Earlier this week on Tuesday, WIRED released a full investigative report detailing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) planned expansion into more than 150 new office locations across the United States—including 54 confirmed, specific addresses. If you haven’t had a chance to read through the reporting yet, you should, and for good reason: there is a very high chance one of these new ICE sites is located not far from where you live.
ICE is targeting every major U.S. city for this expansion. The agency does not only plan to move into existing federal government spaces; many of its new outposts will share hallways and elevator banks with private medical offices and small local businesses. Some locations will sit just down the street from daycare centers, and within a short walk of neighborhood churches and addiction treatment centers. ICE enforcement officers and agency attorneys will be stationed only a quick drive away from massive warehouses that have already been earmarked to hold thousands of immigrant detainees.
Ordinarily, a government leasing push this large would unfold completely out in the open. It would require public competitive bidding, planned renovations for selected sites, and all the standard bureaucratic processes that keep government work slow but publicly accountable. That is not what happened here. The General Services Administration (GSA), the federal body that manages all U.S. government property, was instructed to set aside its standard operating protocols to prioritize speed and secrecy instead. Internal documents reviewed by WIRED confirm that the locations of these new outposts, and the entire process of securing and planning them, were meant to be hidden from the public from the very start.
These plans never should have stayed secret from the communities they impact. That is exactly why we chose to publish them.
ICE currently controls more than $75 billion in funding and employs a workforce of at least 22,000 officers and agents. Its growing footprint in Minneapolis is not a one-off anomaly—it is a national blueprint for expansion. Local communities deserve to know when their area could be next. Every person has a right to information about who is operating in their neighborhood, especially when that operation amounts to a growing force targeting immigrant residents.
What we have been able to reveal so far only fills in a fraction of the full picture. Our reporting captures only what ICE had planned as of January, with no insight into expansions that came after that date. More than 100 new office addresses remain unknown, many of them in states that already have a heavy ICE presence like New York and New Jersey. The specific type of operations being run out of many of these sites is still unclear, as is how long ICE intends to maintain these locations.
The need to answer these open questions grows more urgent by the day as ICE continues its unchecked spread across the country. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has taken an increasingly aggressive stance against journalists covering the agency, repeatedly arguing that publishing any identifying details about ICE agents or their operations qualifies as “doxing.” In Minnesota and across the country, ICE and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents have framed independent observers and community watchdogs as enemies, arresting and harassing them at growing rates. The DOJ has also moved quickly to classify any perceived disruption to ICE activity as a criminal offense.
The Trump administration deliberately moves fast on these expansions, counting on courts, elected lawmakers, and independent journalists to be unable to keep pace with its agenda. WIRED remains committed to continuing this investigation until we have full, transparent answers for the public.
Simply knowing where ICE plans to expand next is not enough on its own to stop the agency’s campaign of cruelty and violence against immigrant communities. But that information gives local communities critical time to prepare for an incoming wave of immigration enforcement in their neighborhoods. It also gives local and national lawmakers clear insight into just how far ICE’s unchecked power has spread. And it sends a clear message to the administration that it cannot operate with total impunity—or at the very least, that it cannot hide its actions behind complete secrecy.
So we encourage you: take a moment to check if ICE is opening a new outpost near your home. And know that this is far from the last update we will share on this ongoing story.
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