Overview

Construction and Expansion of ICE Detention Centers

The Scale of Expansion

The detained population reached a record of approximately 73,000 in mid-January 2026, far exceeding the system's funded capacity of around 41,500 beds from the prior fiscal year. The number of people in ICE detention expanded by roughly 75 percent during Trump's first year back in office. By the end of November 2025, ICE was using 104 more facilities for immigration detention than at the start of the year — a 91 percent increase.

Since the beginning of the second Trump administration, ICE set a goal of doubling its detention capacity to more than 100,000 beds by the end of 2025, according to an internal document reported by the Washington Post. That goal had not been achieved as of mid-2026. White House border czar Tom Homan acknowledged that ICE currently holds "about 70,000 beds" and is pushing for more.

Facility Types and Infrastructure Models

New facilities range from small county jails offering a few beds to previously closed state prisons housing over 2,000 people to newly constructed tent facilities on military bases capable of holding up to 5,000 people. The agency's original plan was to build makeshift "soft-sided" detention facilities — tents, essentially — on military bases. That approach largely fell through; just one such tent camp was built, at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, which currently holds over 3,000 people.

Having moved away from tent camps, ICE shifted to a more dramatic plan that would fundamentally reshape immigration detention, with the backbone of the new system resting on the purchase and retrofitting of a network of commercial warehouses. ICE has quietly purchased at least seven warehouses, some exceeding one million square feet, across Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Texas, according to the Associated Press.

An internal agency memo dated February 2026 laid out a sweeping overhaul designed to support what ICE describes as the ability to "effectuate mass deportations," including eight mega-centers capable of housing up to 10,000 detainees each, slated to be fully operational by November 30, 2026. Beyond the mega-centers, the plan calls for 16 regional processing sites built to hold between 1,000 and 1,500 detainees for short stays of three to seven days, and the acquisition of 10 existing turnkey centers.

The expansion also includes a new facility at Guantanamo Bay, the military base in Cuba where Trump announced detention plans in January 2025, claiming the base had "30,000 beds" and would hold "the worst criminal illegal aliens." As of mid-2025, the administration was spending $73 million annually to operate the Guantanamo immigration facility despite it holding only about 400 beds, with fewer than 2 percent occupied.

Funding and Private Industry

Congress authorized $45 billion for ICE detention in July 2025, to be spent through Fiscal Year 2029, on top of a record $4 billion appropriated for ICE detention in the FY 2025 budget. With that funding, ICE has enough money to operate upwards of 135,000 detention beds through the end of FY 2029. Nearly 90 percent of detainees are held in facilities operated by private prison companies — primarily CoreCivic and The GEO Group — or in county jails that contract with ICE. The two major private companies announced the addition of more than 6,000 beds across Texas, Ohio, Nevada, Oklahoma, Mississippi, New Jersey, Michigan, and other states, including reopening old prisons and jails such as the Delaney Hall facility in Newark, New Jersey.

Significance and Impact

The detention expansion represents a structural transformation, not simply an enlargement of existing capacity. A system that did not fully take off until the mid-1990s is now on track to rival the entire federal criminal prison system by the end of President Trump's second term. The administration's budget legislation has codified much of the immigration agenda, and analysts at the Brennan Center for Justice have noted that the resulting detention apparatus would likely be difficult to dismantle under future presidents.

The number of "at-large" arrests in American communities increased by 600 percent, leading to a 2,450 percent increase in the number of people with no criminal record held in ICE detention on any given day. ICE detention is a civil system, not a criminal one — the vast majority of people in ICE custody are held while their immigration cases move through administrative proceedings, not because they have been convicted of a crime.

The Department of Homeland Security and ICE have expanded the detention network beyond jails, prisons, and military bases to include large warehouse and industrial spaces for mass detention. Facilities labeled as "processing" centers may be presented as temporary to justify a lack of infrastructure, but in practice both models expand detention capacity, normalize confinement in industrial settings, and increase the federal government's ability to detain immigrants at mass scale.

Reactions and Debate

The rapid expansion has generated significant humanitarian and legal controversy. Deaths in ICE custody have risen sharply: at least 33 people died in ICE custody in 2025, the highest annual total since 2004, and 2026 is on pace to surpass that record. A joint report by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights released in June 2026 documented at least 52 deaths in ICE custody since January 20, 2025, attributing the rising toll to systemic medical neglect, facility overcrowding, and reduced oversight.

The increased number of people in detention facilities and the overcrowding of facilities has further increased health risks, particularly for communicable diseases and people with complex medical conditions. Several legal challenges related to poor health care conditions and limited oversight have been brought against ICE, including a February 2026 ruling requiring ICE to improve conditions in California detention facilities by ensuring adequate health care staffing, access to medical specialists, and timely provision of care and medications.

Oversight has become a central dispute. A DHS memo restricted unannounced congressional visits to detention facilities using funds from the One Big Beautiful Bill, and a federal court upheld the memo as valid, at least pending a separate court challenge, meaning members of Congress must give a week's notice before seeking to observe conditions. Senator Jon Ossoff launched a formal investigation into human rights abuses in immigration detention in January 2025, with his staff interviewing correctional officers, law enforcement officials, attorneys, detainees, and their families.

Immigrant rights advocates have raised concerns about conditions at detention centers run by private prison companies. California's Department of Justice found that conditions at California facilities had largely worsened as the Trump administration's enforcement campaign led to overcrowding and strained resources, especially around access to medical care. The expansion has also been augmented by new state-run detention facilities, including the "Alligator Alcatraz" facility in Florida, the first-ever state immigration detention facility not operating under contract with ICE.

Outlook

Eight mega-centers, each capable of housing up to 10,000 detainees, are slated to be fully operational by November 30, 2026, though the administration's track record of meeting its own detention timelines introduces uncertainty about whether that schedule will hold. ICE has also requested construction proposals to expand a facility near the U.S.-Mexico border in Port Isabel, Texas, along with more than a dozen other potential targets for new or expanded facilities.

Repurposed warehouses now hold thousands of detainees, and whether those facilities can meet the minimum standards for medical care, sanitation, and safety required under ICE regulations remains an open question as oversight mechanisms have contracted. ICE also rescinded a Biden-era requirement to report deaths occurring within 30 days of a detainee's release, reducing the visibility of mortality data at the margins of the system.

The deeper structural question is whether a detention infrastructure built at this speed, scale, and cost can be governed effectively. The congressional funding already appropriated locks in a vast system for years. Legal challenges to facility conditions are active and multiplying. With the administration simultaneously expanding the enforcement population and curtailing the mechanisms designed to monitor facility conditions, the gap between detention capacity and accountability capacity is likely to remain a persistent source of litigation, oversight conflict, and public debate well beyond the current term.