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More than a month after national news reports said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was considering Merrillville as a potential location for a detention or processing facility, local officials say they still don’t know what, if anything, the federal agency has planned for the northern Indiana city.
A Dec. 24 report by The Washington Post indicated ICE was exploring using industrial warehouses as immigration detention or processing facilities. The Post report, citing internal documents reviewed by its staff, says the federal agency was planning seven large-scale detention centers and 16 smaller processing centers, one of which would be in Merrillville.
On Jan. 28, the Merrillville Town Council issued a statement opposing a potential ICE facility, and on Feb. 5, a northern Indiana congressman sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security expressing safety concerns for potential detainees.
Despite the public condemnations, a Merrillville city spokesperson told The Indiana Lawyer on Monday that neither ICE nor any federal agency has formally notified them regarding the matter. Messages sent to ICE’s Chicago Field Office, which oversees enforcement in Indiana, were not immediately returned.
Council: Facility ‘does not align’ with town values
Although details are scarce, members of the Merrillville Town Council said they felt compelled to act. Their Jan. 27 meeting, during which a resolution to oppose the potential facility was discussed, included more than 40 minutes of public testimony related to the resolution, with more than a dozen residents speaking in support of the council’s actions to oppose ICE.
“This council chose to be proactive rather than reactive,” Council President Rick Bella said in a Jan. 28 press release after the council unanimously adopted its resolution. “We are making it clear now that a detention or processing facility does not align with Merrillville’s values, planning standards or vision for the future.”
In its statement, the council emphasized that Merrillville’s warehouses “were approved and built based on industrial use,” and that they weren’t designed for human residence at detention-scale.
“If such a conversion happened, it would place unanticipated demands on police, fire, emergency services, as well as other public resources like water and sewer utilities,” the council press release said.
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According to Chas Reilly, the town media officer, Merrillville officials had been made aware that a recently constructed and currently unoccupied 289,000-square-foot warehouse in town had at some point been identified as a possible location for an ICE facility.
Reilly said the town council was aware that a group of individuals toured the facility around mid-January, but was unsure who specifically toured that facility. He said the town was working to learn more and that no official notices had come in from federal officials.
Opus, a Minneapolis-based group of commercial real estate companies with projects across the country, currently owns the building.
A company spokesperson did not confirm whether Opus had talked with the federal government regarding the site’s potential use, saying the company does not disclose details regarding prospective transactions.
However, the spokesperson said: “We can confirm that our Merrillville, IN, building is not under contract, does not have a transaction pending and remains available for sale or lease.”
Congressman weighs in
Last week, U.S. Rep. Frank Mrvan, the Democratic congressman in District 1, sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem opposing such a move. He wrote that a lack of consultation with city officials and his office on the potential for a new facility “raises serious public safety and infrastructure concerns for our community.”
“Converting an industrial warehouse designed for commercial use into a detention facility presents serious health and safety concerns for detainees,” Mrvan wrote. “The facility in question was not designed for human habitation and lacks the infrastructure necessary to safely accommodate individuals for extended periods.”
ICE currently uses six Indiana facilities to house its detainees, with the largest being the Miami Correctional Facility in Bunker Hill.
Last summer, Noem announced that President Donald Trump’s administration would partner with the state to secure about 1,000 beds at Miami, dubbed the “Speedway Slammer” by Noem, to house more immigrant detainees.
As of Jan. 22, that facility saw an average daily detainee population of 405, according to Syracuse University’s Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse. That’s an increase of 229 detainees since TRAC first tracked the facility’s average daily population in November 2025.
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