HAMMOND — Mayor Pete Panepinto says he knows nothing about a Trump administration plan to open a 9,000-person  immigration detention center in his town despite a report in the Washington Post last week saying one was in the works.

The newspaper reported the government wanted to hold more than 80,000 immigrant detainees that await being removed from the country. A "feeder system" would assign detainees into seven large-scale warehouse holding up to 10,000 people. Smaller centers would hold up to 1,500, the Post reported.

Hammond was among the cities mentioned as a potential site for an Immigration and Customs Enforcement warehouse.

"No one from ICE, DHS, or any other entity has reached out to me about such a facility," Panepinto wrote on Facebook. "If or when this changes and more details become available, I will share that information."

The Post reported that ICE's plan was not final but that the agency planned to share it with private companies to gauge their interest. ICE declined to answer the newspaper's questions about the plan. 

“It’s dehumanizing,” said Tania Wolf, an advocate with the National Immigration Project who is based in New Orleans — about one hour south from the site of a planned warehouse in Hammond. “You’re treating people, for lack of a better term, like cattle,” she said in an interview with the Post.

ICE held more than 68,000 people at the beginning of this month, agency data shows, the highest number on record. Nearly half, or 48 percent of these people, have no criminal convictions or pending criminal charges, ICE data shows.