Cary community members are reacting with anger and alarm to a WIRED report that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is leasing new office space at 11000 Regency Parkway near Koka Booth Amphitheatre.
In mid-February, WIRED reported on a trove of 2025 government records outlining ICE’s plans to massively increase its presence in most states and major cities through 150 office expansions and new leases. Many of the new offices, reportedly for use by deportation agents and attorneys, are located near schools, hospitals, and community gathering places. ICE already has a field office in Cary at 140 Centrewest Court; the Regency Parkway location would be its second in town.
INDY hasn’t been able to independently confirm WIRED’s reporting that the Regency Parkway lease is for an ICE office.
The address appears in the U.S. General Services Administration’s Inventory of Owned and Leased Properties. The website says the lease took effect in October 2025 and expires in October 2030, but doesn’t say which agency is using the space. INDY visited the location, a large office building with multiple tenants, and did not see any signage outside or inside indicating the presence of ICE or any federal agency.
An ICE spokesperson wrote in an email to INDY that the agency will not confirm office locations due to a “coordinated campaign of violence” against its officers, including an “8,000% increase in death threats against them and a 1,300% increase in assaults.”
(ICE has been making these claims for months. An NPR data analysis from last fall showed a roughly 25% increase in charges for assault against federal officers year-over-year, a significant uptick but nowhere close to ICE’s claims.)
“Is it really news that when a federal agency hires more personnel that they need more space?” ICE public affairs officer Lindsay Williams wrote. “Thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill, we have an additional 12,000 ICE officers and agents on the ground across the country. That’s a 120% increase in our workforce.” (The Atlantic reported last month that thousands of those newly-hired deportation officers have not yet deployed to American cities and may not be ready for months.)
A separate General Services Administration list of federal contracts indicates that the value of the contract on the 11000 Regency Parkway property is just over $7.6 million for a 10-year lease with a 5-year minimum. The building’s property manager, Foundry Commercial, did not respond to questions from INDY seeking to confirm that ICE is the agency leasing the space.
Laura Paye, the founder of activist group Durham Resistance who organized a petition opposing the reported lease, said the expansion of ICE across the country and in Cary is “upsetting and frustrating,” especially because the details are being obscured.
“This is not, most likely, going to be a detention center. But I don’t think that should diminish our alarm or opposition to it,” Paye said. “Even if this is an OPLA [Office of the Principal Legal Advisor] office, that is still connected to and supporting the guys on the streets with masks. And people being held in secret locations or held without access to lawyers, held without access to medical care.”
Siembra NC, one of the local immigrants’ rights groups leading the effort to track and verify immigration agent sightings in North Carolina, also hasn’t been able to confirm the purported new ICE office location.
“We have heard the troubling news that ICE may be expanding their presence in Cary, and we have reached out to the property manager ourselves—and still are waiting for answers,” Emanuel Gomez Gonzalez, a communications strategist for Siembra, wrote in a statement to INDY. “We encourage local elected officials to inquire into the issue and use their role as the people’s representative to get to the bottom of these plans.”
Cary mayor Harold Weinbrecht wrote on his blog this week that the town has received “dozens of emails” about the Regency Parkway lease, but did not confirm ICE’s presence there.
“We have no authority over the federal government,” Weinbrecht wrote. “At this time, the town has not received any requests or permit applications from ICE. However, they could proceed there, and we do not have the authority to stop them.”
Town of Cary spokesperson Carolyn Roman told INDY on Thursday that 45 residents have contacted the town to express their opposition to the reported lease.
Roman echoed Weinbrecht’s statement that the town has not received any rezoning or development applications for the Regency Parkway Property, and that “it is important to recognize that federal agencies have independent authority and will operate in ways that do not require local rezoning or municipal approval.”
Paye, who has been in communication with the Cary Town Council, says she and others want to see the Town of Cary issue a statement avowing that ICE is not welcome, since “there isn’t much they’re technically empowered to do that could oppose this.”
“Standing up and speaking out is something that every local government should be doing, but I understand why they’re hesitant to take that step,” Paye added. “They feel the fear that they’re intended to feel. That if they speak up, then people in their community will be further targeted.”
Congresswoman Valerie Foushee, whose district includes the Regency Parkway address, was also unable to provide information about ICE’s presence there.
“Congress and the public have been kept in the dark about ICE’s secretive expansion plans, and the lack of transparency is unacceptable,” Foushee said. “As a cosponsor of the Respect for Local Communities Act, I am working to require full public reporting and oversight of ICE’s lease and enforcement activities. I firmly oppose this possible expansion.”
After immigration enforcement agents carried out a spree of arrests in the Triangle in November, Cary residents organized a recurring protest outside ICE’s field office at Centrewest Court on Friday mornings. Community members are also holding other regular anti-ICE protests at major intersections around Cary and the bridge over Interstate 40 (near the N.C. Art Museum), among other locations.
Paye’s petition had about 1,200 signatures as of Thursday afternoon, she said. If printed, it would be about 74 pages long, because almost everyone who signed the petition also left a comment, she added.
“All of them are just so passionate about how ICE has no business here. ICE endangers my friends and family.”
Another protest is planned for Weinbrecht’s 2026 State of Cary address at town hall on March 5 at 6 p.m.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
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