By Kevin Hardy, Stateline.org

Outrage erupted last month when Oklahoma City residents learned of plans to convert a vacant warehouse into an immigration processing facility.

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Making matters worse was the secrecy of the federal government: City leaders received no communication from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement aside from a mandated disclosure related to historic preservation.

Planning a major development without city input is antithetical to the in-depth, sometimes arcane permitting, planning and zoning process in Oklahoma City. Mayor David Holt, a former Republican state senator, said those land use decisions are among the most crucial of any municipal government.

“For any entity to be able to open a detention center in our communities, potentially next to neighborhoods or schools, regardless of your views on immigration policy or enforcement, is very challenging, because that’s a very high-impact use, and that’s the kind of thing that we would expect to talk about,” he told Stateline.

Communities across the country are facing similar prospects as ICE undertakes a massive expansion fueled in large part by the record $45 billion approved for increased immigration detention by Congress last summer.

During President Donald Trump’s second term, ICE is holding a record number of detainees — more than 70,000 as of January — across its own facilities as well as in contracted local jails and private prisons. ICE documents from last week show plans for acquiring and renovating 16 processing sites that hold up to 1,500 people each and eight detention centers that hold up to 10,000 each, for a total capacity of 92,600 beds. The agency also has plans for some 150 new leases and office expansions across the country, Wired reported.

But ICE’s plans to convert industrial buildings — often warehouses — into new detention facilities have recently faced fierce opposition over humanitarian and economic concerns. From Utah to Texas to Georgia, local governments have sought to block these massive facilities. But with limited legal authority, city and state officials have turned to the court of public opinion to deter private developers and the federal government.

Holt, who is the president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, a nonpartisan organization representing the more than 1,400 leaders of cities with populations of 30,000 or more, said cities have little legal recourse over the ICE facilities.

“We all have a clear, unified position that really crosses party lines,” he said, “and then we also have a clear understanding of how limited our options are.”

Local leaders often cite the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause, which says federal laws supersede conflicting state laws. That leaves cities with limited influence over projects that could take industrial space off tax rolls, cause new strains on city services and raise serious humanitarian concerns given the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement, including the high-profile killings of two Americans in Minnesota.

Facing bipartisan opposition, the out-of-state owner of the Oklahoma City warehouse ultimately decided to end talks of selling or leasing its warehouse to the federal government.

Similar public pressure has proved effective in reversing plans in several other cities: In late January, a Canadian firm said it would not proceed with a planned sale of a Virginia warehouse after it faced calls for a boycott from Canadian politicians and businesses. In Mississippi, U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker announced the federal government would“look elsewhere” after he spoke with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who oversees ICE. Wicker, a Republican who said he supports immigration enforcement, echoed local economic concerns of a project planned in Byhalia.

Some officials have welcomed the new facilities: Missouri Republican U.S. Rep. Mark Alford has lobbied to land a detention and processing center in his district. And last week, a Maryland county approved a resolution expressing its “full support” for ICE, which is considering purchasing a warehouse there, despite local protests. But most communities have fought them.

Neither DHS nor ICE responded to Stateline’s questions.

Holt said the discussion resembles other local development concerns where NIMBY — short for Not in My Backyard — is a common description of opponents.

“There are plenty of people who are very law-and-order and supporters of law enforcement who don’t want a jail next to their house,” he said. “That’s why it’s got such broad opposition: NIMBYism is the most powerful force sometimes in American politics and nobody wants a detention center next to their home, their business or their school.”

A political and legal fight

After learning that ICE planned to take over a vacant warehouse within its city limits, the Kansas City Council in January swiftly approved a five-year ban on nonmunicipal detention facilities.

Kansas City Council member Andrea Bough, who is also a private development attorney, said the move was both political and legal: The city wanted to send a clear signal opposing ICE facilities, but it also wants to exert its local authority over planning and zoning.

She acknowledged the legal hurdle posed by the supremacy clause, but said there was enough ambiguity over the city’s ability to regulate land use that it may take the issue to the courts.

“Some would say local building codes and zoning regulations do not apply to the federal government,” she said. “That’s something I think we would probably in this situation be willing to fight until we had clear guidance on that.”

Following weeks of pressure, the Kansas City firm that owns the 920,000-square-foot warehouse announced Thursday it was no longer “actively engaged with the U.S. Government or any other prospective purchaser,” the Kansas City Star reported.

Jackson County, which includes portions of Kansas City and the potential detention facility, is considering a similar ban. And across the state line, the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas, is considering a similar two-year moratorium.

But there are clear limitations on cities’ ability to stop federal projects, said Nestor Davidson, a professor who teaches land use and local government law at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design.

