Update: U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker says U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has agreed not to open the proposed ICE facility in Byhalia, Mississippi. Read more here.
BYHALIA, Miss.—About a dozen people converged on a parking lot on a chilly, windy mid-January morning in the shadow of a mammoth warehouse near Interstate 2-69, straddling the Mississippi and Tennessee state line.
The group that assembled in Byhalia, Mississippi, had one objective: to stop the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from converting the building into an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center to potentially hold up to 8,500 immigrants. They were there upon hearing news that federal officials were visiting the site to scout it out.
“We will not sit by and let this happen in this community,” said Chelsea Howard, citing reports of abuse and inhumane conditions at other ICE facilities.
Howard, who helped spearhead the conference, told the Mississippi Free Press that the property is listed as available for purchase or lease.
“We know officials have had talks with contractors,” she said.
The property was included on a leaked list of prospective ICE detention centers across the U.S. that The Washington Post published in December.
Republican U.S. Senator Opposes ICE Facility
Opponents of the Marshall County ICE facility have gained an unlikely ally: Roger Wicker, the state’s senior Republican U.S. senator and the chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee. In a Feb. 3 letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, the senator wrote that he had learned that ICE “is in the final stages” of acquiring the Byhalia warehouse to convert it into an ICE detention center.
“While I support the enforcement of immigration law, I write to express my opposition to this acquisition and the proposed detention center,” Wicker wrote. “This site is currently positioned for economic development purposes. It represents an opportunity for job creation, private investment, and long-term economic growth in Marshall County. The county is already experiencing meaningful growth and increased interest from employers seeking to locate or expand in North Mississippi.”
“Preserving limited, development-ready industrial sites is essential to sustaining this growth. Converting this industrial asset into an ICE detention center forecloses economic growth opportunities and replaces them with a use that does not generate comparable economic returns or community benefits,” he continued.
Sen. Wicker also raised what he called “serious feasibility concerns,” pointing to the “specialized infrastructure demands” that detention facilities require, “including transportation access, water, sewer and energy costs, staffing, medical care and emergency services.”
“From my understanding, the ICE detention facility would have a capacity exceeding 8,500 beds,” Wicker wrote. “Existing medical and human services infrastructure in Byhalia is insufficient to support such a large detainee population. Establishing a detention center at this site would place significant strain on local resources.”
Byhalia had a population of about 1,339 people as of the 2020 Census. While the small town has a family health clinic, the nearest full-service hospital is 15 miles away.
The size of the proposed facility is far larger than that of other ICE facilities currently in operation: the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center, a significant detention facility that has housed many of the immigrants detained in Mississippi, as well as high-profile detainees such as Mahmoud Khalil and Kasper Eriksen, has a standard capacity of only 1,170.
Even the largest existing immigration detention facilities are a fraction of the size of the proposed Byhalia megacamp. Texas and California have the largest current ICE detention centers in the nation, with populations of fewer than 3,000.
Wicker said that his constituents have “voiced concerns regarding the public safety, medical capacity, and economic impacts this center would impose on their communities.”
“Proceeding with this acquisition without adequately addressing these issues disregards community input,” the senator wrote in his letter to Noem. “I strongly urge ICE to reconsider this acquisition and the development of a detention center in Byhalia, Mississippi. I look forward to your prompt response and request that you keep me informed of this acquisition and any future ICE contracting proposals affecting the state of Mississippi.”
ICE: No New Facilities to Announce
In a statement to the Mississippi Free Press on Thursday morning, an ICE spokesperson did not respond to Wicker’s specific concerns or acknowledge any specific plans for the Byhalia mega warehouse. The spokesperson did not identify themselves by name.
“We have no new detention centers to announce at this time,” the statement read in part. “Sites will undergo community impact studies and a rigorous due diligence process to make sure there is no hardship on local utilities or infrastructure prior to purchase … Detention centers will not be warehouses—they will be very well-structured facilities that meet our regular detention standards.”
But even in long-established ICE facilities, detainees have shared numerous reports of mistreatment and neglect. The Central Louisiana Ice Processing Center in Jena, Louisiana, the destination for many immigrants detained in Mississippi, has faced serious allegations of human rights violations, including deprivation of human necessities, physical and sexual abuse, and denial of medical care for urgent conditions.
