Getty ImagesTexas officials say they are willing to offer President-elect Donald Trump 1,400 acres (567 hectares) of land along the U.S.-Mexico border to build a detention facility for illegal immigrants.
The Texas General Land Office said in a letter that the land could be used to build a facility to “process, detain, and coordinate the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation’s history.” .
President Trump has repeatedly promised to deport millions of illegal immigrants and mobilize the National Guard to help do so.
But his plan is likely to face major financial and logistical hurdles, as well as an imminent legal challenge from rights groups.
The letter, published online and sent to President Trump at his Mar-a-Lago, Florida, mansion, states that the owner of the recently purchased land refuses to build a border wall there and that law enforcement It said it had “actively prevented” people from entering the area. .
In an interview with Fox News, which first reported on the proposal, Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham said, “It’s basically farmland right now, so it’s flat and easy to build on. You could easily put a detention center there.” ” he said.
The Texas government, which launched its own unilateral border security operation after Trump left office, broadly supports Trump’s pledge to strengthen the U.S.-Mexico border.
“I agree 100% with the Trump administration’s commitment to rid our country of criminals,” Buckingham said.
But Democratic governors in three other southern border states, California, Arizona and New Mexico, said they would not support mass deportations.
“Local and state officials on the front lines of the Harris-Biden border invasion have suffered for four years now that President Trump will return to the Oval Office,” Trump transition press secretary Caroline Leavitt said in a statement. I’m really looking forward to that.”
“President Trump will use every power at his disposal to secure our borders, protect our communities, and launch the largest mass deportation operation of criminal illegal immigrants in history.”
It is unclear what the new detention facilities will look like, but incoming “border czar” Tom Homan has suggested they could be “soft”.
Facilities currently in use range from soft-sided camp-like facilities used by Customs and Border Protection to hold illegal immigrants for short periods to brick-and-mortar buildings used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). A wide range of things.
County and state prisons are also used, and local jurisdictions receive compensation from immigration authorities.
Trump’s immigration chief of staff, Stephen Miller, who has been named deputy chief of staff for policy, previously said the Trump administration would build vast detention facilities to serve as transit centers for mass deportations.
Getty ImagesIn an interview with The New York Times in late 2023, Miller said the facility would likely be built on vacant land near the Texas-Mexico border.
The 2024 spending bill signed by President Joe Biden allocates $3.4 million (£2.69 million) to ICE to house 41,500 people at any given time.
Adam Isakson, an immigration and border expert in the Washington office’s Latin America office, told the BBC: “If President Trump carries out large-scale deportations, ICE will quickly exceed that number.” spoke.
As of Nov. 2, 38,863 immigrants were found in detention, according to ICE data compiled by Syracuse University’s Transaction Records Access Clearinghouse.
The largest number, just over 12,000, are housed in facilities in Texas.
News of Texas’ proposal to the president-elect comes as Democratic-run cities and states vow not to cooperate with President Trump’s promise of mass deportations.
For example, the Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday passed a “sanctuary city” ordinance that prohibits the use of local resources to assist federal immigration authorities.
Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the Washington-based Migration Policy Institute, said the fact that Republican-led states are more likely to cooperate with the Trump administration’s immigration goals creates a vastly different “patchwork of protections.” ” may occur. All over the country.
“The gulf between red states and blue states may widen further,” she says.
Ms. Bush-Joseph added that the addition of a facility in Texas means illegal immigrants detained in the interior of the United States could ultimately be transferred to Texas for processing. Ta.
“If you’re picking people up in a blue state and there’s no detention facility available there, would you try to transfer them to a red state?” she asked. “That’s the question.”
