Federal officials are reportedly eyeing an industrial warehouse in Orlando as a potential site for a new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center. It’s a project that, if pursued, would likely be subject to the approval of a municipal planning board and the Orlando City Council.
A WFTV reporter spotted a group of private contractors and federal officials touring the 439,945-square-foot industrial warehouse at 8660 Transport Drive last Friday after being informed by “several sources” that ICE was considering the site for a potential detention center. It would be the first ICE detention center in Central Florida, if executed, joining four others located across the state. But it’s still unclear at this point whether this will actually happen.
ICE senior advisor David Venturella told WFTV reporter Ashlyn Webb last Friday that the tour of the East Orlando warehouse was “exploratory” and that nothing had been decided yet.
Orlando Weekly reached out to all six city commissioners on Orlando City Council to ask if they would approve the development of a new ICE detention center — to hold people accused of being in the U.S. illegally — if it did come up for a vote. Newly elected city commissioner Tom Keen, whose district includes the warehouse, told Orlando Weekly over the phone Wednesday that he hasn’t heard anything about the project from federal officials himself, and that the only information he’s received about it has been through the media.
“I haven’t been approached by anybody — a landowner, a real estate agent, a federal official, and as far as I know, I don’t know that any city officials have been approached,” Keen said, adding that he doesn’t believe a detention center would be “compatible” with residential and commercial development plans for the area surrounding the site.
Newly elected city commissioner Roger Chapin, representing parts of Orlando just north of downtown, similarly told Orlando Weekly that he was not aware of any application, permit or formal process initiated within the city related to an ICE detention center.
“If such a proposal were to exist — and especially if it required legislative approval by the City Council — I would approach it with deep skepticism,” Chapin wrote in an email.
“If such a proposal were to exist …I would approach it with deep skepticism”
Although the Orange County Jail is serving as a temporary holding center for upwards of hundreds of people per day who are detained by federal immigration enforcement officials, it is not a federally owned or operated detention facility. Under the county’s agreement with ICE, the local jail is only supposed to hold people on federal immigration holds for up to 72 hours before they are transferred elsewhere.
Other local and state elected officials, upon learning of a potential ICE detention center being built in the City Beautiful, have also voiced concerns over the last week. State Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-Orlando), a term-limited House member campaigning for Orlando mayor, explained that developing a new ICE detention center at the Transport Drive site would require a conditional use permit, subject to approval by city leadership. “This is the time to be brave,” Eskamani said at a press conference Monday.
Because the industrial warehouse is located in the city of Orlando, not unincorporated Orange County, approval for such development would fall on the city, not the county, according to a county spokesperson. Still, Orange County commissioner Nicole Wilson, an environmental law attorney by trade, took initiative herself this week to fend off a potential detention center by sending draft language to her fellow commissioners on Monday to help block it.
The building toured by federal officials Friday is located about 10 miles from the Orlando International Airport. Dubbed the Beachline Logistics Center, the facility was developed by the TPA Group, an Atlanta-based development firm. According to the Orlando Business Journal, the TPA Group bought the property in 2022 for $7.9 million.
‘Our community deserves dignity’
The idea that a detention center could be coming to Orlando — a city visited by millions of international tourists per year for its world-renowned theme parks — quickly drew criticism and concern from local, state and federal officials.
“An Orlando ICE detention center would be an unacceptable and dangerous escalation of immigration enforcement in our area,” Florida Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D-Orlando) said in a statement Friday. “Let me be clear. We oppose any effort to place an ICE facility here and will fight it at every turn.”
Advocates who have protested the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration and a lack of transparency for families of those who are temporarily held at the local jail on behalf of ICE were also rattled by the news.
“Detaining individuals in a warehouse setting is not enforcement; it is dehumanization, and it stands in direct opposition to our most basic values and principles of human rights,” said Felipe Sousa Lazaballet, executive director of Hope CommUnity Center in Apopka. Lazaballet, a Brazilian immigrant, is also running as a Democrat for a seat in the Florida House.
