Trump team plans to renovate industrial warehouses so they can hold up to 80,000 migrants: report
The Trump administration is reportedly planning to acquire at least seven large-scale warehouses across the United States and use them as holding facilities for detained migrants as it seeks to organize its chaotic deportation and detention immigration system.
According to a draft solicitation proposal, obtained by the Washington Post, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is looking to acquire at least seven large industrial warehouses that could hold 5,000 to 10,000 people after they are processed.
The buildings would serve as a second stop for newly-detained immigrants to prevent detainees from being moved around the U.S. to detention centers that have available space.
As the Trump administration seeks to deport swaths of immigrants, officials are running into problems finding beds for the volume of people detained. Established immigration detention centers are quickly filling up – roughly 67,000 people were in detention centers as of November, per Trace reports.
To make space in overcrowded detention facilities, some detainees have been transferred across the country to unfamiliar places where there is space.
But the warehouses would be part of a new “feeder” system that hopes to organize immigration detentions by having newly arrested detainees first go to processing centers, then to one of the seven large warehouses before being deported.
The Independent has asked the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment.
The new report from the Post comes more than a month after NBC News reported the administration was considering buying warehouses that were initially designed for Amazon and other retailers, to serve as detention facilities.
A White House official told NBC News in November that the warehouses being considered are more than twice the size of current ICE detention facilities.
The buildings would be renovated with restrooms, showers, kitchens, dining areas, and medical units to house detainees – seemingly a step-up from other makeshift detention centers such as Alligator Alcatraz.
The renovated warehouses would “maximize efficiency” while lowering costs, processing times and lengths of stay, the draft solicitation stated, according to the Post.
The larger warehouses would be located near hubs in Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Missouri, Texas and Virginia, according to the draft proposal.
Meanwhile, ICE would add another 16 smaller warehouses, which could hold up to 1,500 people, to serve as processing centers. At least five of the new processing centers would be located in the Northeast, mostly in areas led by Republicans who support Trump’s immigration agenda.
