The Trump administration is expanding its mass deportation effort to include illegally present families, and ICE is reopening two previously closed Texas detention centers to accommodate them, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to The Post on Thursday.
According to DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, all families targeted by President Trump’s mass deportation raids have received final deportation orders from federal judges.
“This administration is not going to ignore the rule of law,” she made clear.
According to McLaughlin, the migrant families will soon be housed in the Karnes and Dilley Detention Centers, which will be “retrofitted” to accommodate them.
Dilley, which is about 75 miles southwest of San Antonio and has a capacity of 2,400 detainees, was ICE’s largest detention center when it was operational.
Last year, the Biden administration shut down the massive facility, claiming it was “the most expensive facility in the national detention network.”
ICE stated at the time that the private prison contractor-run detention facility would be replaced with 1,600 existing detention beds made available in the region, explaining that this was a less expensive option.
Former ICE field office director John Fabbricatore previously told The Post that the decision to close Dilley demonstrated not only a “lapse in judgment, but a deliberate act of amnesty through inaction.”
The Karnes detention center, which previously housed adult detainees under then-President Joe Biden, will also add over 600 beds for ICE to hold families.
The Obama administration established both facilities and used Dilley to detain families. The Biden administration then converted the facility to house only single adults.
During his speech to Congress on Tuesday, Trump touted his “largest deportation operation in American history, larger even than current record holder, President Dwight D. Eisenhower,” and urged Congress to provide funding “without delay” for the operation.
ICE is currently “burning well over” its funding to hold 41,500 illegal migrants, “to the tune of several hundred million dollars,” a senior agency source previously told The Post.
While the Trump administration continues to ramp up its efforts, immigration advocates are fighting back.
According to Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, Dilley is “known for neglect and abuse of families and children” and its reopening “is the start of another dark chapter in this nation’s treatment of immigrants.”
Cho also criticized CoreCivic Inc., the private contractor set to run the facility, saying it is “celebrating the opportunity to profit off the detention of immigrant children and families at the Dilley detention facility, which will only result in more unnecessary suffering at taxpayers’ expense.”
The facility will generate $180 million in revenue per year, according to the contractor.
Former ICE deputy director Scott Mechkowski responded to criticisms of detention, claiming that ICE has “higher” standards “than any state” prison.
According to Mechkowski, ICE’s national detention standards far exceed those of domestic correctional facilities, raising concerns about the treatment and human rights of those detained.