“The federal government can assert immunity from certain state and local laws, including zoning, but it’s complicated, and there are nuances,” he said.

Still, Davidson said some case law has shown cities may have stronger legal footing for zoning rules that are broad and not directly targeted at specific federal government projects.

“I expect to see litigation,” he said. “I think you’re going to see these conversations play out as land use fights often do: both in a legal venue and in a political venue.”

Governments pressured to act

Kansas City’s moratorium has sparked interest among local activists who have pressured elected officials in other cities across the country to act. But many local officials are adamant that federal law ties their hands.

In a legal opinion provided to the Orlando City Council in Florida, City Attorney Mayanne Downs rejected “suggestions of actions we can supposedly take,” including moratoriums or using zoning ordinances to block ICE detention centers.

“However well motivated these suggestions are, the law is very clear: ICE, as an agency of our federal government, ICE is immune from any local regulation that interferes in any way with its federal mandate,” Downs wrote to the mayor and city commissioners.

ICE is reportedly considering a new $100 million processing center in southeast Orlando.

The county commission in Orange County, which includes Orlando, discussed the issue last week after receiving similar legal advice. County Commissioner Nicole Wilson said the board is even more constrained because of a recent Florida law limiting certain local governments’ ability to regulate development through 2027.

After being advised against passing a moratorium, the board agreed with Wilson’s follow-up suggestion to draft a resolution expressing its opposition. That will be considered at a future meeting.

“It doesn’t sound like it has the teeth that a moratorium would have, but it essentially gives an awareness that we’ve established a position in opposition to this type of facility in Orange County,” Wilson told Stateline.

An attorney by trade, Wilson said the case law regarding federal projects largely centers on disputes about post offices, which she said is not an appropriate comparison to the massive detention centers currently contemplated.

“A post office has the same water consumption and sewage as probably a lot of other uses,” she said. “If you take a warehouse that was designed for 25,000 widgets and put 15,000 humans in it, you’ve got a very different set of local needs and services that are being used and being taxed and being burdened.”

Working with the feds

Communities have often opposed various other federal projects, such as federal courthouses. But the federal government generally takes the time to listen to local concerns and communicate building plans with communities, said Jason Klumb, a former regional administrator with the U.S. General Services Administration, which manages the federal government’s real estate.

“Generally, GSA has had kind of a good neighbor approach, understanding that they have requirements for federal facilities, and some of those facilities may not always be popular,” said Klumb, an Obama appointee.

But the federal government has not been shy about exerting its constitutional authority.

For example, late last month, GSA announced it would build a new $239 million federal courthouse in downtown Chattanooga, Tennessee, despite bipartisan lobbying from city and federal officials for a different site.

“The feds get what the feds want, ultimately,” Klumb said.

In a statement, a GSA spokesperson declined to clarify the agency’s current role in acquiring ICE detention facilities. The statement said the agency was “following all lease procurement procedures in accordance with all applicable laws and regulations.”

Communities have largely been left out of the administration’s immigration decision-making process.

“Most of the information we have received on this facility has been through news leaks and the government has not reached out to us yet,” said Paul Micali, the town manager of Merrimack, New Hampshire.

Through an open records request, the ACLU of New Hampshire confirmed that ICE was planning to convert a 43-acre warehouse property in the town of about 28,200.

The federal plans were obtained from the state’s historic preservation office, which came under fire for not informing Republican Gov. Kelly Ayotte of ICE’s proposal. That agency’s top official resigned last week after pressure from Ayotte.

Ayotte’s office did not respond to a request for comment. On Thursday, her office released documents detailing how the federal government’s$158 million plan to retrofit the property would create hundreds of long-term jobs for the region.

Testifying before Congress Thursday, an ICE official said the feds will not cancel the project over local concerns.

Micali said the vacant warehouse currently provides about $529,000 in annual property taxes — a substantial sum given the town’s property tax base of about $20 million.

In a letter to Noem, the Town Council said converting the property to a tax-free federal facility would result in higher local taxes for residents. Merrimack is also concerned about potential demands for water, fire and other city services, Micali said, but can’t even begin to assess needs without more details from the feds.

He’s speaking with lawyers about what options, if any, the town may have to assert local zoning power.

“We’re looking at every possibility,” he said.

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

©2026 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Sure, lots of people have laser printers hooked up to their computers. But vanishingly few have the equipment and technical know-how for traditional letterpress printing, in which individual letters on wood or metal ‘type’ blocks are arranged into words, inked up and physically pressed onto paper.

At her St. Paul studio Lunalux, though, Morgan Hiscocks does.

