The Trump administration has awarded a Virginia-based defense contractor a $1.26 billion contract to build a 5,000-bed immigration detention center in El Paso, Texas, reports Bloomberg. The newest—and biggest—facility will be located at the 1 million-acre Fort Bliss Army base, equipped with tents for detention infrastructure and an airport to serve as a deportation hub.
President Donald Trump has grappled with limited detention space holding back his mass deportation plans since January. As of late June, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) held a record-high 57,861 detainees. With only 41,500 beds officially allocated by Congress, the spike in numbers has already led to overcrowded conditions at many federal detention facilities. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Trump signed into law in July, seeks to alleviate this bottleneck by appropriating $45 billion to increase detention capacity to 100,000 beds by the end of the year—more than doubling the current number of beds available.
Now, the Trump administration is focusing on providing detention tents, or "hardened soft-sided facilities," according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, to speed up expansion. Documents show that ICE is prioritizing nine projects in other locations including Colorado, Indiana, and New Jersey to add more than 9,000 detention beds. The Fort Bliss detention center in El Paso, Texas, is listed as the highest priority project, with plans to be operational by August.
