Incoming Trump admin is eyeing new immigrant detention centers near major U.S. cities
The incoming Trump administration is eyeing locations and talking to private prison firms about drastically expanding the scale of immigrant detention centers.
The incoming Trump administration is considering locations and talking to private prison companies about drastically expanding immigrant detention centers that would hold immigrants before they are deported as part of President-elect Donald Trump's promised mass deportation plan, two sources familiar with the planning told NBC News.
The goal is to double the number of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention beds — 41,000 are now allocated by Congress — to hold vast numbers of migrants for short periods of time while they await deportation after their arrests inside the U.S., the sources said.
The plan would also include restarting the policy of detaining parents with their children, known as family detention, which immigration advocates have criticized and the Biden administration stopped in 2021, the sources said.
So far, people working on the plans with the Trump transition team are assessing which of the facilities the Biden administration closed could be reopened, taking account of available space in county jails and assessing which areas might need temporary facilities to detain migrants as part of the deportation effort.
Trump’s transition team is looking at how many migrants each region can hold, including in Democratic-controlled metropolitan areas across the country. A source familiar with the plans said they prioritize areas with large migrant populations that lack detention facilities, rather than single out Democratic strongholds.
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