So as federal immigration enforcement activity — and the violence of agents’ tactics — ramped up in the Twin Cities earlier this year, Hiscocks said, she quickly realized the role she could play. She began regularly inviting community members into the studio to typeset posters, which she helped print in larger quantities to distribute in exchange for donations to mutual aid efforts.

Posters printed at St. Paul letterpress studio Lunalux hang on the walls of the studio in the Midway Triangle Building, in the Creative Enterprise Zone, on Feb. 12, 2026. In recent months, owner Morgan Hiscocks has invited community members to create protest posters in the studio. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)

So far, Hiscocks said, the poster project has resulted in more than $3,000 in contributions to grocery funds, rent relief and other direct-support fundraisers. Designs are posted on the studio’s Instagram page, @lunalux.mn.

“The historical context of all this type is to print whatever needed to be printed — news, ideas, protest posters, warnings, announcements — in multiples,” Hiscocks said. “Loud, important messages. I don’t know how to write those things, but I know how to help those things find their way to a page.”

The original Lunalux was founded in 1993 as a storefront letterpress card and stationery shop in Loring Park, in Minneapolis. The shop’s final owner, Jenni Undis, closed the business in 2016 — but Hiscocks, who’d started as an intern in 2009 and quickly became Undis’s right-hand woman, worked with Undis to save three printing presses and an extensive collection of hard-to-find large wood type in storage until she could find a new home.

After two years of searching, in 2018, Hiscocks found a nook for rent, tucked deep inside the Midway Triangle Building. As a nostalgic nod to the history of the presses, although she’s running a personal workshop and not a client-facing business, Hiscocks kept the Lunalux name for her studio.

“I’m hanging on for dear life to this because I am so passionate about letterpress printing, the history of it, keeping things in practice,” she said. “The more that people are walking away from it, the more that these things sit stagnant, and then they literally get scrapped.”

For Hiscocks, keeping the history of analog printing alive is also the motivation behind the Minnesota Newspaper Museum, a working print shop that she, Undis and a team of volunteers run at the Minnesota State Fair every summer. Many younger fairgoers have never considered how printing worked before computers, she said, nor have the college students she’s teaching this semester at the College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University.

Vintage wood type blocks spelling out “ICE DROOLS” are set up to be transferred to a printing press at St. Paul letterpress studio Lunalux on Feb. 12, 2026. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)

“Their jaw’s just on the floor; it’s awesome,” she said. “Other people’s wonderment with this process is something that I’ve grown to love. … I just have this hope in the back of my mind that somehow people return to this method of printing, that this does become necessary again.”

Lunalux is not and will never be Hiscocks’ full-time job, she said, nor really even a paying job at all. That’s not to say it’s quick — letterpress printing is an “insanely time-intensive practice,” she said — but there’s just not enough money in it anymore. Nowadays in the Twin Cities, there are maybe a handful of people who make sustainable livings as independent letterpress printers, a more dire state of affairs than even 10 years ago, she said.

“As much as I’ve tried to make this my way of living, it has shown me so many times that it’s not possible, and those experiences broke my freaking heart,” she said. “It will never be a financially secure thing, so that is no longer the goal.”

Protest posters lie on a table at St. Paul letterpress studio Lunalux on Feb. 12, 2026. Printer Morgan Hiscocks has been distributing community-made posters in exchange for donations to fundraisers supporting those impacted by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement activity in the Twin Cities. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)

Instead, for Hiscocks, the fact that the process is so slow and methodical and meditative and anachronistic is itself the point; the fact that, after hours spent setting type, the only payoff is seeing the inky paper roll off the press. The Lunalux studio has no windows. Yes, there’s a clock, but often Hiscocks will gauge how much time has passed by how many movies on VHS tape she’s played on the small TV.

On a recent Thursday, she was spending one “Jurassic Park” worth of time organizing stacks of “Unchecked Force is Un-American” and “All My Friends Are Antifascists” posters. Christmas decor stays up year-round, she explained, “for morale.” Her dog, Delta Dawn, snoozed nearby.

“The process is the most romantic part, the most enjoyable part — that your hands get filthy,” she said. “It’s just filling my cup. Not with money, damn it, but it is very fulfilling.”

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Cutting-edge AI technology allowing boys and men to digitally undress girls and women without consent has put male-dominated Silicon Valley, long criticized as inhospitable to women, in a harsh new spotlight, after xAI’s Grok chatbot sparked worldwide outrage, and Google and Apple allowed dozens of “nudification” apps in their app stores.

