ICE documents reveal plan to double immigrant detention space this year

When President Donald Trump took office this year, the United States already commanded the largest immigrant detention system in the world with a capacity of 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, megadetention 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.

Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, confirmed in an email that the planning document was created by ICE but said the list was outdated and had not been approved. She said the listed contracts “are not accurate” but declined to elaborate.

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.

Geo Group, ICE’s largest contractor and a company with close ties to the Trump administration, is in line to receive at least nine new or modified detention contracts with a total estimated value of more than $500 million a year, the documents show. When combined with four new contracts that ICE had already awarded Geo this year, the company is on track to double its total annual revenue from ICE detention.

CoreCivic, the other largest private prison operator, would receive at least 12 contracts worth more than $500 million a year under the ICE plan – also roughly doubling that company’s annual revenue from ICE.

Representatives from Geo and CoreCivic did not respond to multiple emails seeking comment.

Nationwide expansion

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.

The new facilities are dividing communities torn between the economic benefits of employing hundreds of workers and the moral burden of playing a role in an immigration crackdown many see as unjust.

In rural Baldwin, Michigan, Republican state lawmaker Aric Nesbitt says he is encouraged by ICE reopening the North Lake Correctional Facility, a former federal prison. “It’s on track to be the largest employer and taxpayer in one of the poorest counties in our State,” Nesbitt said in an email.

Out in California City, a remote town two hours north of Los Angeles, activists recently gathered outside a former federal prison to protest its conversion into an ICE facility. Among the protesters was Dolores Huerta, the 95-year-old civil rights activist and labor leader, who says the facility is a misuse of taxpayer resources in a region with more pressing needs.

“These people do not have a pharmacy, they do not have a clinic,” Huerta said of the area’s residents in an interview. “The last thing that they need is a prison.”

Expanding family detention

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.

The largest of the newly planned family centers, referred to as “Brownsville Family” in ICE’s planning document, would hold up to 3,500 adults and children in the Texas border town of Brownsville. There is no existing ICE facility in that location, so the agency may be planning to build a new soft-sided structure.

Family detention was previously expanded under the Obama administration and continued in the first Trump administration, with the goal of deterring migrants from crossing the border illegally with children. President Joe Biden ended family detention in 2021, releasing many families and putting some in hotel rooms.

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.

ICE has said it abides by strict federal standards around the treatment of children in custody. A court settlement generally prohibits the government from detaining children longer than 20 days. But Neha Desai, an attorney with the nonprofit advocacy group National Center for Youth Law, says children in detention at Dilley experience trauma, malnourishment and medical problems – and some have been in custody for months.

“There is no humane way to detain families,” Desai said in an interview.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said Biden’s “open border” policies “enabled child trafficking and abuse,” while Trump “has closed the border – he’s protecting countless children and families from being smuggled or trafficked across.”

The move to megafacilities

The plans show that the Trump administration is embracing megadetention 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.

While bigger facilities can help the government focus resources in fewer places, it can be challenging to find enough staff in remote locations to properly meet the needs of thousands of detainees, said Eunice Cho, an attorney who advocates for immigrant detainees at the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project.

In October, ICE plans to reopen the Reeves County Detention Center, a 5,700-bed former prison in the rugged Trans-Pecos region of West Texas, which lost its federal contract in 2021. Under its operator, Geo Group, the facility struggled to maintain adequate staff, leading to substandard medical care and inmate riots, a federal watchdog found in a 2015 audit.

Some of the largest new facilities are soft-sided structures – large plastic enclosures that resemble military barracks. They can be built in a few weeks, but may lack basic amenities like running water and offer little protection from harsh weather, Cho said.

Earlier this month, ICE began holding detainees at a soft-sided detention center at Fort Bliss, a one-million-acre Army base in West Texas. Makeshift detention structures are also being planned at military bases in Indiana and New Jersey. ICE’s planning road map does not include the Florida Everglades detention facility known as Alligator Alcatraz because it is run by the state.

The plan includes contracts for new tents to house hundreds of additional people at detention centers in Pennsylvania, Texas and Nevada that have neared or surpassed capacity due to the surge in ICE arrests this year.