A deed filed with the Salt Lake County Recorder’s Office shows that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has bought a warehouse in Salt Lake City. It’s a different building in a different part of town than the rumored site that sparked protests against a detention center last January.
For $145 million, the government bought an 833,000 square-foot building at 6020 W 300 S. It sits on a 25-acre lot in the Mountain View Industrial Park, west of the Salt Lake City International Airport and south of Interstate 80.
This comes as ICE is detaining more people than ever and buying warehouses around the country.
The Salt Lake City Mayor’s Office is gathering more information about the transaction, site plans and potential community impacts, said spokesperson Andrew Wittenberg in a statement to KUER.
“Mayor Mendenhall has made it clear that this kind of facility has no place in Salt Lake City,” he wrote.
In a separate statement, Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson said she was “deeply disturbed” to learn about the reported purchase “for what would likely become a massive ICE detention facility.”
Wilson has not given up on stopping a detention center from coming to town. She said Utahns came together to stop the previous warehouse from becoming a detention center and “we must summon that same resolve again.”
“We cannot allow aggressive and often unlawful federal enforcement tactics to take root in our community,” she wrote to KUER.
The seller of the building is a Chicago-based real estate investment firm, RREEF Management.
ICE is reported to have been searching for a Utah location since before President Donald Trump’s second term. In 2024, Gov. Spencer Cox said he wanted a detention center in Utah so the federal government would not have to transport detainees to Las Vegas. But ICE often takes immigrants to detention centers far from home.
Back in January, the Ritchie Group, owner of the warehouse rumored to be under ICE consideration, said it had no plans to sell or lease to the federal government.
At the time, Mayor Wilson spoke out against a potential detention center. Reports indicated it would have been a 7,500-bed facility, and Wilson pointed out that would be more than triple the population at the County Metro Jail. She also cited “widespread unease about ICE’s aggressive and unchecked conduct nationwide, and the instability detention facilities often bring to surrounding communities.”
In her own January letter against the detention center, Mayor Erin Mendenhall said the property sat in an M1 light industrial zone. There are building regulations there, the mayor noted, for things like bathrooms, exits and fire suppression in order to house more than 20 people with restricted movements.
The new Salt Lake City building purchased by ICE is also in an M1 zone.
Macy Lipkin is a Report for America corps member who reports for KUER in northern Utah.
