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HUTCHINS, TX
Modern warehouses are built for Prime Week sales, not people. Alexa doesn’t need warmth when a North Texas winter freeze hits, and Kindles don’t take bathroom breaks. 1As such, these logistics hubs aren’t easily converted into residences for humans who eat, sleep, bathe and await their forced removal from the United States. Yet, warehouse conversions are at the center of a $38 billion Department of Homeland Security plan to expand President Trump’s mass deportation plans.
Sitting on the other side of a planned detention center deal is industrial warehouse tycoon Ed Roski, Jr. The Majestic Realty founder and owner of a one million square foot warehouse in Hutchins, a small suburb outside of Dallas that the town valued at $80 million, is more familiar than you or me with the purpose of a logistics hub. Roski’s great success in warehouse landlording enabled him to eventually purchase minority stakes in the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Kings, a connection that Jacobin first noted.
Majestic Realty, who also helped develop the Crypto.com Center, was set to sell the warehouse until pulling out of sale talks on Monday, saying in a statement that it “has not and will not enter into any agreement for the purchase or lease of any building to the Department of Homeland Security for use as a detention facility.” Hutchins locals concerned with the facility and its impact on the town credited the sudden reversal to significant activism from local clergy and the opposition from its mayor, Mario Vasquez.
But Roski wasn’t the only NBA stakeholder warehouse linked to eventual migrant detention centers. eyeblack identified four NBA teams — the Atlanta Hawks, Sacramento Kings, Charlotte Hornets, and Minnesota Timberwolves — with minority ownership directly linked to profiting from the federal government’s ICE-run mega jail shopping spree.
Do you know of any people engaged in discussions with buying, selling or leasing property to DHS/ICE? Using a non-work device, you can call or message me securely on Signal Messenger at 646-481-0859. Or, shoot us an email at [email protected].
Blue Owl Capital, which partnered with Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez in their Timberwolves acquisition, has $1.1 billion in assets spread across those four teams in 20252, a 22% increase from the previous year. About $500 million of its sports franchise portfolio is expected to generate income from the fund. However, like many asset management firms, its business interests are diverse enough to dip its toes into the mega jail trade. In February, a fund managed by Blue Owl Capital sold a 1.3 million sq foot vacant warehouse in Tremont, PA to DHS for nearly $120 million.
“We know nothing about it,” wrote an NBA spokesman in response to eyeblack’s questions about Blue Owl Capital’s warehouse sale to DHS. Representatives from four NBA teams and Blue Owl Capital did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The Trump administration’s immigration enforcement strategy has set aside $38 billion towards acquiring industrial facilities regularly worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Plenty of taxpayer cash to burn on mass jailing. Even more now that deals in Hutchins, Kansas City, and Mississippi falling through. Barring a dramatic change in plans, expect DHS and pro sports ownership groups to be increasingly intertwined. Even if said deals passively facilitate the creation of what Andrea Pitzer argues are modern concentration camps.3
Concurrently, the average value of an NBA team is estimated at $5.52 billion. The barrier for entry into even the smallest of ownership stakes is high.4 But between whether it’s an individual or wealth funds, the same pool of magnates who happen to own or manage industrial warehouses — themselves worth tens, if not hundreds of millions — are among the few capable of purchasing even a small stake into a glitzy multi-billion dollar franchise. These are the people who not only have property, but the kind of property similar to what the federal government wants.
In a sane and moral world, a portfolio this wide would be a glaring contradiction.
Besides the NBA’s stated and very publicized commitment to social justice, the league continues to grow as a global brand, boasting a talent base where its top MVP candidates are foreign born6, and the overwhelming majority of the league’s domestic talent is Black. Meanwhile, at least four of its franchises — and until Majestic pulled out, it was very nearly five — include a stakeholder who just made a starting five’s worth of money selling a property DHS expressly intends to serve as a megajail. That camp will soon be stuffed with migrants who don’t have Shai’s middy or Wemby’s wingspan, and DHS will fill the camp by deputizing ICE to lead violent dragnets of racial profiling. And in this transaction was enabled, in part, by a team stakeholder profiting from the brilliance of its Black, immigrant workforce.7
The people of Hutchins should give you hope that some realtors can be swayed. But time will tell who will decide shame is worth the price of the sale.8
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Writing this meant burning a three-day-weekend finding ownership groups and pouring over financial records. (Not complaining. High key, I love it. But just illustrating the costs.) Also, I think I’ll have some more soon, I just wanted to get this out.
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1 The employees might not either, a point of controversy between Amazon workers and management.
2 Sourced from Blue Owl Capital’s 2025 Q3 10-Q.
3 Ay man, I know that rhetoric may sound extreme, but Andrea literally wrote the book on concentration camps. It’s called One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps. Her book is a must read, though I pray that it becomes less urgent, eventually.
4 Tell the Black man in your life he will not Forex his way into Lakers ownership5.
5 And if you’re not Black, forget you read this. Who invited you this deep in the footnotes?
6 According to FanDuel odds, four of the top five favorites to win the MVP – reigning MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Canada), three-time MVP Nikola Jokić (Serbia), Luka Dončić (Latvia), and Victor Wembanyama (France) — are foreign born.
7 Happy Black History Month!
8 None of this would have been possible without the excellent reporting from Project Salt Box, a community-driven effort to track ICE warehouse acquisitions.