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Tag: donald trump administration

  • PHOTOS: Immigration protests in Denver as part of nationwide protests in opposition of the Trump administration’s policies.

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Students march down 16th Street Mall as part of nationwide protests in opposition to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement actions in Minnesota, on Friday, Jan. 30, 2026, in Denver. (Photo by Timothy Hurst/The Denver Post)

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Timothy Hurst

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  • How the Trump administration plans to speed up deportations with new holding centers – WTOP News

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    As detention efforts by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency continue, a new report details the Donald Trump administration is working to develop large-scale holding centers to speed up deportations.

    WTOP’s Ralph Fox talked with Washington Post reporter Douglas MacMillan on the Donald Trump administration’s new deportation plans.

    As detention efforts by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency continue, new reports are detailing that the Donald Trump administration is working to develop large-scale holding centers to speed up deportations. This is according to internal ICE documents reviewed by the Washington Post.

    One location being considered is a facility with the potential to hold 10,000 people in Stafford County, Virginia.

    This plan would change the current system — where people are moved around to whichever facility has open beds — into a staged pipeline built around “processing sites” and massive “warehouses” intended to speed removals.

    In his report, Douglas MacMillan said the Trump administration aims to build seven large-scale holding centers that can hold as many as 80,000 immigrants in warehouses at a time.

    One senior ICE official told the Post the move is “similar to an Amazon Prime warehouse, but for people.”

    Newly arrested detainees would spend weeks at intake locations before being transferred into one of the facilities designed to hold anywhere between 5,000 and 10,000 people each.

    The Post noted acting ICE Director Todd M. Lyons said at a conference back in April that “the administration needs to treat deportations like a business.”

    The transcript below has been lightly edited for clarity.

    • Ralph Fox:

      What’s the plan and ultimate goal here?

    • Douglas MacMillan:

      All year, the Trump administration has been increasing the capacity for this country to hold immigrants, and they have reopened former prisons. They’ve opened detention camps on military bases. It looks like now they’re shifting the priority a little bit towards trying to make this system more efficient.

      The Trump administration wants to begin deporting people more efficiently, more rapidly. And to do that, they feel like they need to set up kind of a hub and spoke system where they’re going to book people into a processing center where they’ll be held for a few weeks, and then they’ll be sent to one of these kind of mass camps that they hope to renovate at least seven large industrial warehouses to act as sort of the hubs of this system all around the country.

    • Ralph Fox:

      And that could have an effect on our area as well. Yes?

    • Douglas MacMillan:

      Yes, they are planning. One of these seven facilities is planned for Stafford, Virginia, and it’s an industrial center. They seem to be targeting areas that are just outside of major metropolises and near kind of industrial logistics hubs.

      I think that, you know, they want to be near airports, they want to be near highways and make this whole system kind of more efficient, more streamlined. You know, one quote from a current ICE official from a conference earlier this year is, he said that they want this whole system to act more like a business, and they want to be as efficient as Amazon moves packages. And, he said, ‘like Prime but with human beings.’

    • Ralph Fox:

      And now has Homeland Security actually confirmed that this is happening?

    • Douglas MacMillan:

      We reached out to them and for comment. We shared a lot of questions with them. They did not answer the questions, and they said that they cannot confirm this.

      Usually we will get some kind of a statement denying things when things are wrong. So they didn’t do that. Our reporting is based off of an internal draft document that they were planning to send out to industry partners last week.

      So we believe that this is very much kind of in the works and about to kind of be put into action. We don’t know if they’ve actually procured, obtained any of the actual buildings yet, but we think that that might be the next step of this process.

    • Ralph Fox:

      And there’s been stories, a number of stories, of people not knowing where loved ones are for days. They just disappear, sometimes weeks under the current program. This looks to get people out of the country even faster. Is there possibly more accountability, as far as that’s concerned, or, maybe less?

    • