the plan, which came as a “surprise.”
New Hampshire Rep. Maggie Goodlander, who previously drew the ire of the Trump administration, said she’s working “to get to the bottom of this proposal.”
“I am deeply concerned by reports that the Trump Administration has developed plans — apparently without input from the community — to use an industrial warehouse in New Hampshire to detain human beings,” Goodlander said on social media. “This is not who we are.”
Gov. Kelly Ayotte did not return a request for comment about the plan but shared on social media that “sanctuary cities are officially banned in New Hampshire.”
“We will never go the way of Massachusetts and their billion-dollar illegal immigration crisis,” Ayotte wrote.
The plans are subject to change, the Post reported last week, with plans to share it with private detention companies to gauge interest in contracting.
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