Department of Homeland Security plans to purchase and operate mega warehouses to use as immigration detention centers are raising concerns among lawmakers, local residents and government contractors.

The proposed centers are so large that some could house as many as 8,000 detainees at once, according to a DHS spreadsheet of more than 20 potential locations that was verified by NBC News. The largest federal prison in the U.S., for example, has roughly 4,000 inmates.

At least two facilities have already been secured.

One is outside Phoenix, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement paid $70 million for a building the size of seven football fields, according to NBC affiliate KPNX of Phoenix. ICE purchased the 418,000-square-foot warehouse in an industrial park in Surprise.

Surprise city officials said in a statement that they were not aware of the purchase, that they had not been notified of it and that they had not been contacted by DHS or any other federal agency.

The other is outside Philadelphia, where ICE bought a warehouse for $87.4 million last month for possible conversion into an immigration detention center, according to NBC Philadelphia.

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Democratic lawmakers have criticized a proposed facility in Roxbury, New Jersey. And immigrant advocates say a possible detention center in Hudson, Colorado, a rural area more than 30 miles from Denver, would mean lawyers and family members would have difficulty visiting, in part because there is no good public transportation that far away from the city, according to NBC affiliate KUSA of Denver.

To win an ICE warehouse contract, a company must already be doing business with the U.S. Navy or partner with companies that do business with the Navy, according to an executive at a company that houses detainees and is under consideration to run one of the new ICE warehouses. The process was similar when the Trump administration built its largest detention center to date — a sprawling tent facility in Texas.

Two government contractors told NBC News they were worried that new warehouses — and the large numbers of immigrants who would be housed in them — would present safety problems.

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ICE currently houses more than 70,000 immigrants in 224 facilities nationwide, according to the agency’s data from early February.

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