Immigrant detention beds may be maxed out as Trump moves to deport
'millions and millions'
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 [January 23, 2025]
By MORGAN LEE and STEPHEN GROVES
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — President Donald Trump’s inauguration-day
executive orders and promises of mass deportations of “millions and
millions” of people will hinge on securing money for detention centers.
The Trump administration has not publicly said how many immigration
detention beds it needs to achieve its goals, or what the cost will be.
However, an estimated 11.7 million people are living in the U.S.
illegally, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement currently has the
budget to detain only about 41,000 people.
The government would need additional space to hold people while they are
processed and arrangements are made to remove them, sometimes by plane.
The Department of Homeland Security estimates the daily cost for a bed
for one adult is about $165.
Just one piece of Trump's plan, a bill known as the Laken Riley Act that
Congress has passed, would require at least $26.9 billion to ramp up
capacity at immigrant detention facilities to add 110,000 beds,
according to a recent memo from DHS.
That bill — named after a Georgia nursing student whose murder by a
Venezuelan man last year became a rallying cry for Trump’s White House
campaign — expands requirements for immigration authorities to detain
anyone in the country illegally who is accused of theft and violent
crimes.
Trump also is deploying troops to try and stop all illegal entry at the
southern U.S. border. He triggered the Alien Enemies Act to combat
cartels. The rarely used 1798 law allows the president to deport anyone
who is not a U.S. citizen and is from a country with which there is a
“declared war” or a threatened or attempted “invasion or predatory
incursion.”
Detention infrastructure also will be stretched by Trump's ban of a
practice known as “catch and release” that allows some migrants to live
in the U.S. while awaiting immigration court proceedings, in favor of
detention and deportation.
ICE uses facilities around the U.S. to hold immigrants
ICE currently detains immigrants at its processing centers and at
privately operated detention facilities, along with local prisons and
jails under contracts that can involve state and city governments. It
has zero facilities geared toward detention of immigrant families, who
account for roughly one-third of arrivals on the southern U.S. border.
“There’s a limitation on the number of beds available to ICE,” said John
Sandweg, who was acting director of ICE under President Barack Obama.
“There are only so many local jails you contract with, private vendors
who have available beds. And if the administration wants to make a major
uptick in detention capacity, that’s going to require the construction
of some new facilities.”
Trump’s declaration of a national emergency at the U.S. border with
Mexico leverages the U.S. military to shore up mass deportations and
provide “appropriate detention space.” The Pentagon also might provide
air transportation support to DHS.
Private investors are betting on a building boom, driving up stock
prices at the top two immigration detention providers — Florida-based
GEO Group and Tennessee-based CoreCivic.
A fast-track budgeting maneuver in Congress called “reconciliation”
could provide more detention funding as soon as April. At the same time,
the Texas state land commissioner has offered the federal government a
parcel of rural ranchland along the U.S.-Mexico border for deportation
facilities.
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President Donald Trump signs an executive order regarding the
southern border in the Oval Office of the White House, Monday, Jan.
20, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Where could ICE add detention space?
The American Civil Liberties Union estimates that ICE is considering
an expansion of immigrant detention space across at least eight
states, in locations ranging from Leavenworth, Kansas, to the
outskirts of major immigrant populations in New York City and San
Francisco, said Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney for the group and
its National Prison Project.
The ACLU sued for access to correspondence from private detention
providers after ICE solicited feedback last year on a potential
expansion. Related emails from detention providers suggest the
possible redeployment of a tent facility at Carrizo Springs, Texas,
previously used to detain immigrant children, and the South Texas
Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas — one of two major
immigrant family detention centers that the Biden administration
phased out in 2021.
“Under the Trump administration, Homeland Security will be working
to try to detain everyone that it possibly can and also expand its
detention capacity footprint well beyond what is currently available
in the United States at this point,” Cho said.
Cho added that Congress ultimately holds the purse strings for
immigrant detention infrastructure — and that the Pentagon's
involvement under Trump's emergency edict — warrants a debate.
“How does this detract from our own military's readiness?" she said.
"Does the military actually have the capacity to provide appropriate
facilities for detention of immigrants?”
Using the military
Advocates for immigrant rights are warning against a
hyper-militarized police state that could vastly expand the world's
largest detention system for migrants. Immigrant detention
facilities overseen by ICE have struggled broadly to comply with
some federal standards for care, hindering safety for staff and
detainees, a Homeland Security Department inspector general found
during 17 unannounced inspections from 2020-2023.
During Trump’s first administration, he authorized the use of
military bases to detain immigrant children -- including Army
installations at Fort Bliss, Texas, and Goodfellow Air Force Base.
In 2014, Obama temporarily relied on military bases to detain
immigrant children while ramping up privately operated family
detention centers to hold many of the tens of thousands of Central
American families caught crossing the border illegally.
U.S. military bases have been used repeatedly since the 1970s to
accommodate the resettlement of waves of immigrants fleeing Vietnam,
Cuba, Haiti, Kosovo and Afghanistan.
___
Groves reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Rebecca
Santana in Washington contributed.
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