The Trump administration is seeking to spend tens of billions of dollars to set up the machinery to expand immigrant detention on a scale never before seen in the United States, according to a request for proposals posted online by the administration last week.
The request, which comes from the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement, calls for contractors to submit proposals to provide new detention facilities, transportation, security guards, medical support and other administrative services worth as much as $45 billion over the next two years.
ICE does not yet have that much money itself. But if funded, the maximum value would represent more than a sixfold increase in spending to detain immigrants. It is the latest indication that President Trump and his administration are laying the groundwork to rapidly follow through on his promise for a mass campaign to rid the country of undocumented immigrants.
The sprawling request to contractors was posted last week with a deadline of Monday. In the last fiscal year, D.H.S. allocated about $3.4 billion for the entire custody operation overseen by ICE.
ICE is already expecting a large windfall from the G.O.P. budget plan, which Senate Republicans approved on Saturday. That measure lays out a significant spending increase for the administration’s immigration agenda — up to $175 billion over the next 10 years to the committees overseeing immigration enforcement, among other things. The $45 billion request to contractors would put ICE in a position to more readily spend those funds.
The request also invites the Defense Department to use its own money for immigrant detention under the same plan.
“This is D.H.S. envisioning and getting ready to unroll — if it gets the money — an entirely new way of imprisoning immigrants in the U.S.,” said Heidi Altman, the vice president for policy at the National Immigration Law Center.
Tom Homan, Mr. Trump’s border czar, has insisted repeatedly that a major part of raising deportation numbers will require, among other things, more detention beds and funding. The request is the first concrete step toward ICE being able to quickly scale up detention.
“Our level of success depends on the resources I have,” he said in an interview in February. “The more money we have, the more beds we can buy.”
Typically, detention contracts go through a lengthy process for each facility, and ICE specifies the type, size and location. (A request from February, for example, sought up to 950 beds in the Denver area.) But this latest request is what is known as a bulk or blanket purchase agreement. It essentially creates a Rolodex of every detention facility and all auxiliary services and then allows ICE to place individual orders as more funding comes through.
Kevin Landy, the director of detention policy and planning for ICE under President Barack Obama, said that the government’s request was a clear sign that the Trump administration was looking to spend money quickly. “What’s going on is the administration is very concerned that they don’t have enough detention capacity to accomplish their immigration enforcement needs,” he said.
Immigrant detention is already above capacity, and reports have emerged of overcrowded facilities. Last year, Congress provided funding for ICE to detain a daily average of 41,500 people. As of March 23, the detained population was about 47,900.
The stopgap spending measure Congress passed last month allocated an extra $500 million to ICE — increasing the agency’s budget to nearly $10 billion this year — though the funding fell far short of the agency’s request for an additional $2 billion to continue enforcement at its current level.
Lower standards and military detention
The government’s request included several changes to how immigrant detention currently operates, including an invitation to the Defense Department to use its own funding to play a role in detaining immigrants. Previous administrations have held some immigrants temporarily at military bases as a backup, but the Trump administration has hinted at plans to establish a nationwide network of military detention facilities for immigrants.
“D.H.S. takes its commitment to promoting safe, secure and humane conditions for those in our custody very seriously,” a senior homeland security official said in a statement. “We will continue to make sure those in our custody are housed in facilities that adequately provide for their safety, security and medical needs.”
Facilities under the contract will not have to meet the standards for services and detainee care that ICE has typically set for large detention providers. Instead, they can operate under the less rigorous standards the agency uses for contracts with local jails and prisons. These facilities typically do not include comprehensive medical care, like access to mental health services, nor do they offer access to information about immigrants’ legal rights.
Mr. Homan had previously said that he was seeking to lower detention standards, and that he would do away with some of the government oversight and inspections intended to ensure compliance.
Even under existing standards, government inspections for years have found evidence of negligence at private detention facilities, including lack of access to medical care and unsanitary conditions, and problems that may have led to deaths of detainees.
In response to concerns, Congress in 2019 created the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, an independent department to provide a recourse for detainees to address concerns and to inform them of upcoming hearings or the status of their removal process. But the Trump administration recently gutted the department.
Now, under the new request from the government, such services will be back in private hands, a development that former government officials and immigrant advocates denounced.
“They’re going to end up paying more for oversight that is less independent and likely less efficient,” said Deborah Fleischaker, a senior D.H.S. official during the Biden administration.
Private companies were already gearing up
The government’s request is staggering not only for its size and scope, experts said, but also for the speed at which submissions were due. Vendors were initially given just three days to submit proposals.
Private detention contractors were most likely not caught off guard. On an investor call in February, Damon Hininger, the chief executive of CoreCivic, said the company was in daily communication with the administration.
Several private detention operators had already signed new contracts since Mr. Trump took office. Last month, CoreCivic signed a five-year, $246 million contract to reopen a family detention center in Dilley, Texas, and Geo Group announced the reopening of a 1,000-bed facility in Elizabeth, N.J., for a 15-year, $1 billion contract.
Representatives for CoreCivic and Geo Group did not respond to requests for comment on the government’s proposal.
Joe Gomes, an equity analyst with Noble Capital who monitors immigration detention companies, said that the companies and their investors had been anticipating a huge windfall when Mr. Trump took over. But what is on offer now would dwarf that.
“It reinforces what the general consensus was, that the Trump administration policies here should be a significant boon for both CoreCivic and Geo at least in the short term as they continue to put more people under detention,” Mr. Gomes said. “This would seem to reinforce that the federal government is going to do what they have said — putting money where your mouth is, so to speak.”
Aaron Krolik contributed reporting.
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