ICE’s plan to vastly expand its national detention network has faced a wave of bipartisan blowback, scuttling multiple planned warehouse conversions across the country.

Rumored sales or leases to Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been abandoned in places such as Mississippi, Tennessee and New Hampshire in part due to local elected Republicans urging the Trump Administration to look elsewhere.

But so far in Orlando, there’s no similar movement on ICE’s plans to create a detention center in a warehouse park off of State Road 528. The site here is farther from population centers than some of the proposals that have failed, and the opposition has been more muted.

The Orlando facility is among several dozen the Department of Homeland Security would like to purchase around the country to greatly increase federal detention space for President Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

The investment is part of about $45 billion allocated to the agency under Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and could help achieve top ICE official Todd Lyons’ goal to make the agency into the “Amazon Prime for human beings.”

The warehouse would be a so-called “processing center” capable of holding about 1,500 detainees at a time, held for an average of one week.

While the reaction has been quieter compared to other states, U.S. Rep. Maxwell Frost believes local opposition has been enough to keep the federal agency from moving forward for now.

“I think it’s still in a bit of limbo. We’ve made great efforts both on the official side and the advocacy side,” said Frost, D-Orlando. “As a result of that advocacy, it hasn’t gone anywhere as of yet.”

Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings and the Board of County Commissioners are expected to formalize their opposition this coming week in the form of a resolution. The statement argues a facility would burden the county’s “infrastructure, public resources and municipal services.” It also notes that such a facility could be harmful to the region’s reputation as an international tourism destination.

“The Orange County Board of County Commissioners hereby unequivocally and categorically opposes the conversion of any existing industrial warehouse(s) within Orange County for the establishment of a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing facility or detention facility … ” it reads.

ICE didn’t respond to questions about whether the Orlando location is still under consideration. Nor did the Georgia-based TPA Group, which owns the property, nor did HLI Partners, the Winter Park real estate company that was marketing the site.

Local officials have struggled to get intel about the plan from the property owner or from the feds. Several have unsuccessfully tried to contact TPA or HLI, which for a period last month played a Rick Astley song if its listed number was dialed.

City Commissioner Roger Chapin last month sent an email to Republican U.S. Sens. Rick Scott and Ashley Moody, as well as U.S. Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart, R-Miami, urging them to ensure the federal government respects local regulations and processes.

“A facility of this nature, if it were to bypass local zoning laws, located within Orlando could raise important procedural questions under local zoning codes, land-use regulations, infrastructure capacity and public safety planning,” he wrote.

About two weeks later, Moody’s office sent only a brief reply, acknowledging the note.

In all, 10 warehouses across the U.S. have been purchased by the federal government for a collective $894 million, according to Project Salt Box.

But 12 sales have been canceled, with at least seven more, including in Orlando, still under consideration.

In many of the canceled sales, advocacy from coalitions of officials, including members of congress, governors and local leaders – both Republicans and Democrats – has been critical.

For instance, in Merrimack, N.H., town manager Paul Micali said ICE’s proposal to open a detention center there sparked an uproar in the residential community of about 30,000. He said when the town got word that ICE was considering it, they immediately contacted their state and federal representatives, as well as Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte, to oppose it.

“The first thing that worked is we got on it right away,” he said. “We got our state delegation, our federal delegation and our governor involved right away. This was a bipartisan effort by everybody.”

Ultimately, Ayotte met with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and on Feb. 24 announced that the facility wouldn’t move forward.

In Mississippi, Republican Sen. Roger Wicker wrote a letter to Noem opposing a potential warehouse conversion in Byhalia, Miss., because it would harm economic development and potentially overwhelm infrastructure. DHS ultimately decided not to pursue that site any further.

In Oklahoma City, Republican Mayor David Holt announced a property owner there wouldn’t sell to the feds after local opposition, and in Texas, a billionaire Trump donor also decided against selling his property to the Department of Homeland Security.

Amid the blowback, the Trump administration has worked behind the scenes throughout the country to bolster support for the facilities, the Washington Post reported. DHS has distributed talking points to some local Republicans in places like New Hampshire and Maryland, and also held closed-door meetings with members of congress from Pennsylvania and Mississippi. It’s unclear if such an effort has been made in Florida.

Orange County faces a different political reality than many of the places with bipartisan opposition. The local power structure at the city and county level is mostly Democratic, and unlikely to influence the Trump administration. Meanwhile, local and state Republicans have been either quiet or gung-ho on the warehouse idea.

Gov. Ron DeSantis hasn’t weighed in on the Orlando site, but he has fervently spearheaded the state’s own detention facility at Alligator Alcatraz in South Florida.

And Byron Donalds, the Republican front-runner in the contest to succeed DeSantis, has enthusiastically supported the Orlando warehouse plan, while blasting governor’s race rivals Demings and Democrat David Jolly for their opposition.

“Jerry Demings & David Jolly are fighting to block this facility – we’re not going to let that happen,” Donalds, R-Naples, posted on X in January after appearing with about a dozen GOP activists at the warehouse.

The location itself is also much farther away from residential areas than some of the other sites, located about 8 miles east of the Orlando International Airport in an isolated warehouse park. The large Sunbridge development is planned nearby, but there are no current residents anywhere near it to complain.

Opponents still have one major card to play. Frost and other Central Florida officials such as Orange County Commissioner Nicole Wilson have cited the potential impacts to the region’s all-important tourism economy such a facility could have.

Frost said local hotels heard from travelers earlier this year as rumors swirled that ICE had booked hundreds of hotel rooms for a potential enforcement operation here.

“It’s going to be a thing that all tourists hear about when they come to Central Florida,” he said. “People have to throw everything they can at this to try to oppose this.”

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