type: timeline_event
By mid-March 2026, ICE's detention population had swelled to approximately 73,000 people — an 84 percent increase from the roughly 40,000 held in custody at the start of the Trump administration's second term. The expansion was fueled by $45 billion of the $85 billion in new DHS funding authorized through the reconciliation bill, making detention the single largest line item in the department's immigration enforcement budget.
The financial costs of the expansion were coming under increasing scrutiny. In Oakwood, Georgia, CBS News reported that ICE had paid $68 million for a property that the county tax assessor had valued at $7.2 million — a nearly tenfold premium that local officials called "inexplicable." Similar overpayments had been documented at acquisition sites in Maryland, Arizona, and Pennsylvania, raising questions about whether the rapid expansion was being conducted with adequate financial oversight or whether politically connected contractors were profiting from the urgency.
The human costs were even more alarming. Since October 2025, twenty-six people had died in ICE custody, putting fiscal year 2026 on track to be the deadliest year in the history of immigration detention. The deaths included individuals who died from untreated medical conditions, suicide, and physical altercations in overcrowded facilities. Advocacy groups noted that the rapid expansion had outpaced ICE's ability to provide adequate medical care, with some new facilities operating without on-site medical staff.
Community opposition to new detention facilities had become fierce and, notably, bipartisan. In conservative rural counties that had initially welcomed the economic promise of ICE facilities, resistance grew as residents confronted the reality of massive institutional complexes in their communities. Town hall meetings in proposed facility locations from Georgia to Pennsylvania drew hundreds of opponents, with local Republican officials joining Democrats in opposing the sites. The resistance cut across traditional political lines, uniting immigration advocates, fiscal conservatives concerned about overspending, and communities that simply did not want industrial-scale detention centers in their neighborhoods.