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SOCORRO, Texas — In a Texas town at the edge of the Rio Grande and a tall metal border wall, rumors swirled that federal immigration officials wanted to purchase three hulking warehouses to transform into a detention center.

As local officials scrambled to find out what was happening, a deed was filed showing the Department of Homeland Security had already inked a $122.8-million deal for the 826,000-square-foot warehouses in Socorro, a bedroom community of 40,000 people outside El Paso.

“Nobody from the federal government bothered to pick up the phone or even send us any type of correspondence letting us know what’s about to take place,” said Rudy Cruz Jr., the mayor of the predominantly Latino town of low-slung ranch homes and trailer parks, where orchards and irrigation ditches share the landscape with strip malls, truck stops, recycling plants and distribution warehouses.

Socorro is among at least 20 communities across the U.S. whose large warehouses have become stealth targets for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s $45-billion expansion of detention centers.

As public support for the agency and President Trump’s immigration crackdown sags, communities both red and blue are objecting to mass detentions and raising concerns that the facilities could strain water supplies and other services while reducing local tax revenue.

In many cases, mayors, county commissioners, governors and members of Congress learned about ICE’s ambitions only after the agency bought or leased space for detainees, leading to shock and frustration even in areas that have backed Trump.

“I just feel,” said Cruz, whose wife was born in Mexico, “that they do these things in silence so that they don’t get opposition.”

Communities scramble for information

ICE, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, has purchased at least seven warehouses in Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Texas, signed deeds show. Other deals have been announced but not finalized, though buyers scuttled sales in eight locations.

Homeland Security objected to calling the sites warehouses, emphasizing in a statement that they would be “very well structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards.”

The process has been chaotic at times. ICE last week acknowledged that it made a “mistake” when it announced warehouse purchases in Chester, N.Y., and Roxbury, N.J. Roxbury then announced Friday that the sale there had closed.

Homeland Security has confirmed that it is looking for more detention space but hasn’t disclosed individual sites ahead of acquisitions. Some cities learned only through reporters that ICE was scouting warehouses. Others were tipped off by a spreadsheet circulating online among activists whose source is unclear.

It wasn’t until Feb. 13 that the scope of the warehouse project was confirmed, when the governor’s office in New Hampshire, where there is backlash to a planned 500-bed processing center, released an ICE document showing the agency plans to spend $38.3 billion to boost detention capacity to 92,000 beds.

Since Trump took office, the number of people detained by ICE has increased to 75,000 from 40,000, spread across more than 225 sites.

ICE could use the warehouses to consolidate and to increase capacity. The document describes a project that includes eight large-scale detention centers, capable of housing 7,000 to 10,000 detainees each, and 16 smaller regional processing centers. The document also refers to the acquisition of 10 existing “turnkey” facilities.

The project is funded through Trump’s massive tax and spending cuts law enacted last year that nearly doubled the Homeland Security budget. To build the detention centers, the Trump administration is using military contracts.

Those contracts allow for a high degree of secrecy and enable Homeland Security to move quickly without following the usual processes and safeguards, said Charles Tiefer, a professor emeritus of law at the University of Baltimore Law School.

Socorro facility could be among the largest

In Socorro, the ICE-owned warehouses are so large that 4½ Walmart Supercenters could fit inside, in contrast to the remnants of the austere Spanish colonial and mission architecture that define the town.

At a recent City Council meeting, public comments stretched for hours. “I think a lot of innocent people are getting caught up in their dragnet,” said Jorge Mendoza, an El Paso County retiree whose grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Mexico.

Many speakers invoked concerns about three recent deaths at an ICE detention facility at the nearby Ft. Bliss Army base.

Communities fear a financial hit

Even communities that backed Trump in 2024 have been caught off-guard by ICE’s plans and have raised concerns.

In rural Pennsylvania’s Berks County, commissioner Christian Leinbach called the district attorney, the sheriff, the jail warden and the county’s head of emergency services when he first heard ICE might buy a warehouse in Upper Bern Township, three miles from his home.

