Florida officials and Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities are considering opening a new detention center in Orlando.
According to local reports, ICE was seen touring a warehouse facility in east Orange County, just outside Orlando. The visit was confirmed by News 6, which said it was present when ICE toured the facility on Jan. 16. Three days later, during a press conference, several Florida leaders and community members spoke out against the possibility of an ICE detention center being built in Orlando.
As reported by Fox 35 Orlando, Rep. Maxwell Frost and Florida House Rep. Anna Eskamani criticized the Department of Homeland Security's plans to build a detention center there.
"Instead of using our money on building internment camps in our communities to put our neighbors in, why don't you do something about the fact that 25 million Americans are going to see their health care costs go up anywhere from 50 to 300%," Frost said in a statement.
Eskamani also took to social media to voice her concerns, describing ICE's tactics as "vigilante-style policing."
"The idea of expanding ICE detention in Orlando comes at a moment when immigration enforcement has increasingly looked like vigilante-style policing: aggressive street actions, broken windows, people dragged from cars, and even U.S. citizens being detained in the chaos and killed," Eskamani said in a Jan. 16 statement.
My response to federal officials considering opening an immigration detention facility in Orlando: pic.twitter.com/Gx5nsfO3lD
— Rep. Anna V. Eskamani, PhD 🔨 (@AnnaForFlorida) January 16, 2026
The idea was first floated by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who earlier this month said Florida was hoping to help DHS expand its capacity to hold more detainees. While neither DeSantis nor DHS or ICE has confirmed plans to open a new facility in Orlando, Eskamani said a memo leaked in December confirmed the rumors, according to Fox 35 Orlando.
"No information actually came from the federal government or the state government, and when I spoke to the city of Orlando about it, they were completely clueless," Eskamani said. "They're operating in the shadows."
According to El País, the site ICE visited is an industrial warehouse spanning more than 37,000 square feet, three times larger than Alligator Alcatraz, which has capacity for up to 3,000 people.
On Jan. 16, local media captured David Venturella, a senior ICE adviser overseeing the expansion of immigration detention centers, leaving the site. Venturella told reporters the visit was an initial, exploratory step and that the warehouse could serve as a detention center, but no final decision had been made.
"We are in a very early stage," Venturella said.
Eskamani told El País that using a warehouse as an immigration detention center is seen as dehumanizing.
"That place is a commercial warehouse. It is designed to store objects, not people. What they want is to detain you and store you like an object, to pressure you to self-deport," she said.
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