The administration’s “ICE Detention Reengineering Initiative” was first pitched last spring but stalled for months while DHS focused on deportations and a recruitment drive to hire 10,000 ICE officers, the two officials told me. But as the White House demanded more detention space last fall, Noem’s team ordered ICE to expedite the warehouse plan. It calls for ICE to streamline its deportation process by purchasing detention centers from federal contractors it has long relied on and opening its own megajails in retrofitted warehouses.