The mayor of Jupiter said he’s not aware of any official plans for an immigration detention facility, after a recent news report named the Palm Beach County town as a potential site for one.
In late December, the Washington Post reported that Jupiter was one of 16 communities where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials were considering renovating warehouses to create processing facilities for detained immigrants. Those facilities would hold up to 1,500 people and would help speed up deportations in the country.
The Post’s reporting relied on a draft solicitation of the plan, which also included seven new, large-scale detention facilities near American logistics hubs.
“I’ve heard the same report,” Jupiter Mayor Jim Kuretski told WLRN.
“I can’t imagine where it would be,” he speculated. The town of Jupiter has roughly 62,000 people, according to recent census numbers. Warehouse space large enough to accommodate such a facility exists west, outside of town limits, in unincorporated Palm Beach County.
In a statement to WLRN, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the facilities are detention centers, "not warehouses."
"Every day, DHS is conducting law enforcement activities across the country to keep Americans safe. It should not come as news that ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S. and is actively working to expand detention space," the statement said.
DHS said the agency currently has no new detention centers to announce. It did not directly answer if Jupiter would be the location for one of them.
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The purported plan would renovate commercial warehouses to “maximize efficiency, minimize costs, shorten processing times, limit lengths of stay, accelerate the removal process and promote the safety, dignity and respect for all in ICE custody,” the solicitation reportedly said.
U.S. Border Czar Tom Homan wrote on X in December that they’ve reached roughly 579,000 removals of immigrants since President Trump took office. It’s part of the administration’s goal to deport as many as 1 million immigrants living in the country illegally a year.
Last summer, Congress appropriated $45 billion to ICE to build new immigration detention centers.
According to the reports, Social Circle, a tiny Georgia city east of Atlanta, was named as a site for a detention center with up to 10,000 beds. City officials released a statement on Facebook last month that they had no advance knowledge of the warehouse plan.
The city wrote it opposed any such plan, calling it “infeasible” because the city lacked water and sewer infrastructure to support it.
ICE has not publicly acknowledged the plan's details or how it chose the cities on its list.
