By early October, the ICE surge crew was working by way of the federal government shutdown, at the same time as different essential authorities work was placed on maintain. Days after the shutdown started, GSA was nonetheless awarding leases. On October 6, 2025, a signed inner 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 affect of delays on the company’s capacity to “meet essential immigration enforcement deadlines.”
On October 9, the identical day that Trump announced in a cupboard assembly that the federal government could be making “everlasting” cuts from “Democrat packages” in the course of the shutdown, GSA obtained an inventory from OPLA with requests for workplace places, together with expansions and new leases, in 41 cities across the nation.
In a memorandum dated October 29, 2025, a consultant from Homeland Safety Investigations—one of many two main departments inside ICE, together with ERO, and tasked with a variety of investigative work in instances starting from human trafficking to artwork theft—requested GSA’s workplace of basic counsel to interact in nationwide lease acquisition on behalf of DHS “utilizing the weird and compelling urgency justification,” in accordance with Trump’s govt 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 In opposition to Invasion,” the memorandum states.
By early November, in response to paperwork seen by WIRED, 19 tasks had been awarded in cities across the US, together with Nashville, Tennessee; Dallas, Texas; Sacramento, California; and Tampa, Florida. A number of tasks had 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 across 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 prevailing workplaces are at most capability and can “require extra area” to accommodate the brand new workers employed. On the time, the memo states that OPLA had chosen nearly 1,000 attorneys to rent.
Months after the “surge” started, ICE’s growth to American cities is nicely underway, in response to documentation seen by WIRED. The desk beneath provides an in depth itemizing of deliberate ICE lease places as of January, and consists of present ICE workplaces which might be set to broaden and new areas the company is poised to occupy. It doesn’t embrace greater than 100 deliberate ICE places throughout many states—together with California, New York, and New Jersey—the place WIRED has not seen each particular deal with.
