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How Often Is ICE Acting as a Goon Squad for Landlords? 

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Shortly after midnight on September 30, more than 300 agents from federal agencies descended on an 130-unit apartment complex in southern Chicago. They busted down doors, SWAT teams rappelled from a helicopter, they threw around flash-bang grenades, zip tied dozens of residents, and put them in unmarked vans.

US citizens detained were cut loose after a few hours while 37 immigrants were not. Trump administration officials championed the raid saying the apartment complex was filled with members of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang that the Trump administration has designated a terrorist group.

A ProPublica investigation with Block Club Chicago and Frontline later found that it was all BS.

Instead what’s emerged is likely cooperation between the feds and finance over the valuable property:

This isn’t entirely new. Law enforcement largely exists to serve capital and often uses violence to forward real estate interests. One of the most public instances in recent years was the home invasion and killing of Breona Taylor by Louisville police in 2020, which was linked to plans to clear the neighborhood and speed up a major redevelopment plan.

But there is an increasing amount of evidence that the ICE national police state is rapidly building out this architecture as ICE works with landlords to detain tenants targeted for eviction, as well as landlords using the threat of ICE to force people out of their homes.

Here’s a case in San Francisco:

And here’s another in southern California:

There are instances of this occurring across the country as there is clear overlap of interests between ICE looking to goose its detain and deportation numbers and landlords eager to be free of renter protections. The result is that these masked ICE gangs that routinely ignore the bill of rights become landlord goon squads.

That service, of course, extends to employers as well:

ICE Causes Rent Crisis

While ICE can come in handy for landlords looking to evict tenants or clear out a building, the new police state on steroids is also causing plenty of headaches:

In the Minnesota Twin Cities, worker and tenant unions aimed to launch a rent strike yesterday as they demand an eviction moratorium to cover renters whose ability to sell their labor has been hit by the police state crackdown:

It’s unclear to me if the strike has actually begun (the Twin Cities Tenant Union website is still collecting pledges to withhold rent and perhaps is short of its goal of 10,000).

Hardship can extend past immigrants, such as for those employed by businesses who have temporarily shuttered. Immigrant-owned businesses don’t just employ immigrants, of course.

A report published last month by the L.A. Economic Development Corporation found that 82% of surveyed small business owners said they’d been negatively affected by federal immigration actions, and about a quarter had temporarily closed.

In certain communities across the country it’s causing a major crisis in the rental industry:

Now ICE and US Customs and Border Protection rentals might be able to make up some of the difference, but how much?:

‘Resistance’ Doesn’t Mean Economic Solidarity

“Unchecked federal power threatens people in cities across the country,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a  recent mass email “and we must all stand up against these authoritarian tactics.”

California Governor Gavin Newsom has been one of the loudest critics of Trump policies.

Upon Trump’s return to office, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors “reaffirmed its support for immigrants,” which included establishing a task force to monitor the impact of federal immigration policies, increased mental health support for immigrants, and launching an awareness campaign.

But last month when it came time to support those affected by masked agents terrorizing the city and back them where it counts, the Board folded like a cheap suit, and Mayor Bass and Governor Newsom were suddenly silent.

The Supervisors overwhelmingly rejected a proposal that would have let tenants across the county fall behind by about three months’ worth of rent and still have local protections from eviction. Supporters said the rules would have helped immigrants stay housed after losing income because of federal immigration raids.

Local governments in other localities hit hard by ICE operations like Minneapolis-St. Paul and Chicago have also resisted eviction moratoria to aid with growing housing crises.

ICE Bailout for Commercial Real Estate?

The administration is rushing contracts through WEXMAC TITUS — the Worldwide Expeditionary Multiple Award Contract for Territorial Integrity of the United States—which was designed for military logistics, but is now being used by ICE and shoveling money out the door.  It plans to spend $38.3 billion on detention facilities by the end of this year.

That means that politically connected owners of large warehouses across the country are getting a lifeline. From The Lever:

“Given that commercial real estate is sucking wind right now, just about the only way to make money is to leverage political connections to become involved in the heavily political spaces of AI data centers and deportation infrastructure,” said Jeff Hauser, executive director of the Revolving Door Project, a government watchdog group tracking conflicts of interest…

During the pandemic-era e-commerce boom, speculators rushed to build and lease warehouse space. Many of the far-flung warehouses now being scouted by ICE were built for a handful of e-commerce behemoths — such as Amazon and Walmart — that require specialized high-volume distribution facilities.