Grok, a standalone app as well as a feature on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, generated 3 million sexualized images in the 11 days after its image-editing feature was released in December, the UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate reported. Users digitally stripped real women in images — and more than 20,000 apparent children — manipulating many into sexual poses. Musk responded dismissively, reposting an AI-generated image of a toaster in a bikini, saying he “couldn’t stop laughing” about it.

California authorities weren’t laughing.

“This material, which depicts women and children in nude and sexually explicit situations, has been used to harass people across the internet,” Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office said in a news release last month announcing an investigation into whether Grok’s generation of the imagery broke any laws. The investigation is still underway, and Bonta is “committed to moving on this issue quickly,” his office said Wednesday.

Late last month, the Tech Transparency Project, dedicated to accountability at major tech firms, released a report saying it found 55 apps in the Google Play app store, and 47 in Apple’s app store, that could modify images of real women without their consent to make them completely or partially naked, or wearing bikinis and other skimpy clothing.

Companies highlighted by the Tech Transparency Project as purveyors of nudification apps are not nearly as widely known as Musk’s xAI, Google or Apple, and are based in locations from DreamFace in Redwood City to Bodiva in China. Bodiva offers a “Show Off Body” function that stripped women naked in photos, and also provides options to turn photos into pornographic videos, the Tech Transparency Project reported.

The controversy over the apps is just the latest to erupt since San Francisco’s OpenAI released its pioneering ChatGPT in late 2022, allowing users to generate words, sounds and images in response to prompts. AI-generated errors in legal filings, pervasive student AI use for homework and lawsuits alleging chatbots encouraged suicide have raised alarms.

A number of state and local laws apply to AI-generated images, including the federal Take It Down Act of 2025 — introduced by Republican U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas — which prohibits internet users from publishing non-consensual intimate images, including AI-made “deepfake” images of real people who have had clothing removed. A provision of the law also requires websites and apps to delete such imagery within 48 hours of a valid removal request.

California’s Assembly Bill 621, passed last year, bans non-consensual deepfake pornography. Its author, East Bay Democratic Assembly Member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, told media outlets the law was drafted to prevent exactly what Grok was producing.

“These are tools that give people the ability to harm women,” Camerina Davidson, president of the California chapter of the National Organization for Women, said this week. “AI has reinvented misogyny.”

Tech companies, Davidson said, have given men “more powerful ways to harass women and try to assert power over women by using these AI-driven platforms that are so simple to get.”

Apple said its guidelines prohibit overtly sexual or pornographic content, and that it removed 28 of the apps the Tech Transparency Project identified. For the rest, Apple said it warned app developers of violations needing to be remedied in a timely fashion. Apple did not describe how promptly remedies must occur.

Google said it had suspended “most of the apps” pinpointed by the Tech Transparency Project, and that its investigation in the matter was continuing.

Despite taking action on those apps, Google and Apple continue to offer Grok in their app stores.

Grok, operated by Musk’s xAI, a Palo Alto artificial intelligence company that recently merged with Musk’s rocket company SpaceX, did not respond to questions.

The company in an early January post on X cited “lapses in safeguards” that it was “urgently fixing.” But despite that purported urgency, this month Reuters reported that between January 14 and 16 and January 27 and 28, a team of its reporters uploaded fully clothed photos of themselves to Grok and asked the chatbot to depict them in humiliating or sexually provocative poses.

“In the majority of cases, Grok returned sexualized images, even when told the subjects did not consent,” Reuters reported.

In January, Ashley St. Clair, the mother of one of Musk’s children, sued xAI in New York Supreme Court, alleging that Grok in response to users’ prompts, generated “countless sexually abusive, intimate, and degrading” images of her. “Among other things, X users dug up photos of St. Clair fully clothed at 14 years old and requested Grok undress her and put her in a bikini,” the lawsuit said. “Grok obliged.” The case was moved to federal court in New York, and lawyers for xAI are now battling to have it transferred to Texas federal court.

However, it’s not just women and girls undressed by the apps who are harmed, Davidson said.

“Seeing what is done to other women, it affects women emotionally and psychologically, and it makes women not want to call attention to themselves,” Davidson said. “Many women I know who are online, they don’t use their real name. They don’t want to be attacked.”

In allowing users to turn real women and girls into sex objects, the apps send the message to boys and men that girls and women exist to “serve the purposes of men,” said Ruth Darlene, executive director of Los Altos nonprofit WomenSV, which combats abuse of women and children.

“You get to do with them what you will.”

Use of Grok for sexualizing photos sparked a worldwide furor. Members of the British Parliament in mid-January issued a statement condemning “the use of Grok AI to generate and disseminate sexually explicit and non-consensual images of women and children on X, including digitally undressing and sexualising images of minors.” The European Commission and the UK’s privacy watchdog have both launched formal investigations into Grok over the issue.