No one knew anything.

A few days later, a local official in charge of land records informed him that ICE had bought the building — promoted by developers as a “state-of-the art logistics center” — for $87.4 million.

“There was absolutely no warning,” Leinbach said during a meeting in which he raised concerns that turning the warehouse into a federal facility would mean a loss of more than $800,000 in local tax money.

ICE has touted the income taxes its workers would pay, though the facilities themselves will be exempt from property taxes.

A Georgia center

In Social Circle, Ga., which also strongly supported Trump in 2024, officials were stunned by ICE’s plans for a facility that could hold 7,500 to 10,000 people after first learning about it through a reporter.

The city, which has a population of 5,000 and worries about the infrastructure needs for such a detention center, heard from the Homeland Security Department only after the $128.6-million sale of a 1-million-square-foot warehouse was completed. Like Socorro and Berks County, Social Circle questioned whether the water and sewage system could keep up.

ICE has said it did due diligence to ensure the sites don’t overwhelm city utilities. But Social Circle said the agency’s analysis relied on a yet-to-be built sewer treatment plant.

“To be clear, the City has repeatedly communicated that it does not have the capacity or resources to accommodate this demand, and no proposal presented to date has demonstrated otherwise,” the city said in a statement.

And in the Phoenix suburb of Surprise, officials sent a scathing letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after ICE without warning bought a massive warehouse in a residential area about a mile from a high school. Arizona Atty. Gen. Kris Mayes, a Democrat, raised the prospect of going to court to have the site declared a public nuisance.

Crowds wait to speak in Socorro

Back in Socorro, people waiting to speak against the ICE facility spilled out of the City Council chambers, some standing beside murals paying tribute to the World War II-era bracero program that allowed Mexican farmworkers to be guest workers in the U.S. The program stoked Socorro’s economy and population before the Eisenhower administration in the 1950s began mass deportations aimed at people who had crossed the border illegally.

Eduardo Castillo, formerly an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, told city officials that it is intimidating but “not impossible” to challenge the federal government.

“If you don’t at least try,” he said, “you will end up with another inhumane detention facility built in your jurisdiction and under your watch.”

Hollingsworth and Lee write for the Associated Press and reported from Kansas City, Mo., and Socorro, respectively. AP writers Holly Ramer in Concord, N.H., and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pa., contributed to this report.

Altadena has never organized itself around a traditional civic center, like a city hall plaza or downtown square. Instead, this decidedly informal community has relied on an informal constellation of shared spaces — parks and playgrounds tucked into the foothills, popular mid-century libraries, an amphitheater carved into a slope, a handful of living room-like bars and cafés.

After last year’s Eaton Fire tore through town, incinerating community infrastructure and scattering residents across the region, the importance of such places has grown dramatically — not only as centers of gathering, but as sites of refuge, planning and healing. Thanks to a determined commitment from residents and officials, these communal sites are starting to return — in many cases better than before — revealing innovative thinking about the ways we can create and use community spaces.

Earlier this month, L.A.-based aid organization Community Organized Relief Effort, or CORE, founded by Sean Penn and Ann Lee, broke ground on one of the hamlet’s newest local gathering spots: the Altadena Center for Community. Designed by acclaimed Japanese architect Shigeru Ban (who will be receiving the 2026 American Institute of Architects Gold Medal Award later this year), the 1,600-square-foot building, located on a county-owned lot on Lincoln Avenue, adapts a prototype that Ban — who has been designing lightweight structures for disaster victims for more than thirty years — first employed in Onagawa, Japan, following the 2011 Tōhuku earthquake and tsunami.

The vaulted, wood-beamed space, supported on its flanks by shipping containers, is designed to be put up quickly, affordably and with minimal waste, said Ban, who estimates construction will cost about $300,000 and be completed in two to three months once permits are approved.

“Every move we make has to be very cost effective,” noted Ben Albertson, the local project manager for Ban’s firm.

