A federal agency told Orlando’s U.S. Congressman Maxwell Frost, D-FL, this week that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement will not be opening a new office in the Central Florida Research Park structure near the University of Central Florida in Orlando, as first reported by the Orlando Sentinel.
Yet, when reached for comment by Orlando Weekly Thursday, the agency wouldn’t confirm their plans, stating instead that they are “committed to working with all of our partner agencies to meet their workspace needs.”
Tech news magazine Wired reported in February that ICE was reportedly eyeing a lease location at 12249 Science Drive for a new field office, as part of the Trump administration’s plan to expand ICE’s presence nationwide. A LoopNet listing, last updated March 3, shows there is space available.
The agency already has a field office near the Florida Mall at 9495 Delegates Drive, and its officials have also reportedly been eyeing a large industrial warehouse in southeast Orlando, about a half-hour away, to serve as an immigrant detention facility, preemptively sparking public outcry.
Neither project has definitely been confirmed by ICE or its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security. The U.S. General Services Administration, however, informed Congressman Frost’s staff this week over email that the Department of Army is already a tenant at the 12249 Science Drive building. “GSA can also confirm that ICE is not moving into this lease location,” the email stated, according to a screenshot of the email shared with Orlando Weekly.
The building — part of a 1,000-acre research and technology hub — does currently house a U.S. Marine Corps recruiting station. The U.S. Marine Corps, however, is not part of the Department of Army, but rather falls under the Department of the Navy. The U.S. Army, however, does appear to have a training center at a different address in the same complex, at 12211 Science Drive.
The GSA is a federal government agency that manages federal properties, basically serving as an IT department, and has reportedly been under pressure to help coordinate ICE’s expansion. Orlando Weekly reached out to the GSA to confirm details of the potential lease location for ICE at the Central Florida Research Park, but did not receive a definitive response.
A spokesperson told us in a statement that GSA “is committed to working with all of our partner agencies to meet their workspace needs,” adding, “We remain focused on supporting this administration’s goal of optimizing the federal footprint, and providing the best workplaces for our federal agencies to meet their mission. GSA is following all lease procurement procedures in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.”
This is the same statement that they shared, word for word, with Wired last month.
It adds further confusion to ICE’s actual plans for Orlando, but that’s not surprising. According to documents obtained by Wired, the GSA was urged by federal officials last fall to hide public listings of their new lease locations for ICE field offices, as part of the Trump administration’s plan to expand ICE.
“Due to national security concerns and recent attacks against ICE, publicizing new lease locations puts our officers, employees, and detainees in grave danger,” read a Sept. 24, 2025 email from a U.S. Department of Homeland Security official to GSA, as reported by Wired.
Even in Florida, where Republican leadership has largely fallen in line with the Trump administration’s mass deportation plan, ICE activity has been met with protests (mostly peaceful) in places like Orlando, Tampa, Miami, Palm Beach, and on university campuses like UCF, where leadership has voluntarily entered their police departments into agreements with ICE to support their federal immigration enforcement efforts.
“After seeing all the atrocities happening in the world, like genocide in Gaza and ICE brutalities in America, I needed to do something about it,” Ken Pram, a senior sociology major and member of UCF’s Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter, told The Charge, a student newspaper, during a rally organized by the Students for a Democratic Society on-campus in January.
Frost, a UCF graduate and son of a Cuban refugee who immigrated to the U.S. as a child, has also been critical of Trump’s immigration crackdown. In early February, Frost penned a joint letter with fellow Democratic U.S. Congressman Darren Soto of Kissimmee to DHS, urging the department to abandon their plan to potentially turn an Orlando industrial warehouse near Lake Nona into a federal detention facility.
“In addition to opposing additional ICE enforcement efforts targeting non-criminals and family members, we are gravely concerned about opening an additional ICE detention facility at this location,” the letter stated. “This building is not zoned for human residence and has inadequate facilities to accommodate waste management and general habitation. We are especially concerned regarding the risks to human life and safety should such a structure be hit with natural disasters.”
County commissioners in Orange County — which contains Orlando — have also expressed opposition to the development of a new federal detention facility. But local immigrant rights advocates have alleged that human rights violations are still occurring currently in the Orange County Jail, which has an agreement with ICE to temporarily detain people on federal immigration charges for up to 72 hours. Orange County corrections officials have denied these allegations.
Immigration attorneys are also fighting deportation efforts at the courthouse and are, in some cases, winning. As the Orlando Sentinel reported last week, two 12-year-old twins were wrongfully deported to Guatemala with their mother — an immigrant — before being returned to the U.S. the very same day. The twins were born and raised in Orlando. The mother had wanted the girls to stay with their grandmother or father.
“What’s going on in this country is shocking in a lot of ways, but this, to me, is just unacceptable behavior by human beings to treat children this way,” a senior district judge said during a hearing on the issue, as reported by the Sentinel. “Whether the mother was subject to her removal or not is beside the point to me at this point.”
The Trump administration has poured billions of dollars into Trump’s campaign pledge to conduct the “largest deportation in the history of our country.” Seemingly, the details of whether federal agents can do so without violating due process rights or killing U.S. citizens in the process are irrelevant.
A spokesperson for Frost said the Congressman was not available Thursday to respond to a request for comment on the non-response that Orlando Weekly received after asking about ICE’s potential plans to move into the Research Commons Building.
The executive director of the research complex, Joe Wallace, told the Orlando Sentinel last month that he had not received any inquiries from ICE on moving into the building, and that it would be up to his approval if the agency expressed such interest.
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