By early October, the ICE surge crew was working by way of the authorities shutdown, whilst different crucial authorities work was placed on maintain. Days after the shutdown started, GSA was nonetheless awarding leases. On October 6, 2025, a signed inside memorandum said that GSA ought to “approve of all new lease housing determinations related to ICE hiring surge,” in gentle of ICE’s “pressing” area necessities and the purported influence of delays on the company’s capacity to “meet crucial immigration enforcement deadlines.”
On October 9, the identical day that Trump introduced in a cupboard assembly that the authorities could be making “everlasting” cuts from “Democrat packages” throughout the shutdown, GSA obtained a listing from OPLA with requests for workplace areas, together with expansions and new leases, in 41 cities round the nation.
In a memorandum dated October 29, 2025, a consultant from Homeland Safety Investigations—one in every of the two main departments inside ICE, together with ERO, and tasked with a variety of investigative work in circumstances starting from human trafficking to artwork theft—requested GSA’s workplace of basic counsel to have interaction in nationwide lease acquisition on behalf of DHS “utilizing the uncommon and compelling urgency justification,” in accordance with Trump’s government immigration order.
“If HSI can’t successfully get hold of workplace area in a well timed method, HSI will likely be adversely impacted in conducting its mission—a mission that’s inextricably tied to the Administration’s precedence in defending the American Individuals Towards Invasion,” the memorandum states.
By early November, in response to paperwork seen by WIRED, 19 tasks had been awarded in cities round the US, together with Nashville, Tennessee; Dallas, Texas; Sacramento, California; and Tampa, Florida. A number of tasks have been days away from being awarded in Miami, Florida; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and New Orleans, Louisiana, amongst others, and emergency requests for short-term area had been made in eight cities, together with Atlanta, Georgia; Baltimore, Maryland; Boston, Massachusetts; and Newark, New Jersey.
In paperwork seen by WIRED, ICE has repeatedly outlined its growth to cities round the US. The September memorandum citing “uncommon and compelling urgency” for workplace growth states that OPLA will likely be “increasing its authorized operations” into Birmingham, Alabama; Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Jacksonville, and Tampa, Florida; Des Moines, Iowa; Boise, Idaho; Louisville, Kentucky; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Grand Rapids, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; Raleigh, North Carolina; Lengthy Island, New York; Columbus, Ohio; Oklahoma Metropolis, Oklahoma; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; Richmond, Virginia; Spokane, Washington and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The memorandum additionally states that the present places of work are at most capability and can “require further area” to accommodate the new workers employed. At the time, the memo states that OPLA had chosen virtually 1,000 attorneys to rent.
Months after the “surge” started, ICE’s growth to American cities is effectively underway, in response to documentation seen by WIRED. The desk under provides an in depth itemizing of deliberate ICE lease areas as of January, and consists of present ICE places of work which might be set to broaden and new areas the company is poised to occupy. It doesn’t embrace greater than 100 deliberate ICE areas throughout many states—together with California, New York, and New Jersey—the place WIRED has not seen each particular deal with.
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