The center can host workspaces, meeting rooms, mental health facilities and community events, but programming is still pending, based on an assessment of community needs, noted CORE co-founder Lee.

An architectural rendering of Shigeru Ban’s design for the 1,600-square-foot Altadena Center for Community, located at 2231 Lincoln Avenue. Construction began in January and is set for completion this summer.

(Shigeru Ban Architects / CORE)

“What are the gaps? What do they want to name it?” said Lee. The center’s open, flexible design, she added, will allow programs to evolve over time — inside and out — with the goal of accommodating markets, religious services, yoga classes and other types of support.

Local officials, particularly L.A. County Parks and Recreation, immediately started to address the dearth of places to congregate after the fires. While parts of Eaton Canyon still burned, parks staff organized sheriff-escorted site visits to assess damage and determine which spaces could safely reopen first, said Chester Kano, deputy director of the planning and development agency at L.A. County Parks.

In May, Loma Alta Park was the first major spot to reemerge with significant upgrades, funded in part by an outpouring of donations from local residents and businesses as well as philanthropic sources like FireAid, the L.A. Clippers Foundation and the L.A. Dodgers Foundation.

“There’s been so much trauma. I think just building back the way things were would be insufficient,” says Kano.

County crews first addressed widespread damage, then installed new play facilities — including Landscape Structures’ towering “Volo Aire” jungle gym, featuring three tunnel slides — as well as two refurbished baseball fields, a new computer lab and a renovated pool and gymnasium. Several local artists, including Victor Ving, Eric Junker and Katie Chrishanthi Sunderalingam, have painted colorful murals.

Four-year-old twins Noah and Luke Stafford, who had to evacuate during the Eaton Fire, play on new equipment at Loma Alta Park in Altadena.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

The park addresses the need for communal gathering via a new cluster of colorful outdoor furniture known as the Alta Chat Space.

“People didn’t have anywhere to go,” says Kano. “They were meeting on their driveways, literally on top of ash and debris, bringing folding chairs.”

Perhaps the most significant transformation will be to Charles White Park, located a short drive from CORE’s future facility and named for the famed Altadena artist. Long a community focal point, the five-acre park is set to undergo a redesign thanks to a $5-million donation from the Walt Disney Company, and a $5.5-million outlay from California State Parks.

County Parks and Salt Landscape Architects are set to take the lead on the work. New facilities will include a play area and splash pad designed by Disney Imagineers, a community center (with meeting spaces and interpretive exhibits about White), pathways, bathrooms, a small amphitheater, a bronze of White and public art by White’s son, Ian White.

Ian White said his designs are still being finalized, but could include poetry, sculpture, landscape art, and information and quotes relating to notable Altadena residents, including artists, scientists and indigenous tribes.

“It will be a dramatic shift,” noted White. “I must admit every time we have a meeting about it, I’m excited about the potential.”

White is complimentary of Disney’s willingness to take input from the community, despite a flurry of concerns that arose last fall around the release of an early design sketch of the play area, depicting somewhat cartoonish, pinecone-shaped play structures that some locals felt didn’t reflect local identity.

“Disney’s been doing the work, trying to understand the legacy and history of Altadena,” said White, who recently hosted 17 Imagineers at his house. “I think there’s going to be an evolution of their design,” added Kano.

Challenges remain

Despite early victories, there are more than a few remaining “heavy lifts,” as Kano put it. The county has brought in about $60 million to restore parks damaged in the Eaton and Hughes Fires, but about $190 million is still needed.

Arguably no lift is bigger than Farnsworth Park, the beloved recreation space along Altadena’s northeast side. That facility, now largely overgrown and covered with opaque fencing, still needs electricity after the destruction of its power lines and an on-site utility building. Its centerpiece, the lodge-like Davies Building, was all but obliterated by the fire, and its amphitheater, while still intact, suffered notable damage.

