Federal documents show that before the end of the year, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is planning to double its detention space for immigrants scheduled for deportation.
The plans are in motion to enlarge detention space from the 50,000 capacity at the end of the Biden administration to more than 107,000 by the end of the year, the Washington Post reported.
ICE has released plans to open new detention centers in parts of the country that have not hosted such facilities in the past. The plans also include a large number of “soft-sided” housing units — presumably meaning tents — to grow detention spaces quickly.
The initial plans are being funded by the $45 billion negotiated by Congress in the recently passed “Big Beautiful Bill.” The funding has allowed ICE to quickly reach out to award contracts to construction and management companies to begin ramping up construction plans.
Two of the companies receiving contracts include Geo Group, currently ICE’s largest contractor, and CoreCivic, one of the nation’s largest private prison managers.
The states with the most space include Texas, Louisiana, California, Georgia, and Arizona. Other states preparing to see an enlargement of facilities include Colorado, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Florida, Mississippi, and 38 other states and U.S. territories.
The plans will be augmenting contracts already awarded.
In July, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced a $1.26 billion plan to build a center at Fort Bliss, which is near El Paso, Texas, and encompasses more than 1.12 million acres of land along the border with Mexico and also features an airport. The new facility will have room for 5,000 beds and will likely serve as a deportation hub for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
That same month, plans were announced to place detention housing at a military base in Indiana’s Camp Atterbury and another at New Jersey’s Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst.
In April, the Trump administration said it is far cheaper to expand detention facilities and spend the money to initiate mass deportations than it is to simply pay the costs of allowing illegal migration.
With the $45 billion in the congressional budget bill, Trump officials compared that cost to what illegal aliens cost otherwise, a cost that is estimated at more than $150 billion to the American taxpayers.
“Each illegal alien or U.S.-born child of illegal aliens costs the U.S. $8,776 annually,” the latest estimate from the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) states. “Evidence shows that tax payments by illegal aliens cover only around a sixth of the costs they create at all levels in this country.”
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