“I urge our local elected officials to publicly denounce these practices and to terminate all collaboration with ICE, as well as local law enforcement agencies and the Orange County Jail,” Lazaballet said, echoing calls to action from the local Immigrants Are Welcome Here Coalition, with which Hope CommUnity Center is involved.
“Our community deserves dignity, respect and its human rights. Secrecy, fear and intimidation are not compatible with a democratic state and do not belong in this community,” he argued.
Eskamani similarly urged everyone to remember the authority that local jurisdictions have “and not to be afraid to use it.”
She pointed out that a leaked memo from the Trump administration — reported by the Washington Post in December — already laid out federal officials’ plans to scope out warehouses across the country to serve as ICE detention facilities, as a way to speed up deportations. President Trump, prior to his inauguration last January, vowed to conduct the “largest deportation operation in American history.”
Although Florida was not on the shortlist for potential locations for new detention centers, as initially reported, the Post noted the draft solicitation “is not final and is subject to changes.”
“Everything we know is because we’re digging for it,” said Eskamani, who said she received her own tip about a potential ICE facility in Orlando from a “national partner.”
“When I spoke to the city of Orlando about it, they were completely clueless,” she said.
Orlando Weekly contacted the city to ask about the potential new detention center in Orlando and the city’s position on such a development. City spokesperson Andrea Otero told us over email, “We have not received anything so we don’t have any information to provide at this time.”
Not exactly a united front
Although the county wouldn’t be responsible for approving a detention center on property located within the city, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings — a former sheriff running for Florida governor this year as a Democrat — affirmed the county “will continue to cooperate” with federal immigration enforcement, regardless, bucking calls from advocates for the county to distance itself from ICE.
“At this time, ICE has not contacted Orange County regarding a possible detention center in Central Florida,” he said in a statement. “We will continue to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement as statutorily required, as a matter of public safety and national security. Any facility proposed here would require transparency, community input, and assurances that laws are enforced with dignity and respect.”
Two county commissioners — Commissioner Wilson and Dr. Kelly Martinez Semrad — have stood with advocates demanding due process for immigrants detained by ICE at the local jail and against further cooperation with ICE that isn’t required by state or federal law. Unlike Demings, they’ve stood their ground against bullying tactics from Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier, who threatened to remove Orange County commissioners and the mayor from office last year if they failed to sign a voluntary amendment to their existing agreement with ICE.
“I’m willing to fight,” Demings claimed at the time, after reversing course to appease Uthmeier. “But I’d prefer to fight from the vantage point of where I am sitting today.”
Wilson, however, went a step further earlier this week, putting up her own fight. According to the Orlando Sentinel, Wilson sent a memo sent to county commissioners on Monday calling for a temporary ban on the development of new detention facilities in Orange County that aren’t operated by local or state officials. Still, it’s unclear if the county would really have a say, since the warehouse toured by the feds is in the city’s jurisdiction.
“Tourism, hospitality and visitor-serving commercial uses depend heavily on land use compatibility, public perception and the overall quality of place,” Wilson wrote in her memo. “The placement of detention facilities in or near tourism corridors or mixed-use commercial areas risks undermining these critical economic sectors,” she argued.
The draft language, per the Sentinel, is similar to a proposal that cropped up in Kansas City last week, within hours of ICE officials touring a warehouse there. According to KCUR, Kansas City council members quickly voted 12 to 1 to issue a moratorium on new detention centers in their own city, in an explicit attempt to block a new ICE facility.
A Republican-packed city council in Roxbury, New Jersey, preemptively approved a similar resolution last Tuesday, stating, “it is the position of the Township Council of the Township of Roxbury that the Township of Roxbury is not an appropriate municipality for the placement of a detainee processing facility.”
Orlando officials, however, could have a tougher job blocking a new detention center themselves, even if they had the political will. As the Sentinel pointed out in their own reporting, Florida has a law on the books that prevents local governments from placing moratoriums on new development or reconstruction plans through Oct. 1, 2027.
That law, approved by Florida lawmakers last year, has received so much heat since its passage that state lawmakers are currently working on legislation to amend it. Orange County joined a lawsuit over the law last October, arguing that certain parts of it “restricts local home rule authority over land use and planning.”
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