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Those are a few of the logistical and humanitarian concerns raised by residents and local officials in some of the 23 towns where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement plans to convert industrial buildings into detention centers that would combined hold up to 80,000 people. {snip}

As specific sites have surfaced in news reports, people in those communities have taken steps to block the projects.

“I’m not sure that this is the type of detention that is humane,” Quinton Lucas, the mayor of Kansas City, Missouri, said in an interview about plans to transform a warehouse there into an ICE facility that could hold up to 7,500 people. On Jan. 15, the same day that local news photographers documented ICE officials inspecting the building, the city council passed a five-year ban on all new nonmunicipal detention facilities.

ICE expects to hold between 1,500 and 10,000 detainees in each of these 23 warehouses at a time, according to documents and interviews. But some experts have warned that it will be difficult to bring the industrial buildings up to federal standards for detention facilities in the short time before ICE plans to begin housing people in them.

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DHS bought two warehouses this month, one in Williamsport, Maryland, for $102 million and another in Surprise, Arizona, for $70 million, deed records show. In recent weeks, ICE officials have also begun notifying warehouse owners and local officials in several other cities of their interest in specific properties.

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Last month, a DHS official wrote to Oklahoma City’s planning department of its intent “to purchase, occupy and rehabilitate a 26.8-acre warehouse property” into an ICE processing center. The agency said renovations may include the construction of holding spaces, offices, visitor areas, cafeterias, bathrooms and medical units, according to the letter, which was first reported by The Oklahoman.

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DHS also wrote to planners in Hanover County, Virginia, about plans to purchase and overhaul a 553,000-square-foot facility in Ashland, according to a copy of the letter provided to The Post and other media. The warehouse was recently built on the site of a former cattle farm, 15 miles north of Richmond.

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In Williamsport, a town with a population of 2,000 just outside Hagerstown, Maryland, community members found out about plans for a detention center only after ICE purchased an 826,000-square-foot building there. The federal government is not required to get local approval as other developers might because the U.S. Constitution generally exempts it from local laws when it is carrying out a federal duty.

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Virginia Mungovan, a spokeswoman for the city of Surprise, Arizona., said the city was not notified before DHS’s purchase of a 418,400-square-foot, newly constructed warehouse in the suburb northwest of Phoenix. {snip}

ICE expects the buildings in Williamsport and Surprise to begin accepting detainees by April, according to a person briefed on the plan, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal agency matters.

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Some state and local officials have begun girding for battles over the proposed detention centers, saying they would overwhelm local infrastructure, violate zoning laws and potentially threaten the safety of their communities.

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