Three federal buildings in Indiana appeared on a Trump administration list of properties proposed for closure or sale, including a downtown Indianapolis facility that began hosting an immigration court earlier this year.
The U.S. General Services Administration, known as GSA, released the list of non-core properties on Tuesday. It named hundreds of federal buildings nationwide. According to the GSA website where the list was posted, selling the properties ensures taxpayer money is no longer spent on vacant or underutilized federal space, and it would save on what the site called costly maintenance.
The Minton-Capehart Federal Building in Indianapolis is home to several agencies, among them the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration. Most recently, it became the site of one of the newest immigration courts in the country.
Local immigration advocates and attorneys welcomed the new court. They said it was needed to help reduce the backlog of cases and would spare people from traveling to Chicago, where the nearest immigration court had been located.
What would happen to the court and the other agencies in the building if it were closed or sold remains unclear.
Representative André Carson, who represents Indiana's 7th District, said in a statement that he is working to stop the damage caused by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. "DOGE claims these buildings are functionally obsolete and unsuitable for use by the federal workforce. This is untrue," Carson said. He added that as a senior member of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee, he took part in a public review in which the committee approved both local facilities to ensure they were in the best condition possible to fulfill their agencies' missions.
The two other Indiana properties on the list are the Major General Emmett J. Bean Federal Center in Lawrence and the Lee H. Hamilton Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse in New Albany. The Bean Federal Center is among the largest federal buildings in the country and handles Department of Defense payroll. It also houses services for federal employees, including day care, occupational health and a finance center. The New Albany building handles U.S. bankruptcy cases for southern Indiana.
The list has since been removed from the GSA website, replaced by a message reading "coming soon."
