Town manager ‘surprised’ to learn about plans for an ICE processing site in Merrimack

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has drafted a plan to create a immigrant detainee processing site at a former industrial warehouse in Merrimack, according to documents obtained by the Washington Post.

The town of Merrimack had no knowledge of the plan prior to the reporting being published, town manager Paul Micali told NHPR.

“The Town was just as surprised when reading the article,” he wrote in an email. The Union Leader also published reporting on Christmas Day about the draft plan. Micali said he has reached out to Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s office to see if they were aware of the plan and is currently awaiting a response.

Ayotte’s office did not respond to a request for comment from NHPR.

According to the draft plan, the site in Merrimack would be one of 16 smaller processing sites planned nationwide, designed to hold between 500 to 1,500 immigrant detainees. Overall, the draft plan seeks to hold 80,000 immigrant detainees at a time, with larger sites, designated as detention centers, proposed to have between 5,000 to 10,000 beds.

According to the draft plan, the processing sites would be used to hold detainees before transporting them to one of the larger detention centers, where detainees would then be held until deportation.

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Tricia McLaughlin, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, told the Washington Post she “cannot confirm” the reporting, and declined to discuss details of the plan, which is not final.

As of the end of November, more than 340 immigrant detainees were held in New Hampshire, at sites in Berlin and Dover, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Around the same time last year, prior to the Trump administration taking office, less than 100 immigrant detainees were held in the state.

The Boston Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, which oversees New Hampshire, did not respond to NHPR’s request for comment.

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