Construction database lists $400 million ICE detention facility for Hammond, La., with Sept. start

A private bidding database names ICE and DHS as owners of a Hammond, La., project and sets a Sept. 1 start. No site has been identified, and no solicitation appears in federal records.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could be planning a $400 million detention facility in Hammond, La., with a construction start date of Sept. 1, according to a project entry in ConstructConnect, a subscription database that construction companies use to find and bid on upcoming work.

The project, which is not publicly available, was described in screenshots provided to Project Salt Box by a reader. It names ICE and the Department of Homeland Security as the project’s owners.

The entry describes the project as the remodeling of a mixed-use development to include a detention facility, a medical facility, and multi-residential development. Its status is listed as conceptual, and the record was last updated May 5.

Six companies have registered interest in the Hammond facility: Diamond Scaffold Services of Bogalusa, Road Warriors Construction of New Orleans, Stone Mountain Access Systems of Atlanta, and Security Constructors of Oklahoma City, each listed as an interested subcontractor; and Economy Brick Sales of Gonzales and HRM Concrete of Baton Rouge, listed as interested suppliers. None responded to a list of questions about the project, and the database does not indicate that any has submitted a bid.

Neither the $400 million figure nor the Sept. 1 start date appears in any public government record, and ConstructConnect, which compiles project data from permits and industry contacts, may have estimated them.

Neither DHS nor the General Services Administration have posted contract solicitations to SAM.gov, the federal system agencies use to advertise contracts and solicit competitive bids. But it has awarded other detention contracts without one, using a Navy contracting vehicle called WEXMAC TITUS under which pre-approved contractors bid on and are awarded work through a non-public system closed to other firms.

Hammond Mayor Pete Panepinto said in late December that no federal agency had contacted the city. “No one from ICE, DHS, or any other entity has reached out to me about such a facility,” he wrote on Facebook, adding that he would share information if that changed. Mr. Panepinto’s office did not respond to a list of questions sent by Project Salt Box.

Permit records showed no construction on that scale as of late December. Hammond, the largest city in Tangipahoa Parish, sits about 45 miles east of Baton Rouge and 45 miles northwest of New Orleans, with a population of roughly 21,000 at the 2020 census. The largest new commercial project permitted by the parish government in the preceding three months measured 7,541 square feet, according to parish reports reviewed by The Times-Picayune.

The prospect of a facility in Hammond has circulated in local Facebook groups since at least the spring, where residents have speculated about possible sites and raised concerns about the effect on water, electricity, and city infrastructure. Some have pointed to vacant warehouses near the Hammond Northshore Regional Airport, though no record reviewed by Project Salt Box identifies a site.

Hammond has appeared in ICE’s plans before. A draft solicitation reported by The Washington Post in December described seven large warehouse detention centers nationwide, including one in Hammond holding up to 9,000 detainees, as part of a plan to detain more than 80,000 people at a time. The draft required each facility to begin accepting detainees 30 to 60 days after construction starts; a Sept. 1 start would put the first detainees inside by October or November.

DHS has identified more than 20 potential locations for warehouse detention facilities, according to a spreadsheet verified by NBC News in November 2025, and members of Congress investigating the program’s contracts have put its planned cost at $38.3 billion in public funds. A second Louisiana site, a 250,000-square-foot former Conn’s HomePlus warehouse in Port Allen, is as a proposed location for a smaller facility holding roughly 500 detainees.

But in recent weeks, ICE has moved away from the warehouse purchases. The agency bought eleven warehouses for the program before pausing new acquisitions after Markwayne Mullin became secretary in March. On June 18, The New York Times reported that ICE planned to offload seven of them, purchased for more than $700 million, by transferring them to other federal agencies or selling them. The seven are in Romulus, Mich.; Social Circle and Flowery Branch, Ga.; Hamburg and Tremont, Pa.; Salt Lake City; and Roxbury, N.J. It is unclear if this retreat from the warehouse strategy would impact the proposed project in Hammond.

ICE has awarded construction contracts to refit only two of the eleven, in Williamsport, Md., and Surprise, Ariz., and neither is on the list of those to be offloaded. The Hammond project is in neither group; the entry describes a remodeling of an existing development, and no record shows ICE has purchased property there.

More than four months after the mayor’s statement, the entry’s location field still read “To Be Determined, Hammond, LA 70401.”