Immigration

Trump Administration Plans To Spend $1.26 Billion on an Immigrant Detention Center in Texas

The latest detention facility will house up to 5,000 detainees and function as a central hub for deportation operations.

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Texas Flag over a picture of an immigrant detention facility | Illustration: Eddie Marshall | Trong Nguyen | Dreamstime.com | Pedro Porta | TNS | Newscom
(Illustration: Eddie Marshall | Trong Nguyen | Dreamstime.com | Pedro Porta | TNS | Newscom)

The Trump administration has awarded a Virginia-based defense contractor a $1.26 billion contract to build a 5,000-bed immigration detention center in El Paso, Texas, reports Bloomberg. The newest—and biggest—facility will be located at the 1 million-acre Fort Bliss Army base, equipped with tents for detention infrastructure and an airport to serve as a deportation hub. 

President Donald Trump has grappled with limited detention space holding back his mass deportation plans since January. As of late June, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) held a record-high 57,861 detainees. With only 41,500 beds officially allocated by Congress, the spike in numbers has already led to overcrowded conditions at many federal detention facilities. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed into law in July, seeks to alleviate this bottleneck by appropriating $45 billion to increase detention capacity to 100,000 beds by the end of the year—more than doubling the current number of beds available. 

Now, the Trump administration is focusing on providing detention tents, or "hardened soft-sided facilities," according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, to speed up expansion. Documents show that ICE is prioritizing nine projects in other locations including Colorado, Indiana, and New Jersey to add more than 9,000 detention beds. The Fort Bliss detention center in El Paso, Texas, is listed as the highest priority project, with plans to be operational by August. 

But relying on tents likely means eschewing federal detention standards designed to ensure facilities are safe and humane. "All the reasons why you and I live not in tents but in homes are going to inevitably come up in a facility that doesn't offer people walls and floors and insulation," Emma Wagner, deputy legal director at the American Immigration Council, told Bloomberg. Basic needs, like medical facilities and safe food to eat, are harder to meet with tents. "It's very hard to imagine how soft-sided facilities could satisfy even the low detention standards that are reflected in ICE's most recent standards," Wagner continued. 

Alligator Alcatraz, located in Florida's Everglades, similarly relies on "hardened soft-sided facilities." After only eight days of construction, the facility began accepting immigrant detainees on July 2. Soon after, the detainees reported worms in the food, oppressive heat, and flooding issues. Two weeks after opening, the facility was sued in the Southern District of Florida for subjecting detainees to inhumane conditions and denying them access to their attorneys. 

Detainees at other rushed immigration detention centers, like the upcoming Fort Bliss facility, are likely to meet a similar fate.