The Department of Homeland Security is attempting to purchase a warehouse in the village of Chester, New York to function as an ICE “processing facility,” alarming residents and advocates across the Hudson Valley. 

The move was announced on Jan. 8, with DHS saying that they plan “to purchase, occupy and rehabilitate a warehouse property…in Chester, NY in support of ICE operations,” in an online announcement. The facility  would hold as many as 1,500 people. The Village of Chester (pop. 4,000) is located about an hour north of New York City.

Critics of the project vented their opposition at a Jan.12 town hall meeting at the Chester senior center.  Daniel Atonna, a member of the Poughkeepsie City Council and an organizer with the Mid-Hudson Valley chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, who attended the town hall. Around 400 people attended, with about half of them being turned away due to overcapacity, leading to an impromptu protest outside the building. A similar number of people joined a Jan. 29 protest in Chester. 

“There were probably 300 people inside of the village hall. It was at capacity, to the point where the police wouldn’t even let more people in, because there’s so many people inside the building it was causing a safety hazard,” Atonna said.

“There has been an extreme outpouring of opposition at this detention center,” he told The Indypendent. “The Hudson Valley really is one community, and we’re very worried about our neighbors being kidnapped by ICE.”

ICE’s move on Chester comes as the Trump administration is seeking to supercharge its deportation campaign. ICE currently holds 70,000 detainees per day nationwide, an all-time record. The Trump administration is looking to more than double that capacity by building 23 new detention facilities nationwide, including the one in Chester, with a total of 76,500 beds, according to Bloomberg. This push is meeting fierce opposition across the country, including in rural communities who typically voted for Trump.

The proposed facility is located within a two to three mile radius of an elementary school, several churches, and a park with a playground. If the facility were to be purchased and occupied it would “severely disrupt our way of life,” says Maria Martinez, a legislative advocacy consultant at the Rural and Migrant Ministry. 

“The impact of the local economy will be major. But Chester is not going to be the only city that will be impacted. We’re talking about the surrounding cities, like Middletown and Newburgh, Warwick, Poughkeepsie,” said Martinez. “Just because the facility is being built in Chester doesn’t mean that only people who live in Chester will be detained. Best believe that anyone across the state from down to Long Island up to Albany or Buffalo will be impacted.”

Martinez, whose own parents were deported by ICE under the first Trump administration, said that people at risk of deportation and their allies are “terrified” at the possibility of an ICE detention facility being established in their backyard. 

After the Jan. 29 rally in Chester which Martinez spoke at, she met a woman who approached her to give her a hug, and then broke down sobbing in her arms. 

“I know what it feels like to have my family torn apart,” Martinez told The Indy. “People are devastated. Fear is what all of these people are living in every day,” she said, adding that some of the Rural and Migrant Ministries partners and members have already been impacted by immigrant detentions and deportations. 

Chester is just one of several cities across America that may see an ICE facility in the coming months. Thanks to the passage of President Trump’s so-called “Big Beautiful Bill,” which massively increased ICE’s funding, more ICE detention sites are being built to facilitate President Trump’s mass deportation crusade. 

The The Washington Post reported that the Chester facility, formerly an auto parts distribution center, “became so unbearably hot during summer months that two people who used to work there said it was akin to being stuck inside an aluminum shed.”

The warehouse in Chester is currently owned by an LLC linked to former Trump Advisor Carl Ichan. Democrats have widely opposed the sale of the facility to ICE, including Rep. Pat Ryan (D-NY18), who attended the Jan. 29 rally. The Chester Town Board also passed two resolutions reaffirming its opposition to the facility and supporting legislation in the New York State Legislature known as the MELT Act, which would prohibit ICE agents from wearing masks.

Still, as Atonna points out, these measures stop short of calling for abolishing ICE in its entirety. 

“Schumer, Gillibrand, Ryan and Riley, they’ve been voting to fund ICE over and over again. In fact, there was a vote in the House, and I believe Pat Ryan and Josh Riley both voted yes on some kind of resolution that was thanking ICE,” Atonna said. 

“The problem isn’t just that ICE is proposing to build a facility here in our backyard. The problem is that ICE exists in the first place, and that it’s terrorizing our neighbors, kidnapping our neighbors, literally executing people in broad daylight in the street,” he added. “This agency has only existed since 2003. It is not some permanent part of America. There was a time before ICE, and there will be a time after ICE.”

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