Federal immigration officials plan to spend $38.3 billion to boost detention capacity to 92,600 beds. The document was released on Friday As it appears, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is quietly buying up warehouses to turn them into detention and processing facilities.
Republican New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte posted the document online amid tension over ICE’s plans to convert a warehouse in Merrimack into a 500-bed processing center.
She said ICE plans to establish 16 regional centers to handle between 1,000 and 1,500 detainees, whose average length of stay ranges from three to seven days. Eight other large-scale detention centers will be able to hold between 7,000 and 10,000 detainees for periods averaging less than 60 days.
The document also refers to the acquisition of 10 existing “ready-to-use” facilities.
Plans call for all of them to be operational by November, with immigration officials rolling out a whopping $45 billion. Expand detention facilities Funded by President Donald Trump’s recent tax cut law.
More than 75,000 immigrants were detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement as of mid-January, up from 40,000 when Trump took office the previous year, according to federal data released last week.
The newly released document refers to “non-traditional facilities” and comes as ICE has quietly purchased at least seven warehouses — some larger than 1 million square feet (92,900 square meters) — in the past few weeks in Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Texas.
Warehouse purchases in six cities were thwarted when buyers decided not to sell under pressure from activists. However, several other deals in places like New York are imminent.
City officials are often unable to obtain details from ICE until the sale of the property is finalized.
Tensions rose to the surface after interim ICE Director Todd Lyons testified Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security “worked with Gov. Ayotte” and provided her with an economic impact summary.
Ayotte said This assertion was “simply untrue” and the summary was sent hours after Lyons testified.
The document incorrectly refers to “ripple effects on the Oklahoma economy” and revenue generated by state sales and income taxes, none of which exist in New Hampshire.
“Director Lyons’ comments today are another example of the troubling pattern of issues surrounding this process,” Ayotte said. “Officials from the Department of Homeland Security continue to provide no details of their plans for Merrimack, let alone any reports or surveys.”
DHS did not respond to questions about Ayotte’s comments or the new document. But it has previously confirmed it is looking for more detention spaces, although it objected to calling the sites “warehouses”, saying in a statement that they would be “well-organised detention facilities that meet our normal detention standards”.
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Associated Press writer Holly Ramer contributed.