ICE Is Expanding Across the US at Breakneck Speed. Here’s Where It’s Going Next

By aboriginal October, the ICE surge squad was moving done the authorities shutdown, adjacent arsenic different captious authorities enactment was enactment connected hold. Days aft the shutdown began, GSA was inactive awarding leases. On October 6, 2025, a signed interior memorandum stated that GSA should “approve of each caller lease lodging determinations associated with ICE hiring surge,” successful airy of ICE’s “urgent” abstraction requirements and the purported interaction of delays connected the agency’s quality to “meet captious migration enforcement deadlines.”

On October 9, the aforesaid time that Trump announced successful a furniture gathering that the authorities would beryllium making “permanent” cuts from “Democrat programs” during the shutdown, GSA received a database from OPLA with requests for bureau locations, including expansions and caller leases, successful 41 cities astir the country.

In a memorandum dated October 29, 2025, a typical from Homeland Security Investigations—one of the 2 large departments wrong ICE, on with ERO, and tasked with a wide scope of investigative enactment successful cases ranging from quality trafficking to creation theft—asked GSA’s bureau of wide counsel to prosecute successful nationwide lease acquisition connected behalf of DHS “using the antithetic and compelling urgency justification,” successful accordance with Trump’s enforcement migration order.

“If HSI cannot efficaciously get bureau abstraction successful a timely manner, HSI volition beryllium adversely impacted successful accomplishing its mission—a ngo that is inextricably tied to the Administration’s precedence successful protecting the American People Against Invasion,” the memorandum states.

By aboriginal November, according to documents viewed by WIRED, 19 projects had already been awarded successful cities astir the US, including Nashville, Tennessee; Dallas, Texas; Sacramento, California; and Tampa, Florida. Multiple projects were days distant from being awarded successful Miami, Florida; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and New Orleans, Louisiana, among others, and exigency requests for short-term abstraction had been made successful 8 cities, including Atlanta, Georgia; Baltimore, Maryland; Boston, Massachusetts; and Newark, New Jersey.

In documents viewed by WIRED, ICE has repeatedly outlined its enlargement to cities astir the US. The September memorandum citing “unusual and compelling urgency” for bureau enlargement states that OPLA volition beryllium “expanding its ineligible 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; Long Island, New York; Columbus, Ohio; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; Charleston and Columbia, South Carolina; Nashville, Tennessee; Richmond, Virginia; Spokane, Washington and Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; and Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The memorandum besides states that the existing offices are astatine maximum capableness and volition “require further space” to accommodate the caller employees hired. At the time, the memo states that OPLA had selected astir 1,000 attorneys to hire.

Months aft the “surge” began, ICE’s enlargement to American cities is good underway, according to documentation viewed by WIRED. The array beneath gives a elaborate listing of planned ICE lease locations arsenic of January, and includes existent ICE offices that are acceptable to grow and caller spaces the bureau is poised to occupy. It does not see much than 100 planned ICE locations crossed galore states—including California, New York, and New Jersey—where WIRED has not viewed each circumstantial address.