Last year, an individual detained at CLIPC, which is run by the GEO Group, told the Mississippi Free Press and the Youth Media Project that he and other detainees had been sickened by contaminated water at the facility. GEO Group spokesman Christopher V. Ferreira acknowledged to the Mississippi Free Press then that a water outage had affected the facility for two days in June 2025, but said bottled water had been provided to detainees.
In ICE’s statement to the Mississippi Free Press today, the agency said that removing “criminals from the streets makes communities safer for business owners and customers.”
“ICE is targeting criminal illegal aliens, including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members and more,” the statement said. “70% of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the U.S. Thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill, ICE has new funding to expand detention space to keep these criminals off American streets before they are removed for good from our communities.”
At the end of the statement, ICE also included photos of four Hispanic men and one Vietnamese man that the agency had arrested in Mississippi with criminal convictions ranging from homicide to sexually assaulting children.
But those men are not representative of the vast majority in ICE’s facilities, and the claims the agency made in its statement to the Mississippi Free Press are incompatible with the basic facts of its expanding campaign of detention—a campaign that has targeted more individuals without criminal convictions.
The need for such massive detention camps is the result of an extraordinary growth in these detentions. An analysis from Syracuse University professor Austin Kocher of the first quarter of the financial year 2026 found an increase of 11,296 single-day ICE detentions. Of that number, only 902, or about 8%, had been convicted of a crime. Additionally, 8,121 of those new detentions came from individuals without a conviction or a charge at all—individuals purely detained on allegations of immigration violations.
Even accounting for all ICE detentions, detainees with no criminal convictions or charges make up the plurality. Of those, only a small minority have been convicted of violent crimes.
Federal crime data has repeatedly found that immigrants commit crimes at lower rates than U.S.-born citizens, and crime rates are even lower among undocumented immigrants.
‘Mississippi Does Not Need Blood Money’
The protesters who gathered outside the 798,000-square-foot warehouse to oppose an ICE purchase on Jan. 16 included civil rights attorney Cliff Johnson, a Democrat who is running his party’s March 10 primary for Mississippi’s 1st Congressional District.
He warned about the continual fiery controversy across parts of the country where ICE agents are pursuing and arresting undocumented immigrants. He cited what he said were failed promises coming from the federal government and President Donald Trump’s administration.
“Trump said (officers) would arrest the worst of the worst,” he said, noting that that is not what is happening.
Johnson, who hopes to unseat incumbent Republican U.S. House Rep. Trent Kelly, said that whenever detention centers expand, “abuse expands.”
In September of 2025, federal authorities opened a former prison facility with a capacity of 600 beds an hour north of Memphis in Tipton County, Tennessee, to house detainees—the closest detention center in the region.
“This (Byhalia) center means more raids and the impact will be on children and families,” Johnson said. “While the state does need more jobs, Mississippi does not need blood money.”
Marshall County Supervisor Terry Rodgers told the Mississippi Free Press that, to his knowledge, no county official has been contacted by ICE officials about the property.
“We (board of supervisors) know as much as the public does,” Rodgers told the Mississippi Free Press on Jan. 28. “Who knows if this will pan out with the federal government being involved? We will just have to see.”
Rodgers said he had heard some input from constituents about the possible detention center.
“I’ve heard some complaining about it, but most of the calls I’ve got were from people who live in Memphis,” he said.
‘We Are Not Going Back to Injustice’
Byhalia resident Cindy Garcia, speaking as a concerned resident who has raised three children in Marshall County, said a move to create a prison for detainees represents inverted priorities for neighbors. She said attention should be directed instead toward addressing improved schools and opening more grocery stores.
DeSoto County resident Andrea Gonzales, representing a grass-roots group from Memphis called Vecindarios 901, said she proudly likes to share with visitors how “warm and kind” her neighbors are. She said that the inclusion of a detention center would upend that charity.
She said that a center would be designed to directly hurt Hispanic communities.
“You can throw a stone, and you will hit a Mexican restaurant,” she said.
Lovie West, president of the National Federation of Democratic Women, told listeners that a detention center for immigrants points to injustice, “something Mississippians know about.”
“We are not going back to injustice … This time it’s about immigrants,” she said. “This is not about public safety; it’s about rounding up people,” she said.
Ashton Pittman contributed to this report.