Rumors of an ICE detention center in Merrimack spark protests, outrage, and confusion

Demonstrators gather outside Merrimack Town Hall Thursday for a protest of reported plans to put an ICE facility in Merrimack. (Photo by William Skipworth/New Hampshire Bulletin)

In late December, The Washington Post reported that Merrimack is one of 23 sites across the United States where the Trump administration plans to build a new ICE detention facility as part of its aggressive deportation campaign, citing a leaked document from the Department of Homeland Security. The local response over the ensuing weeks has been intense.

“I’m almost 70 years old,” Mike Tranchemontagne, of nearby Nashua, said. “I never thought I’d be living in a police state, and that’s what we’re turning into.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement, commonly known as ICE, is seeking contractors to help convert industrial warehouses into a network of detention centers across the country to hold immigrants the federal government wants to deport, the Post reported. Under the plan, seven new facilities would hold 5,000 to 10,000 people each and 16 new smaller feeder facilities would hold up to 1,500 people each. Detainees would be booked and held at the smaller facilities for a few weeks before being transferred to one of the large facilities. The administration plans to put one of the smaller facilities in Merrimack, according to the newspaper’s reporting.

Gov. Kelly Ayotte, speaking to reporters last week, said her administration has heard nothing from the federal government about a potential ICE facility in New Hampshire.

“This whole discussion about it, to me, is, at this point, a speculative discussion,” Ayotte said. “I would expect, if this were a real plan, which I don’t know yet because it’s been media speculation at this point, that there would be a process in which members of the local community would have an opportunity to weigh in, as, I would think, at some point the state would be consulted. But none of that’s happened yet.”

Ayotte also questioned who would staff a Merrimack facility given the fact there is already an ongoing staffing shortage in New Hampshire state prisons.

Tranchemontagne was one of hundreds who gathered outside Merrimack Town Hall Thursday protesting the plans. While the demonstration began as a reaction to the news of a potential detention center in Merrimack, it grew to become a protest about ICE action across the country and the Trump administration’s actions writ large. The protest came one day after an ICE officer shot and killed U.S. citizen Renee Good in Minneapolis, and many protesters held signs referencing the shooting or wore stickers bearing Good’s name. 

“I love my country and I disagree with just about everything that’s happened in the last year,” Tranchemontagne said. “Just total lack of concern about law and order, the Constitution, due process, on and on and on. I mean, it’s unfathomable.”

State Rep. Wendy Thomas, a Merrimack Democrat, believes such a facility would be both a moral and practical issue.

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“ICE is a lawless, thug-ridden agency that is not following procedure,” Thomas told the Bulletin. “They’re not following laws. They’re terrorizing people around the United States. We don’t need people like that in our town. They violate human rights on a regular basis.”

Thomas argued “building this facility would make Merrimack complicit in those abuses.” 

However, she also pointed to planning and zoning concerns.

“Even if you set aside the moral crisis, and we shouldn’t, this proposal is still a terrible deal for our town,” she said. “Detention centers are often exempt from local property taxes or generate far less revenue than traditional commercial development. That means lost property-tax income for Merrimack, while the costs fall squarely on our residents, our fire department, police and emergency medical services would be expected to respond to a high-risk facility.”

She also worries about the traffic a facility could add to the Daniel Webster Highway, Merrimack’s main artery.

Max Goddard grew up in Merrimack. He worries the former Anheuser-Busch plant — which the multinational beer company announced would close sometime in early 2026 — would be the chosen site for a detention center. (The Trump administration has not publicly specified where any detention center might be located or publicly confirmed or denied the Post’s reporting.)

“I took prom pictures at the Anheuser-Busch plant,” Goddard said during the protest, “which might be the site of this future concentration camp. And I think it would be a tragedy to take what is formerly an icon of this town, and a thing that everyone goes to, and to turn it into something so sickeningly horrible.”

Merrimack Town Hall closed early Thursday in anticipation that more people would show up than it could handle, and Merrimack Police Department officers and Hillsborough County sheriff’s deputies were on scene. Protests against ICE activity in general and the Merrimack plans specifically also took place in Concord and Manchester. Other towns identified in the Post’s reporting, such as Roxbury, New Jersey, and Jefferson, Georgia, also saw resistance and demonstrations.

Erin Walthour, who travelled from Grantham to the Merrimack protest Thursday, said she was horrified reading the federal government’s plans to create a network of detainment centers.

“​​That’s what the Nazis did,” she said.