ICE's new 'Speedway Slammer' detention center gets America all wrong
Department of Homeland Security officials recently began promoting a deal with Indiana to use 1,000 state prison beds for federal immigration detention – calling it the 'Speedway Slammer.' (The facility itself is 70 miles north of Indianapolis Motor Speedway, near Bunker Hill.) Social media posts from government accounts hyping the deal included an AI-generated image of an ICE-branded IndyCar on track at a version of the speedway that featured a hulking prison in the background instead of the iconic pagoda.
The IndyCar racing series – which shares corporate ownership with the speedway – acted swiftly to extricate itself from a conversation it hadn't wished to enter about Immigration and Customs Enforcement, asking DHS to stop using its intellectual property in the post generated by artificial intelligence.
DHS officials insisted no such violation occurred but quietly deleted the image – only to post another one Aug. 8 with a fleet of slightly modified ICE-liveried racecars.
Many IndyCar fans remain upset about the incident, with many blaming the series for not criticizing the Trump administration's immigration policy more forcefully – and even calling for boycotts.
There's more to a sport than its ownership. The series' response hardly scratched the surface of why using IndyCar and the speedway for literal government propaganda – promoting immigration detention – felt to so many of us like a violation of a racing series and a set of traditions that we dearly love.
Opinion: Trump keeps brutalizing immigrants because he's failing at everything else
Why DHS is using state facilities – and what it means
First of all, let's talk about why DHS is doing this to begin with.
Using state facilities to detain immigrants helps muddy the waters about who's actually responsible. In Florida, where a facility called "Alligator Alcatraz" is ostensibly operated by a state department that doesn't have a written agreement with the feds, detainees have been served maggot-infested food and had to clean out toilets with their bare hands.
But it's also happening because the government simply needs the space. ICE agents have been ordered to meet astronomically high arrest quotas, according to internal agency emails viewed by the Guardian. They can only be met by sweeping people up first and checking their immigration status later.
Frequent reports of U.S. citizens getting arrested and detained have raised real concern that ICE is resorting to industrial-scale racial profiling to make its numbers. Court cases show government lawyers have argued that agents should target people based on factors like speaking Spanish, looking Mexican or working in gardening.
The message being sent is that some people are presumed unwelcome, particularly Latinos. Communities around the United States have heard it loud and clear: Community parades, ethnic restaurants and Spanish-language church services have shuttered or been canceled out of fear of ICE.
And the message is reinforced by the government's jokey, sneering tone on social media, posting 'soothing' videos of clanking chains alongside recruitment pitches to join ICE and 'defend your culture.'
Opinion: Want to destroy the lives of innocent people who've done nothing wrong? Join ICE!
That's the culture war DHS dragged IndyCar into – casually appropriating the racing series and the speedway as if it owned Americana, as if anyone who loves American traditions would share its vision of who counts as 'real America.'
DHS couldn't be more wrong.
What Pato O'Ward and IndyCar really stand for
Take Pato O'Ward, my very favorite racing driver, whose IndyCar No. 5 showed up in AI-mangled form on the original (deleted) image DHS posted. O'Ward races under the Mexican flag but has roots in Texas as well. He's not politically outspoken and mostly demurred when asked about the 'Speedway Slammer' image, but he did say, 'I don't think it made a lot of people proud, to say the least.'
The word choice was striking; O'Ward's pride in representing his community – and its pride in him – is one of the great joys of IndyCar in 2025. The same people who are being scared out of public life by ICE in other regards are some of the most visible fans at every IndyCar race.
Of course they're welcome. Of course everyone is welcome.
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First-time Indianapolis 500 attendees, or newcomers to the racing series from the driver's seat to the broadcast booth, are consistently bowled over by just how welcoming IndyCar is. What makes the last Sunday in May the best day of the year is the combination of traditional ritual and an unpretentious, open vibe.
You don't have to be a Hoosier to choke up at 'Back Home Again in Indiana,' any more than you have to be a gearhead to hold your breath at the greatest spectacle in racing. When I evangelize for the 500 to my coastal friends, I always tell them it's the Midwest at its best. It's America at its best.
ICE doesn't own the rights to IndyCar, and it doesn't own the rights to America. The rest of us get a say in the meaning of the things we love.
Dara Lind is a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council and a former immigration reporter. This column originally appeared in the IndyStar.
You can read diverse opinions from our USA TODAY columnists and other writers on the Opinion front page, on X, formerly Twitter, @usatodayopinion and in our Opinion newsletter.
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