ICE is reportedly considering facilities near southern airports used for deportations as part of Trump’s crackdown
The administration of US President Donald Trump is considering converting giant warehouses originally built for companies such as Amazon into holding facilities for immigrants who have been detained for violating the law, NBC has reported, citing unnamed government sources.
Since taking office in January, Trump has pursued a broad crackdown on illegal immigration. He has pledged the largest deportation operation in American history, claiming that around 25 million people entered the US illegally before he returned to office earlier this year.
The new warehouses could be turned into what a Department of Homeland Security official described as “mega detention centers” that will reportedly be located near airports in southern states, where deportations are most frequent. The official said the move would help “increase efficiency” in deportations.
According to NBC, some of the warehouses being considered were built for Amazon but were never used by the company, and range in size from 600,000 square feet to several million square feet. Current detention facilities used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) are reportedly much smaller. One in Tacoma, Washington, is 277,000 square feet, another in El Paso, Texas, is 153,000 square feet, and a Florida facility offers 158,000 square feet of housing, NBC reported.
A White House official told the outlet that ICE plans to fund the conversion using money from the recently approved spending bill that boosted the budget for immigrant detention by $45 billion over the next three years.
The number of detainees in ICE custody rose to 66,000 this week, setting a new record, CBS News reported on Thursday, citing internal Department of Homeland Security data. ICE now has enough detention beds to hold as many as 70,000 detainees at a time, an unnamed state official told the outlet.
The US administration’s tough approach to immigration enforcement triggered nationwide protests, with demonstrators denouncing the crackdown and holding violent rallies for weeks. The government’s use of the National Guard and US Marines in several cities subsequently led to lawsuits from the states of California, Oregon, and Illinois, as well as the city of Chicago.
