A massive ICE detention center planned in Far East El Paso County – whose early federal contracts with tribal-owned businesses sparked backlash and withdrawals – appears to be part of the Trump administration’s efforts to create mega holding facilities.
The new Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility is expected to hold up to 8,500 people – more than the controversial 5,000-capacity East Montana Detention Center that opened on Fort Bliss land in August.
“It should not come as news that ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S. and is actively working to expand detention space,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
DHS did not respond to specific questions about the facility’s location or timeline, saying it had no new detention centers to announce at this time. However,a logistics park off Gateway Boulevard East in the city of Socorro near Clint has been identified as the likely site of the center by sources with knowledge of the matter. Responding to whether the facilities would be in steel warehouses, DHS said they would be “well-structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards.”
The Department of Homeland Security is planning seven detention centers for deportation staging to be located near logistics hubs in several states, including Virginia, Texas and Arizona, the Washington Post reported in December, citing a draft contractor solicitation. The centers would be in renovated industrial warehouses and hold up to 10,000 people each, while more than a dozen smaller facilities would serve as processing centers and hold up to 1,500 people each, the Washington Post reported.
The facilities are being funded under the One Big Beautiful Bill, which includes about $75 billion in supplemental funding to ICE over four years, with about $45 billion allocated for detention facilities and $30 billion for enforcement.
“Donald Trump and Republicans have been using American taxpayer funds to enrich these private corporations that are responsible for Trump’s mass deportation efforts, including the corporation operating Camp East Montana that limits adequate oversight, has become increasingly fatal, and does not meet minimum standards for detaining human beings,” U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, said in a statement. “The existing facilities need to be shut down – not proliferated.”
Three immigrants under ICE custody at Camp East Montana have died the past two months – one with homicide listed as the manner of death. The facility has been mired in allegations of human rights violations, incuding assault, sexual abuse and medical neglect, since it began operating. The El Paso Service Processing Center off Montana Avenue near the airport has faced similar allegations. DHS has refuted the allegations, calling them categorically false.
The logistics park believed to be the eventual location of the new detention center comprises three buildings made of steel and reinforced concrete exterior walls, each about 296,000 square feet, according to a commercial real estate brochure. The park sits adjacent to an empty plot of land under the same developer – Flint Development in Kansas.
Turning the warehouse park into a mega detention center carries implications beyond controversial immigration enforcement and whether an area zoned for industrial use can be used for detention facilities, Socorro’s mayor told El Paso Matters.
“We in the city of Socorro have many residents who still don’t have adequate water or sewer systems and now (DHS) is planning to put 8,500 people – plus all the contractors and staff – in our water system?” Mayor Rudy Cruz Jr. said. “It sounds problematic how much water and electricity those facilities will require if they’re running all day and night with that many people versus what you would have in a warehouse operation.”
The area is serviced by the Lower Valley Water District, which provides water, wastewater and solid waste services to about 21,000 customers in Socorro, San Elizario, Clint and neighboring communities.
The federal government is generally exempt from local land use and building code regulations for its own facilities, including detention centers. Other municipalities where DHS is looking to build the processing or mega detention centers have expressed similar concerns over resources and land use, including Oklahoma City, Kansas City and Chester Village in Orange County, New York.
The Native American connection
Scoping locations for the mega center had a rocky start.
Federal records show some tribe-affiliated companies were initially awarded sole-source contracts for preconstruction work before later withdrawing amid growing backlash over allegations that ICE raids have targeted Indigenous people and concerns about tribes profiting from mass arrests and deportations.
A $4 million federal sole-source contract was awarded Jan. 16 to Coho Construction headquartered in Anchorage, Alaska, for inspection and engineering services to support an ICE facility in El Paso, according to USA Spending, a federal contracts and spending portal. The award carries a seven-month term to end in August – and a potential total award of more than $13 million.
Coho is part of a group of Alaskan tribally owned businesses that operate under the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) Program, a certified designation for small businesses owned by socially and economically disadvantaged groups – including Alaska Native corporations and tribes. The SBA 8(a) Program allows federal agencies to bypass the bidding process for contracts worth less than $4.5 million.
In December, a joint venture business under the Oneida Nation, an Indigenous community in New York, was awarded a $3.9 million contract for the services later awarded to Coho Construction, the federal contracts portal shows. The limited liability corporation, Oneida-Stantec JV, had also been awarded a $2.6 million contract in September to inspect ICE detention facilities in more than 30 locations. That work had been mostly completed.
Jeff House, the head of the Oneida ESC Group, during an hour-long YouTube broadcast Jan. 2 apologized for greenlighting the proposal. He discussed how the group would be more selective in government projects to ensure they don’t go against the tribe’s values.
“I know now it was a huge mistake,” House said.
The Oneida Business Committee later adopted a resolution requiring the tribe’s subsidiaries disengage from ICE grants, agreements and contracts.
In late November, ICE issued a no-bid $29.9 million contract to Kpb Services LLC for “due diligence services and concept design for processing centers and mega centers throughout the United States.” The award did not include construction or operation services.
Bloomberg News reported the limited liability company is a joint venture between SK2 LLC and another LLC affiliated with the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation in Kansas. After public outcry, the tribe divested from the contract and soon after fired senior management of its economic development corporation, Native News Online reported.
“Sometimes working with the government puts you in positions that go against your values,” Prairie Band Chairman Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick said in a YouTube address to the nation. “Our values must guide us first and foremost.”
ICE contracts with Alaska Native corporations and subsidiaries are nothing new in the El Paso area – some have staffed the agency’s detention and processing centers with detention officers, guards, transportation and food service workers over the years under agreements valued in the tens to hundreds of million dollars.
Ramping up detention, deportations
The mega detention facilities and the smaller processing centers are part of a larger plan to speed up deportations by establishing a more deliberate feeder system, the Washington Post reported, citing the draft solicitation documents.
This week, DHS reported that more than 675,000 deportations and 2.2 million self-deportations have taken place under Trump’s second term.
“Now, in 2026, ICE has the ground running with 120% more officers and agents after hiring 12,000 Americans to help President Trump deliver on his signature promise,” DHS said in its news release.
More than 65,700 people were in ICE detention nationwide as of Nov. 30, nearly 74% of them without any criminal convictions, the latest data available through a public tracking system shows.
About 17,700 of those detainees were being held in Texas, including nearly 2,780 at Camp East Montana – the most than any ICE detention center in the country.
The new detention center would be among the largest in the country, dethroning the $1.2 billion Camp East Montana, which is expected to hold up to 5,000 people by September 2027.
The 153,000-square-foot ICE tent facility in Northeast El Paso sits on about 28 acres and has a capacity of about 1,000 people; while the El Paso Service Processing Center can also hold up to 1,000 detainees.
The Northeast facility has been used as a staging facility since at least March, holding between three to 200 people daily on average, the tracking system shows.
The Trump administration conducted 13,446 immigration enforcement flights in 2025, starting when Trump took office Jan. 20 that year, according to the Human Rights First ICE flight monitor.
Those included 2,138 removal, or deportation, flights to 79 countries – a 44% increase in flights over the previous year. The rest included nearly 8,400 domestic transfers that shuffle people between U.S. detention centers and deportation staging facilities, as well as some removal-related flights.
Credit: Source link