“A ton of money is put into these buildings under the concept that they are going to be handling frequent in-and-out trucking, heavy materials,” [Joshua Harris, a real estate professor at Fordham University] explained.

But these investments have sometimes failed to pay off, as tariff uncertainty has caused commercial real estate demand to falter (although it began to recover at the end of 2025). In one case, the owner of a vacant Maryland warehouse recently acquired by ICE for over $100 million complained in earlier Securities and Exchange Commission filings about the property’s toll on its investment portfolio, per reporting by Project Salt Box, an ICE watchdog in the state.

Now, the Department of Homeland Security’s unprecedented spending spree opens a promising new avenue for owners and brokers holding on to flagging warehouse investments.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my time in real estate,” Harris said of the agency’s acquisitions.

But little thought is being put into limitations of detaining thousands in such spaces. Government contracting executives note how difficult it will be to staff many of the locations, such as a mega detention center in rural Social Circle, Georgia, where ICE is purchasing a 1.2 million-square-foot warehouse that will supposedly hold up to 10,000 people. Severe strain will also be placed on local electrical, water and sewage systems with no clear plan to deal with limitations.

Officials obviously care little about the well being of detainees, but the impact on local communities looks to prove unpopular as well. Yet if the purpose of the contracts is more about a slush fund to aid connected companies hit by their commercial real estate miscalculations rather than actually housing inmates, then many of the concerns over how ill suitable the properties are for such purposes could be moot points.

Israel-ICE Connection

Many have noted how ICE operations resemble tactics used in the Israeli occupation. Yes, there are joint delegations, trainings, technology exchanges between ICE and Israel, and now the import of data mining and algorithmic surveillance.

We’d be remiss not to mention another connection:

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6 comments

  1. Janeway

    Rent strikes mostly hurt the tenant, not the landlord.

    Here is the problem – even if evictions are paused – the legislature can’t waive a wand and make the past due unpaid amounts disappear. As seen during COVID pauses (and even back in the great recession where the foreclosures in some areas were so great in number that it took years to get deeds transferred, and the former homeowner usually still in the house the whole time paying nothing but the utilities) – all it does is create worse outcomes for the tenants/former homeowners who are hit with massive money judgments that result in ruined credit, wage garnishment and usually bankruptcy as a last resort. And, the tenants also have to deal with an eviction on their record when looking for a new place. Meanwhile, ‘new’ tenants/homeowners have no inventory to rent/buy and they are stuck in place or looking to move elsewhere where housing is available.

    As Inigo Montoya might say “You keep using that phrase (Rent Strike). I do not think it means what you think it means.”

    1. Mary Traynor

      In NY tents going on rent strike due to code violations set their rent aside, then sue the landlord in housing court, get a court order for repairs – can then litigate what the amount of rent owed should be. What is market value if a home with no hot water, no heat? That’s what is owed. Tenant pairs fair market value meanwhile collecting a few cents interest.

    2. Mark Anderlik

      That is certainly the downside. However you forget about the up side. And that is a properly organized rent strike – like a labor strike – develops at least the power of the organized tenants to demand and win in the negotiations to end the strike forgiveness of debt or a much reduced debt.

      In the illegal Red for Ed teacher strikes in several conservative states a few years ago, teachers won concessions including no legal retaliation. As one teacher crisply put it “there is no such thing as an illegal strike – only an unsuccessful one.”

  2. Hickory

    Thank you for this article as well as all your great war coverage.

    One correction – a tweet is embedded twice, the second time under “That service, of course, extends to employers as well”

  3. johnnyme

    It looks like my attempts to correct an oopsie made SkyNet unhappy with my post so I’ll give it another go (in chunks).

    My understanding is that the unions involved in organizing the rent strike in Minneapolis held a vote to authorize the strike and it did not pass.

    State and local governments have been slow to provide assistance and neighbors at the ground level are attempting to immediately cover as much as they can of the estimated $27-$51 million in additional rent debt accrued due to Operation Metro Surge but there’s no way this isn’t going to end badly.

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