A view of the closed and heavily damaged Farnsworth Park in Altadena, which needs about $69 million in repairs.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Thus far, the park — which needs about $69 million in repairs, said Kano — has only received $5 million from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to build a healing and reflection garden along its west flank; and $3 million from the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy to rebuild a restroom and restore some landscaping and other related work.

Liz MacLean, a principal at Architectural Resources Group, a preservation-focused firm that has been advising L.A. County Parks about repairs to Farnsworth’s amphitheater, lived less than half a mile from the park. She and her family are still undecided on whether they will return to the area, making her memories of the park particularly poignant.

“It was a real destination for the community, tucked up in the hills,” noted MacLean. “They’d have a musical in the summer, and people would picnic outside of the amphitheater on the lawn. And every type of sport you wanted to do, there seemed to be a field for it. My daughters have had a bunch of events for their schools up there. Graduations, performances, meetups. The community would vote there. Boys and Girl Scout troops would have events in the banquet hall.”

Altadena’s two libraries, both spared from destruction, have borne outsized responsibility for picking up the slack from these losses, and have hosted community events and workshops for those hoping to rebuild. But starting Feb. 1, the skylit, greenery-filled Main Library will undergo a long-planned renovation and expansion that will put it out of commission for about the next 18 months, officials said. Updates will include access improvements, new mechanical and electric systems, a seismic retrofit, and space reconfigurations.

“There have been people who have said, ‘Please don’t close. What are we going to do?’” said Nikki Winslow, director of the Altadena Library District. “But this has been a long time coming. Our Main Library really needs a renovation.”

As a result, the smaller, recently renovated Bob Lucas Memorial Library and Literacy Center will host far more activity. The district has also installed a temporary satellite library inside a multipurpose room at Loma Alta Park. Stewart noted that the district is looking for more spaces — including the Altadena Community Center — to host events.

Ian White, standing by the sign for Charles White Park, is the son of the park’s namesake and is working on creating public art for the project.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“We’ve become so dependent on all things virtual, but nothing can really replace the human connection, especially coming out of a disaster,” said Carolina Romo, director of the Construction and Asset Management Division of the Los Angeles County Development Authority, which is coordinating with CORE on its new center. “You can’t really address the psychological toll in a virtual environment.”

CORE’s Lee says that such spaces are particularly important in areas where digital expertise is less common. “There’s just so much bad information out there. You don’t know who to trust. So going to a physical space and seeing people that you know you can talk to can make all the difference.”

Rebuilding will take years, and many decisions remain unresolved. But the community, said Architectural Resources Group’s MacLean, needs something solid sooner: “There are things that were lost that were special to everyone. At the end of the day people just want their community back. They want to gather again.”

It all began after a viral video alleging fraud in Somali-run child-care centers in Minneapolis: strangers peering through windows, right-wing journalists showing up outside homes, influencers hurling false accusations.

In San Diego, child-care provider Samsam Khalif was shuttling kids to her home-based center when she was spooked by two men with a camera waiting in a car parked outside, prompting her to circle the block several times before unloading the children.

“I’m scared. I don’t know what their intention is,” said Khalif, who decided to install additional security cameras outside her home.

Somali-run child-care centers across the United States have become targets since the video caught the attention of the White House amid the administration’s immigration crackdown. Child-care providers worry about how they can maintain the safe learning environments they have worked to create for young children who may be spending their first days away from their parents.

In the Minneapolis area, child-care providers, many of them immigrants, say they’re being antagonized, exacerbating the stress they face from immigration enforcement activity that has engulfed the city.

One child-care provider said she watched someone emerge from a car that had been circling the building and defecate near the center’s entrance. The same day, a motorist driving by yelled that the center was a “fake day care.” She’s had to create new lockdown procedures, is budgeting for security and now keeps the blinds closed to shield children from unwanted visitors and from witnessing immigration enforcement actions.

“I can’t have peace of mind about whether the center will be safe today,” said the provider, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being targeted. “That’s a hard pill to swallow.”