On Feb. 3, prosecutors in France raided the offices of X, Elon Musk’s social media platform, in an investigation into what French authorities described as alleged possession and spreading of pornographic images of children, sexually explicit AI-generated “deepfake” imagery, and other material. Musk, who was summoned by French authorities, took to X to call the move “a political attack.“

Malaysia and Indonesia both blocked Grok over the image editing.

The eruption of outrage from California to Kuala Lumpur follows years of gender-related controversy in Silicon Valley’s tech industry. A 2012 gender-discrimination lawsuit by businesswoman Ellen Pao against Menlo Park venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins failed, but drew attention to the treatment of women in tech. In 2017, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick was ousted amid a sexual harassment scandal, and the following year, the company agreed to pay $10 million to settle a lawsuit claiming it discriminated against women and minorities.  Also in 2018, thousands of Google employees walked off the job over the company’s handling of workplace sexual harassment. Four years later, Google agreed to pay $118 million to up to 15,500 women to settle a years-long class-action lawsuit alleging it paid women less than men and promoted them more slowly and less frequently.

For companies like xAI, Google and Apple, the availability of undressing apps represents a leadership failure, said Ann Skeet, senior director of leadership ethics at Santa Clara University’s Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

“Reputational hits like the ones they’re taking now erode value in the company,” Skeet said. “They’re actually doing harm to the very entity that they’re responsible for leading.”

Almost symbolically, as it flows through Washington, D.C., the Potomac River carries on its journey to Chesapeake Bay more than 240 million gallons of suddenly spilled raw, untreated sewage. Poop. The smell is so pungent that residents say they can taste the filth just when talking on a street corner. Disease is a worry. Beyond the smell is the regrettable truth that a spring and summer of actually going out on the river is highly unlikely, if not foolishly risky.

The spill occurred on Jan. 19. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calls it an ecological disaster of historic proportion. The University of Maryland calls it one of the largest sewage spills in the country.

To corroborate the symbolism, politicians not only have been slow to react, but they are quibbling with each other and repair work is not happening fast enough, on the grounds that no sewage pipe repair can happen fast enough. Maryland’s governor, Wes Moore, says the repair is the federal government’s responsibility. President Donald Trump, possibly suffering a nasal blockage, did not comment on the disaster until Feb. 16, 28 days after the pipe ruptured. According to an NBC News story, the finger-pointing is complicated by the interwoven jurisdictions in the area, where two states, the District of Columbia, the federal government and D.C. Water work in coordination.

Trump posted that if local leaders wanted federal help, they should call him and politely ask for help, presumably calling him sir. Trump’s nose became unplugged when he realized the threat this summer to the nation’s 250th birthday celebration. Federal funds either now have been or soon will be released on a disaster declaration.

The feds apparently have to be on the hook. Many sources point out that the federal government has been maintaining the pipe for 100 years, which makes you wonder what the undersides of our once-great cities must look like. Do you think the new Marxist mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, cares about sewage pipes? No, he cares about free grocery stores. Or here, in Minneapolis, where we are entering year six just to establish a George Floyd memorial. God help anybody in this county if real work needs to be done. We have the workers, but their superiors fight all day about equity and inclusion proclamations, not infrastructure.

The broken pipe is within the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historical Park, which is property controlled by the federal government in Maryland. D.C. Water owns the Potomac Interceptor – which broke – and the EPA regulates and oversees it. Authorities claim that drinking water is not affected.

Locals are saying this: WHO CARES WHO FIXES IT? JUST FIX THE DAMN THING!

Because it is horrible and dangerous. The river is sluggish. The smell is unbearable. How many illnesses, how many businesses will suffer, how many fish and animals lost, as the burbling witch’s brew rolls, slowly, to the ocean?

Yes, I am supposed to understand that humans can destroy the Earth with their cars and lawnmowers and that true believers have a period in history they would wish to return to for more agreeable temperatures, which is an insane childish fantasy, but all you young scholars buying into this nonsense are in far more real danger from a ruptured sewer pipe than you will ever be by a gunned minivan on the way to a soccer practice. This is damage to the planet that you can see and touch and smell, not some computer model written by an academic who needs another hit of grant money.

If you really want to worry about something you can impact, start by finding people to run for office because they actually want to do something useful. We keep electing people who merely intend to be important. It’s not working out too well for us, either here or in the nation’s capital.

Every city in the country should right now be examining its water infrastructure to avoid a Potomac sewage catastrophe. But that isn’t sexy. The people we elect don’t even think that’s important.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.

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