A Department of Homeland Security letter dated Sept. 11 names a privately owned office building at 3161 Eagles Nest St. in Round Rock as the planned site of a new ICE field office — but no federal lease for the property has turned up in public records, and the agency has not confirmed the project publicly. The letter, titled “ICE ERO Round Rock Security Fence,” describes plans for roughly 1,015 feet of new fencing, a secure parking area, and two security gates fitted with cameras and card readers, all to be built within the existing property line.
The letter surfaced as part of Project Salt Box’s reporting, which said a person with knowledge of ICE’s plans in the Austin area provided the document. Round Rock sits about 20 miles north of Austin in Williamson County, and the outlet — which previously reported on federal lease searches tied to ICE office expansion in San Antonio and Newburgh, New York — found no record of an awarded lease for the Eagles Nest Street address. The building also does not appear in the GSA’s public inventory of federally owned and leased property, and public records show no existing ICE field office in Round Rock.
A Paper Trail Without a Lease
Ownership records tied to the site add another wrinkle. An entity called Burke Eagles Nest II LLC was formed in 2017 and registered in the federal contracting system SAM.gov on June 16, 2026 — a registration required before any federal agency can lease from or pay rent to a landlord. Still, according to Project Salt Box’s reporting, no lease has been confirmed. A Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation record for the building’s Suite 340 lists a privately funded renovation completed in October 2023 with an estimated cost of $100,000, though that record predates the DHS letter and does not itself establish any connection to ICE.
Neither ICE headquarters nor the ICE San Antonio field office, which covers Round Rock, responded to Project Salt Box’s request for comment, the outlet reported. A property manager for Burke Real Estate Group also did not respond. The ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations division, or ERO, is the arm of the agency tasked with arresting, detaining and deporting immigrants.
The Historic Preservation Review Behind the Letter
The DHS letter is part of a Section 106 review required under the National Historic Preservation Act, which obligates federal agencies to weigh a project’s potential effects on historic buildings, archaeological sites and places of cultural importance to Native American tribes before proceeding. Under that process, federal agencies must consult with state historic preservation officials, local governments and tribes, and the review explores alternatives to avoid, minimize or mitigate any adverse effects, according to the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation. Consulting parties in such a review can include the relevant Tribal Historic Preservation Officer alongside local government officials.
Gabrielle Fernandez, identified in the letter as a DHS environmental protection specialist, wrote that the Eagles Nest Street building and seven nearby properties were built around 2009 or later and are not historic, and that past construction on the site had heavily disturbed the ground. Based on that assessment, ICE concluded the project would not affect historic properties. Fernandez reportedly wrote similar Section 106 letters earlier in 2026 for warehouses DHS bought for ICE use elsewhere.
The letter was sent to the Round Rock Historic Preservation Commission and also invited comment from the Texas Historical Commission and six federally recognized tribes — the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma, Comanche Nation, Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, Delaware Nation, Tonkawa Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, and Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. Consultees were given 30 days to respond, and as of Sept. 11, ICE had received no comments. The ACHP’s own handbook on tribal consultation states that such outreach should begin with a formal letter from the agency to the appropriate tribal official.
Nearby Detention Context
About 15 miles east of the Eagles Nest Street building, in Taylor, Texas, sits the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, which CoreCivic runs under contract with ICE. The Round Rock project’s connection, if any, to that facility is not addressed in the DHS letter.
Part of a Much Larger Buildout
The Round Rock letter lands amid a nationwide surge in ICE real estate activity. Federal records reviewed by WIRED show more than 150 ICE leases and office expansions placing new facilities in nearly every U.S. state, with a training kickoff for an ICE surge team putting the total need at around 250 new locations. DHS said the agency had grown to 22,000 officers and agents stationed around the country and was continuing to hire. ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division had also asked that new locations sit within 10 miles of an existing ERO facility, and a DHS official separately asked the General Services Administration not to publicize new lease locations, citing risk to officers, employees and detainees. WIRED also reported that GSA faced pressure to bypass the Competition in Contracting Act’s standard open-competition rules using an urgency exception for ICE-related leases.
Texas has become a focal point of that buildout. In San Antonio, the federal government signed two 15-year leases totaling $51 million — $42.5 million for one, $8.8 million for the other — covering about 75,000 square feet at the WatersEdge office complex on the city’s Southeast Side, according to the San Antonio Express-News. Those buildings, at 7515 and 7611 Inner Circle Drive at Brooks, are intended for immigration operations including proceedings and hearings. Separately, ICE paid $66 million in January for a vacant San Antonio industrial building it plans to convert into a detention facility, per the Express-News, while the Texas Tribune reported DHS paid $66.1 million for a 640,000-square-foot commercial warehouse in San Antonio earlier this year — accounts that describe the same general purchase with differing figures. That detention center is now expected to open this winter, later than an earlier Sept. 30 target, and in August ICE awarded GardaWorld Federal Services a $17.3 million contract to renovate the property and run its operations, according to Texas Public Radio.
Not every ICE real estate move in Texas has gone smoothly. In February, a company declined to sell or lease a 1 million-square-foot facility in Hutchins to ICE, blocking a proposed detention facility near Dallas that could have held 9,500 people, the Texas Tribune reported. And a federal judge barred work at a warehouse in Williamsport, Maryland — also purchased by DHS for ICE use — until the agency completes a full environmental review; ICE has since agreed in court to pause conversion work at several other warehouses while it completes a new environmental assessment.
