The Trump administration has filled the nation’s 47,600-bed capacity of people awaiting deportation and is now scrambling to open new facilities to hold even more as the White House ratchets up its migrant crackdown.
Since Trump took office, immigration law enforcement officials have arrested and detained more than 32,800 people, a Department of Homeland Security official said. However, the administration has largely ended the practice of releasing some people who are considered non-threatening to the community out of detention centers – something the Biden administration followed.
DHS officials have now turned to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, Department of Defense and United States Marshals Service to increase bed space while the agency asks Congress for more funding to help carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation plan.
Trump’s team has also partnered with private, for-profit centers to hold migrants awaiting deportation.
The Trump administration has been aggressively cracking down on immigration, promising to deport all undocumented immigrants and end what the president calls an “invasion” of migrants into the U.S.
"We expect these ICE arrests and removal numbers will only go up as we unleash an agency that has had its hands tied behind its back for the past four years," said acting ICE Director Todd Lyons, according to NBC. "These ICE enforcement operations are not only removing criminals from the American communities, but they are also discouraging people from coming to our country illegally."
It remains unclear exactly how many of those detained under Trump had been deported.
As the White House pushes its immigration plans, enforcement agencies have run into financial, administrative and legal roadblocks.
To ease the tension on detention facilities across the country, DHS has begun releasing certain people by following Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Alternative to Detention program, which allows for release based on medical or humanitarian concerns, an agency official told reporters.
The Trump administration had initially sent dozens of undocumented immigrants, some with criminal records, to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, but officials unexpectedly cleared out groups of migrants on Tuesday, according to the New York Times. It is unclear why the change, but the administration has faced several lawsuits over its use of Guantánamo Bay for immigration detention.
The administration remains confident it will continue carrying out Trump’s immigration agenda at the same pace.
Over the weekend, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said federal law enforcement agencies are planning to detain immigrants at U.S. military bases to deal with the capacity issues.
“Yes, there is a plan to use the facilities at Fort Bliss for detention facilities,” she told CBS’s Face the Nation. “But also we need to remember to ask — Congress needs to continue through with funding that this administration has asked for.”
House Republicans have proposed a resolution that would avert a government shutdown. That suggests slashing the fiscal year’s budget by $13 billion in non-defense spending but boosting funding for ICE.
Noem said DHS can’t keep pace with Trump’s aggressive anti-immigration agenda without it.
“That reconciliation bill needs to happen,” Noem said. “We have just weeks before we are out of the funds to continue the operations that we have.”
Alex Woodward contributed to this report
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