In a recent development, a private prison company has reached an agreement to reopen a detention facility in Texas which was previously utilized for housing immigrant families under the supervision of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The Nashville-based company, CoreCivic, made an announcement regarding its contract with ICE and the city of Dilley concerning the South Texas Family Residential Center, which boasts a capacity of 2,400 beds. This facility is situated roughly 85 miles north of Laredo and the Mexico border.
Initially, the center was used during the presidencies of Barack Obama and the early years of Donald Trump. However, family detention was subsequently halted by President Joe Biden in 2021, leading CoreCivic to idle the facility in 2024. According to Ryan Gustin, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, the company anticipates accommodating families at the Dilley location.
CoreCivic’s statement outlines that the facility, specifically developed for ICE back in 2014, is intended to provide a suitable environment for housing family units. The new agreement is scheduled to last at least until March 2030. However, ICE officials have not yet provided details regarding who will be detained there or the timeline of its operation.
At present, ICE predominantly detains immigrants in privately run detention centers, its own processing facilities, and various local jails and prisons. Entering the current year, the agency had zero facilities specifically allocated for families, a group that constituted nearly one-third of southern border arrivals last year. Meanwhile, during the Trump administration, there was an expansion in the use of military bases, including the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba, to detain migrants, which also included chartered flights from Army bases in El Paso, Texas, amidst declarations to increase mass deportations.
Long-standing ICE partners, including CoreCivic and GEO Group, claim to provide more cost-effective solutions compared to military options for a vast range of services, including transportation, even involving international flights. Under the Trump administration’s mandate, military bases were authorized to house immigrant children, specifically at locations such as Fort Bliss and Goodfellow Air Force Base in Texas. Back in 2014, President Obama temporarily resorted to using military bases for detaining immigrant children, while accelerating the establishment of privately managed family detention centers to accommodate the high numbers of Central American families illegally crossing into the U.S.
