US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has estimated it will spend $38.3bn on a plan to buy warehouses across the country and renovate them. migration Detention centers with a capacity of tens of thousands of prisoners, according to Documents The agency was sent to the governor New Hampshire.
The documents, published Thursday on the state website by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Expectations It will spend $158m to renovate a new detention facility in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and an additional $146m to operate the facility over the first three years.
According to an overview of the plans reported earlier The Washington PostImmigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) will buy 16 buildings across the US and convert them into regional processing centers, each housing between 1,000 and 1,500 people at a time. Eight other large-scale detention centers hold 7,000 to 10,000 people at a time and serve as “primary locations” for deportation. Inmates spend an average of three to seven days at processing sites before being transported to larger facilities, where they are held for up to 60 days before deportation.
According to the document, a new model is needed to increase the detention space Increase in ICE appointments and an expected increase in arrests. The number of Persons in ICE Detention It holds second records Trump administration.
The facilities “ensure the safe and humane civil detention of aliens in ICE custody while assisting ICE in implementing mass deportations,” the documents state. This effort depends on billions of dollars appropriated by Congress A big beautiful bill is the law According to the documents, “to fully implement the new detention model by the end of fiscal year 2026”.
Collectively, the records provide a clear view of the Trump administration’s strategy to rebuild immigrant detention by converting buildings initially built for industrial use — a broader program intended to strengthen ICE’s ability to detain more immigrants and remove them more quickly.
According to ICE’s plan documents, instead of transferring detainees across the country based on open bed space, the redesigned system would send people into a network of large centralized facilities where they would remain until deportation.
They seem to be Contradictory Statements about when the economic impact analysis for the proposed Merrimack facility was presented to New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte.
Ayotte, a Republican, said in a press release that DHS provided the documents to his office for the first time Thursday. Her comments seemed to contradict testimony from ICE’s acting director, Todd M. Lyons, who told a Senate hearing the same day that DHS representatives had already discussed the project with the governor and provided her with a “financial impact summary.”
Massachusetts Issued by Governor Maura Healy Advertisement The ICE agency opposes setting up a detention center in Merrimack, calling it an “outrageous and completely wrong move.”
“There is ICE Shooting people He died on the street. Mothers are ripped from cars and separated from children, “US citizens are stopped, detained and killed. Peaceful protestors are attacked. Parents are afraid to send children to school, go to church, seek health care and report crimes. None of this makes people safer – it makes us all less safe.”
It continued: “We must oppose ICE’s tactics, not allow them to expand. We absolutely must not allow ICE to build new human warehouses when they cannot be trusted to keep people safe and protect due process.”
