Monster of the Week: David Sabey
Dave Sabey has made a fortune as a landlord for the worst tenants in modern capitalism: deportation agencies, data centers, biotech firms, and military-linked operations — the physical backbone of corporate and state power.
The Sabey Corporation owns and manages more than 5 million square feet of property around the country, with an estimated $200 million in annual revenue
Sabey is a landlord for ICE. It owns the DHS field office in Tukwila, WA. Earlier this year, another Sabey property — Riverfront Technical Park — was floated for possible new ICE/DHS contracts. It is a site conveniently close to Boeing Field, where ICE is carrying out deportation flights.
Tukwila is one front in a much broader fight over who gets to control public infrastructure: working people, or big companies like Sabey who are turning cities into machinery for deportation, surveillance, and AI profit.
Across the country, opposition to data centers is exploding. Sabey is at the center of that fight too.
In Indiana, Sabey Corporation is building a massive, $4 billion data center on the southwest side of Indianapolis. This data center alone is expected to use as much electricity as 200,000 homes. Workers in Indianapolis have fought back, but the Democrat-controlled City Council pushed through approval for the data center, which comes with a $10 million per year tax break.
In early April 2026, The Seattle Times reported that Sabey was one of four companies that had approached Seattle City Light about five large data centers that could demand up to 369 megawatts of electricity — roughly one-third of Seattle’s average daily power use.
By May 1, Sabey said it had withdrawn the request because the project had “no clear path forward.” Sabey backed off because of massive opposition from working people. The public outrage made the project politically radioactive.
The Sabey family is doing its best to grease the political wheels. It has a representative on the board of Seattle City Light. In 2025, Joe Sabey, the company’s Chief Commercial Officer, ran for mayor of the rich enclave of Hunts Point, WA, and won.
But working people do not want ICE terrorizing their cities or billionaire-owned data centers draining public resources. They want free healthcare, affordable housing, free mass transit, free childcare, and fully funded public services.