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By Khaleda Rahman
National Correspondent
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A new tool to "crowd cancel" Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention facilities before they open was launched by a former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official this week.
Miles Taylor, who was chief of staff at DHS during the first Trump administration and authored an anonymous 2018 op-ed that was sharply critical of the president, has launched GTFOICE.org—which stands for Get the Facilities Out, ICE—to help Americans find out about and protest proposed facilities amid DHS's expansion of detention centers to house immigrants.
"We want to make sure that the moment that ICE decides to open up a new prison camp, that local communities immediately have the chance to weigh in and to stop it," Taylor told Newsweek.
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"This sweeping expansion of ICE facilities around the country has been done in secret. People have been finding out late in the game that ICE has purchased multimillion-dollar warehouses and they're turning those warehouses into detention camps," he added.
When asked for comment, a DHS spokesperson told Newsweek, "Where are the protests on behalf of the victims of criminal illegal aliens, including Rachel Morin, Laken Riley, Jocelyn Nungaray, and Sheridan Gorman?"
The White House has also been contacted for comment via email.
Nationwide protests against ICE's plans to expand detention facilities are set to take place on Saturday.
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Why It Matters
DHS has been scouting places to hold immigrants as part of a massive $45 billion expansion of detention facilities. In many of the cases, ICE's purchases of warehouses to be turned into detention centers have been marked by secrecy. A Senate investigation has also detailed human rights abuses, poor conditions and the abuse of pregnant women and children in existing immigration detention centers nationwide.
As public support for ICE and the Trump administration's aggressive immigration crackdown has fallen, the plans for new detention centers have been met with fierce opposition from communities, with some objecting to ICE's presence and others questioning whether the facilities would strain local resources.
How Will GTFO ICE Work?
The GTFO ICE tool, a collaboration between Taylor's nonprofit Defiance.org, the Save America Movement and Project Salt Box, allows people to sign up to join the network.
They will receive alerts if a facility is being planned in or near their community and be provided with organizing resources, legal guidance and other support.
The website includes a tracker from Project Salt Box, an ICE watchdog that has been gathering information about planned ICE facilities.
"There's been a lot of great efforts done by a lot of grassroots groups to stop these things, but there's not yet been a national alert network so that people can know if it's happening in their area and do something about it," Taylor said.
The tool also allows people to push back against planned ICE facilities from wherever they are.
"People who sign up will be notified if there are places around the country they can help out from afar," Taylor said. "If they can write letters, make phone calls and help local communities push back in other places."
Steve Schmidt, co-founder of the Save America Movement, said the effort is "about uniting people of different political backgrounds."
“Republicans and Democrats, small towns and capital cities—they don’t want their government to be operating secret prisons, and certainly not in their communities," he said. "The GTFO ICE alert network will allow Americans to support each other and put a stop to this.”
Taylor noted that protests against proposed ICE facilities have already seen success, saying owners of warehouses decided not to sell in Merrimack, New Hampshire; Ashland, Virginia; and Oklahoma City after communities quickly organized.
"That's only because people found out early as opposed to places like Social Circle, Georgia, and Surprise, Arizona," he said.
"Those are two places where local communities found out after warehouses had already been purchased, and now they're fighting to try to walk it back. But they have far more limited options," Taylor added.
He warned that if plans to expand ICE detention facilities proceed unchecked, DHS's detention capacity would exceed the entire federal penitentiary system.
"For a lot of reasons, folks worry that in the wrong hands that much detention capacity is something that leads to a police state," he said.
Speaking about the poor conditions reported in detention centers, Taylor said the "cruelty is intentional."
"The cruelty is the point," he continued. "That was something that I said many years ago when I first came forward after leaving the Trump administration. And I don't say that flippantly. I say it because the president of the United States with regularity expressed his interest in seeing people suffer as a means of deterrence*."*
DHS Pauses Plans
DHS is pausing plans to purchase new warehouses to detain immigrants, NBC News and the Associated Press recently reported, citing unnamed senior department officials. The development came days after Markwayne Mullin was sworn in as the new Homeland Security secretary following Kristi Noem's departure.
Two senior DHS officials told NBC that the pause may be temporary, but that plans are moving forward to develop facilities that have already been purchased. So far, 11 warehouses have been purchased in Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas and Utah, with the federal government spending a combined $1.074 billion, according to the AP.
During his confirmation hearing, Mullin was pressed by Senator Maggie Hassan, a New Hampshire Democrat, on whether he would commit to not opening new ICE facilities without the support of local communities.
"I will not be able to speak to that until I understand the risk and the reason behind delivering the mission that's set in front of us. We have to protect the homeland and we're gonna do that," he said.
"But obviously, we want to work with community leaders," Mullin added. "We want to be good partners."
Update 4/24/26, 9:21 a.m. ET: This article has been updated with comment from a DHS spokesperson.
Update 4/24/26, 10:49 a.m. ET: This article has been updated to add comment from Schmidt.
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