Trump's stepped-up immigration arrests escalate need for more detention space
Immigration and Customs Enforcement has space to detain about 41,000 people a day, but Trump’s "border czar," Tom Homan, wants space to hold over double that amount.
As arrests of immigrants increase, the administration is scrambling to make sure it has the room to house its detainees and keep President Donald Trump’s promise to deport them.
Trump’s "border czar," Tom Homan, told NBC News that Immigration and Customs Enforcement needs 100,000 beds total, more than double what it has currently. Trump alluded to the need for more room when he ordered the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday to prepare 30,000 beds at Guantánamo Bay for who he said would be detainees posing the greatest threat to Americans’ safety.
An immigration detention room is used to hold people until they are deported, and it “is really kind of a backbone of the mass deportation plan,” said Jesse Franzblau, a senior policy analyst with the National Immigrant Justice Center.
“That’s why we see [ICE] floating numbers. They talk about doubling the space to hold people in these ICE jails,” Franzblau said.
The Biden administration made an average of 282 immigration arrests per day in September 2024, the most recent ICE data available.
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