Trump administration wants $1.2 billion tent city at Texas Army base, country’s largest immigration detention center

Trump administration officials have awarded a $1.26 billion contract to build a sprawling tent camp to detain immigrants at an Army base in Texas.

The 5,000-bed facility at Fort Bliss, once complete, will be the largest immigration detention facility in the country.

The deal, awarded to Virginia-based contractor Acquisition Logistics Company, was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News.

The contractor, which has previously done supply chain work for the military, does not appear to have past detention experience, according to a review of records by Bloomberg.

The Army is paying $232 million worth of the contract, per the outlet.

The deal comes after a previous $3.8 billion contract to build a tent camp at Fort Bliss was awarded, then retracted earlier this year.

The contracted detention center adds to capacity in the area, where there is an existing Immigration and Customs Enforcement tent facility in use in northeast El Paso.

Critics argue that tent-based detention camps suffer from poor conditions.

Detainees say that at a Florida detention center dubbed Alligator Alcatraz, hastily constructed out of tents and trailers on a defunct air strip, they were given no water, maggot-infested food, and exposed to mosquitoes.

Civil rights groups have sued over conditions at the facility, alleging detainees were denied due process and legal counsel.

Since taking office, the Trump administration has embarked on a mass expansion of immigration-related spending.

The White House’s signature One Big, Beautiful Bill spending package includes an unprecedented $45 billion worth of detention-related funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has already used Fort Bliss as a hub for deportation flights.

As of last week, more than 56,000 people were in immigration detention across the country, and the administration has said its further investments could increase bed capacity to 100,000.

The military reportedly has plans to use bases in Indiana and New Jersey to further expand detention capabilities.

With this spike in detention comes worsening conditions in immigrant detention centers, according to critics.

Video from inside a New York City detention facility shows about two dozen people on a cement floor with nothing but emergency blankets near a partially exposed toilet

“Look how they have us like dogs in here,” the person filming the videos can be heard saying in Spanish.

At least 14 people have died this fiscal year in immigration detention, outpacing past administrations.

Outside of detaining immigrants, the Trump administration has made marked use of the military in other areas of immigration policy, including conducting deportation flights, sending Marines into the streets of Los Angeles to respond to anti-immigration raid protests, and creating new military border zones where troops can arrest border-crossers.