U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials said February 17 that they had made a “mistake” after claiming to have bought a warehouse owned by former Trump adviser Carl Icahn in order to build a detention center in upstate New York.

Previously, an ICE spokesperson had told several news outlets, including the Times Union, that it had purchased a disused Pep Boys warehouse in the village of Chester, 60 miles North of New York City. But, the Times Union reports, Orange County had no record of a sale, and ICE retracted its claim.

“ICE has NOT purchased a facility in Chester, New York,” a spokesperson wrote in an email on February 17. “That statement was sent without proper approval and this mistake has since been rectified.”

Read More: ICE Plans to Convert Warehouses into Detention Centers

The Chester facility was understood to be part of the Trump administration’s plan to house 80,000 immigrants in warehouses across the country, as revealed in internal ICE documents obtained by The Washington Post in December 2025.