Trump's ICE Wants to Build a 10,000-Person Detention Center in a City That Doesn't Have the Water

The Trump administration's deportation machine has a water problem.

In March, the Department of Homeland Security spent $145.4 million to purchase an 833,000-square-foot warehouse on Salt Lake City's west side. The plan? Convert it into one of eight "mega centers" nationwide, each designed to hold between 7,500 and 10,000 immigration detainees. It's part of a $45 billion push to expand detention capacity across the country.

But Salt Lake City officials say the math doesn't work. The city is already in a Stage 2 drought advisory, urging residents and businesses to conserve 10 million gallons of water per day. Most of Utah is experiencing some level of drought. The Great Salt Lake has been drying up for years, exposing a toxic lakebed that's becoming a public health hazard.

And now the federal government wants to add what amounts to a small city's worth of water demand to an already overtaxed system.

The Numbers Don't Add Up

Salt Lake City's Department of Public Utilities provided a comparison to help understand the scale. The nearby Utah State Correctional Facility uses about 450,000 gallons of water daily to serve roughly 3,000 inmates and staff. That's about 150 gallons per person per day for drinking, hygiene, showers, food service, and cleaning.

Scale that up to 10,000 people, and you're looking at approximately 1.5 million gallons of water per day.

The warehouse currently uses 5,600 gallons daily as storage space.

"We don't have the water to house 10,000 people in the western side of Salt Lake Valley," Dr. Brian Moench, president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, told Straight Arrow News. "We don't have the infrastructure, we don't have the water as a resource. We don't have the sewage system."

A City Fights Back With Water Restrictions

Two weeks after DHS purchased the warehouse, Salt Lake City passed an ordinance limiting new nonresidential developments to 200,000 gallons of water per day. The timing wasn't subtle. The rule has the potential to block the federal government's detention plans entirely.

Salt Lake City isn't alone. Similar efforts are playing out across the country as cities try to stop the Trump administration's warehouse detention expansion. In January, ICE quietly toured a facility in Kansas City, Missouri. Within hours of the secret visit, the city council voted to approve an ordinance blocking applications to expand detention facilities not owned or operated by the city through January 2031.

Utah's Water Crisis Is Getting Worse

Utah relies on snowpack for roughly 95% of its annual water supply. This year's accumulation was underwhelming, and it melted weeks earlier than usual after a record warm spell. The state's 2026 water outlook is especially precarious.

Salt Lake City Council Member Alejandro Puy put it plainly: "It is not easy to turn a warehouse into a habitable place for thousands of people."

Polly Prince, co-founder of the Med-Team Utah Prisoner Advocate Network, echoed the concern. "It's concerning that we're putting it in Salt Lake City, in a county that's been warning us about our water usage for years."

Air Quality and Environmental Justice Concerns

Water isn't the only issue. The proposed detention site sits in the Utah Inland Port industrial district, just south of the Utah State Correctional Facility and near the Kennecott Copper Mine, one of the world's largest open-pit operations. The west side of Salt Lake City already faces multiple sources of air pollution not found on the east side of the valley.

"If you're bringing in here, essentially a new city of 10,000 people, you're going to aggravate all those problems," Moench said. "From the standpoint of the limits of what the environment here can bear in terms of water quantity, water quality and air quality, bringing that many people into the valley is not sustainable."

The area also faces ongoing mosquito mitigation challenges due to its proximity to wetlands and industrial zones.

The Pattern: Warehouses Over Humanity

The Salt Lake City facility is part of a broader Trump administration strategy to rapidly expand immigration detention using warehouse conversions rather than purpose-built facilities. It's cheaper and faster, but it raises serious questions about habitability, access to medical care, legal representation, and basic human needs like water.

An ICE spokesperson told Straight Arrow News that the agency "fully complies with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) as implemented by DHS directives and policies when planning and executing" facility conversions. That compliance process will be tested as Salt Lake City's water restrictions come into effect.

The federal government has the power to override local ordinances in some cases, setting up a potential legal battle between a city trying to manage a water crisis and an administration determined to expand its deportation infrastructure at any cost.

For now, the warehouse sits empty. But the question remains: Can Salt Lake City afford to turn it into a detention center? And more importantly, should it have to?