Video’s claims disproved

The day after Christmas, right-wing influencer Nick Shirley posted a lengthy video with allegations that members of Minneapolis’ large Somali community were running fake child-care centers so they could collect federal child-care subsidies.

The U.S. occasionally has seen fraud cases related to child-care subsidies. But the Minneapolis video’s central claims — that business owners were billing the government for children they were not caring for — were disproved by inspectors. Nonetheless, the Trump administration attempted to freeze child-care funding for Minnesota and five other Democratic-led states until a court ordered the funding to be released.

President Trump has repeatedly targeted Somali immigrants with dehumanizing rhetoric, calling them “garbage” and “low IQ” and suggesting that Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota Democrat who was born in Somalia, should be deported: “Throw her the hell out!” In Minnesota, 87% of foreign-born Somalis are naturalized U.S. citizens.

Trump has zeroed in on a years-old case in which a sprawling network of fraudsters — many of them Somali Americans — bilked Minnesota of an estimated $300 million that was supposed to help feed children and families. His rhetoric intensified after Shirley’s video was posted.

Activists take it upon themselves to investigate

In Federal Way, Wash., and Columbus, Ohio, both home to large Somali communities, right-wing journalists and influencers began showing up unannounced at addresses for child-care operations they pulled from state websites.

In one video, a man arrives at a bungalow-style building in Columbus. He films through the glass front door, showing a foyer with cheerful posters that read “When we learn, we grow” and “Make today happy.”

“It does not look like a child-care center at all,” the man says.

Ohio dispatched an inspector to the address and found that it was, in fact, a legitimate child-care center. The center’s voicemail was hacked, so parents calling heard a slur-laden message calling Somalis “sand rats” and saying they “worship a false religion of baby-raping terrorists,” according to WOSU-FM.

In Washington state, child-care workers called police on the right-wing journalists who kept appearing outside their homes.

Journalists with the right-leaning Washington outlet Center Square filmed themselves pressing a woman for proof that she ran a child-care center for which she was collecting federal subsidies. She refused to answer questions.

“Are you aware of the Somali day-care fraud? We’re just trying to check out if this is a real day care,” one of the journalists said. “Where are the children?”

Local officials speak out

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson posted a statement on X saying she would not tolerate anyone trying to “intimidate, harass or film Somali child care providers.” Then, Harmeet Dhillon, who heads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, issued her own warning: “Asking questions/citizen journalism are NOT HATE CRIMES in America — they are protected speech, and if Seattle tries to chill that speech, @CivilRights will step in to protect it and set them straight!”

In Ohio, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine held a news conference to debunk a right-wing influencer’s fraud claims about a Columbus child-care center and assured people the state diligently monitored centers that receive public money. He said a child-care provider refusing to let in a stranger should not be read as a sign of fraud.

“It shouldn’t be a shock when someone sees something on social media, and someone is going, ‘I can’t get into this place, no one will let me in,’” DeWine said in a news conference in January. “Well, hell, no! No one should let them in.”

Even after DeWine refuted the claims, Republicans in the Statehouse introduced legislation to more closely monitor child-care centers, including one measure that would require those that take public money to provide live video feeds of their classrooms to state officials.

Advocates say fraud claims are a distraction

Child-care advocates say the fraud allegations are detracting from more pressing crises.

Child-care subsidy programs in many states have lengthy waiting lists, making it difficult for parents to return to work. The programs that subsidize child care for families that struggle to afford it are also facing funding threats, including from the Trump administration.

Ruth Friedman, who headed the Office of Child Care under President Biden, accused Trump and Republicans of manufacturing a crisis for political gain.

“They are using it to try to discredit the movement toward investing in child care,” said Friedman, who is now a senior fellow at the left-leaning think tank Century Foundation.

Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon said in a statement that the department “rejects the claim that concerns about child care program integrity are manufactured.” He urged people to report suspected fraud to the government.

Balingit and Kramon write for the Associated Press.