The administration is rushing to ensure it has space to lodge its inmates and fulfill President Donald Trump’s pledge to deport them as the number of immigration arrests rises.
Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar,” told NBC News that Immigration and Customs Enforcement needs a total of 100,000 beds, which is more than twice as many as it already has. When Trump directed the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday to set up 30,000 beds at Guant Namo Bay for detainees he claimed posed the worst threat to American security, he was hinting at the need for additional space.
According to Jesse Franzblau, a senior policy analyst with the National Immigrant Justice Center, the immigration detention room serves as the mainstay of the mass deportation strategy, where individuals are held until they are deported.
We see [ICE] floating numbers as a result. According to Franzblau, they discuss expanding the capacity of these ICE jails to house inmates.
The latest accessible ICE statistics shows that in September 2024, the Biden administration averaged 282 immigration arrests per day.
The Trump administration’s daily average thus far, based on seven days of data, is 791.
According to Homan, he told the officers and agents to make as many arrests as possible.
Despite ICE’s $230 million budget deficit, the Trump administration began its mass deportation campaign. The Laken Riley Act, the first bill Trump signed this term, mandates that ICE hold unauthorized immigrants who are arrested, charged, or convicted of theft, larceny, shoplifting, or burglary. However, it omitted the additional funding that DHS stated in December would be required to detain those more immigrants.
According to ICE, there were at least 106 facilities around the country as of January. At a cost of almost $3.4 billion, Congress approved funds to jail an average of 41,500 people per day.
That was an increase over fiscal year 2023, when Congress allocated around $2.9 billion to hold an average of 34,000 people per day. Republicans in Congress have estimated the cost of the budget measure that the House is currently working on to include funding for Trump’s immigration crackdown to be about $100 billion.
According to DHS data, the annual cost of an ICE detention bed is $57,378 per bed.
Under the first Trump administration, the average daily population of detentions reached 50,000, but when COVID struck, that figure dropped to roughly 20,000.
A vast network
The thousands of immigrants detained annually are frequently housed in an extensive network of facilities, the majority of which are contracted from private organizations but some of which are held by the federal government, state governments, and municipal governments.
Through open government requests, the American Civil Liberties Union learned that the Biden administration was looking to increase the number of detention facilities across the country.
The Trump administration has already started to add to the area it now occupies.
DHS is processing immigrants with criminal charges or convictions who were detained during ICE operations in the state at Buckley Space Force Base in Aurora, Colorado. The location was made accessible by the military, possibly for a prearranged operation in Aurora.
The Justice Department has been directed by the Trump administration to look into possible prosecutions of state or municipal authorities who oppose the application of federal immigration laws.
There is restricted or ended immigrant detention in some states, such Illinois. Private businesses have filed a lawsuit to overturn New Jersey’s restriction on the construction of new immigration detention facilities. However, ICE has long had partnerships with various state and local agencies for detention facilities.
Geauga County, Ohio, Sheriff Scott Hildenbrand stated that his agency has a 15–20 year contract with ICE to house detainees who are immigrants. According to Hildenbrand, ICE withdrew six inmates from the facility after bringing in 20 more who had been apprehended over the weekend, bringing the total number of detainees to 58.
None of those brought in, he claimed, were sought on local warrants as far as he knew.
When they called, they inquired if we had space for twenty people. Hildenbrand said NBC News, “and brought them in.”
According to Hildenbrand, the number of immigrants housed in the jail has been consistent.
According to him, his 182-bed facility can normally accommodate 60–70 immigrants, depending on the number of inmates who are not ICE detainees. Every day, the county receives $100 for each inmate.
Government watchdogs and immigrant organizations have consistently criticized the immigration detention system for shortcomings such as inadequate access to legal representation and subpar medical care, in addition to concerns about cost and efficacy.
Trump wants to use a portion of the Guantnamo Bay detention center that has been used to house adults and families with small children who have been arrested at sea while attempting to escape to the United States. It is distinct from the military jail where detainees were housed by the United States following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
According to the International Refugee Assistance Project (IRAP), which detailed in a report the conditions and some of the experiences of adults and children kept there, among the refugee families jailed there have been Cuban individuals and children who have attempted to flee the Cuban regime.
Former clients, detained refugees, and former employees characterized the premises where they were housed as run-down with mildew and sewage issues, according to IRAP’s study. They stated that single adults were housing families with small children. Those detained cannot speak with lawyers in confidence over the phone, and they face consequences if they talk about being mistreated.
According to the study, even if they have family in the United States, many of the people detained at the Guant Namo Bay facility are forced to stay there for years until a third nation agrees to take them in. Some nations, like Venezuela and Cuba, refuse to accept the repatriation of their nationals who have been deported from the United States.
Raha Wala, a vice president of the National Immigration Law Center, stated, “We have reports on conditions in these detention facilities that lack basic health care, shackle pregnant women, and have no protections for communicable diseases like Covid.”
Wala mentioned Trump’s decree, which is the legal equivalent of a black hole, and we witnessed a movement to Guant Namo.