When President Donald Trump took office this year, the United States already commanded the largest immigrant detention system in the world, with the capacity to hold close to 50,000 migrants. Right away, his administration set a goal of doubling it.
An internal planning road map obtained by The Washington Post shows for the first time exactly how immigration authorities plan to reach that goal, including by opening or expanding 125 facilities this year. By January, ICE will have the capacity to hold more than 107,000 people, internal agency documents show.
The documents outline the strategy behind ICE’s breakneck expansion, a chaotic effort that has already triggered lawsuits and accusations of cruelty. The agency has repurposed sections of military bases and revived dormant prisons, partnering with private prison contractors, local sheriffs and Republican governors to house its record number of detainees.
The road map, last updated July 30, shows that ICE intends to expand immigrant detention to new parts of the country, nearly doubling its number of large-scale, mega-detention centers and relying increasingly on makeshift “soft-sided” structures that can be built in a few weeks and taken down just as easily. The government is also planning to dramatically expand its capacity for detaining parents and children in what could amount to the nation’s largest family detention program in decades.
The plans are still in flux, and some of the contracts are not finalized. The Post reviewed an earlier version of the road map that showed 12 fewer contracts but few other changes.
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The expansion is funded by an unprecedented $45 billion detention budget approved last month by Congress. The money cleared the way for federal officials to award billions of dollars in additional contracts to the private prison contractors that already oversee the vast majority of immigrant detainees.
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Four states account for the majority of ICE’s detention space: Texas, Louisiana, California and Georgia. That trend is poised to continue, with new facilities in Texas alone expected to double the state’s capacity to almost 38,000 beds by year-end.
But ICE also plans to expand in states with few existing detention beds, including Oklahoma, Indiana, Minnesota, North Carolina and Tennessee. By year-end, 19 states could have the capacity to hold at least 1,000 immigrants, up from 14 states last month.
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ICE’s plan calls for three new or expanded family detention facilities totaling more than 5,700 beds, signaling that the government plans to significantly increase deportations of parents with their children. The agency currently has close to 2,000 beds for families at one facility in Dilley, Texas.
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Tom Homan, Trump’s border czar and an architect of the controversial child-separation policy of the first Trump administration, said in December he prefers to detain families together so they can be deported together to their native countries.
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The plans show that the Trump administration is embracing mega-detention centers capable of housing at least 1,000 detainees. By the end of the year, ICE expects to have 49 such facilities, up from 29 at the end of July.
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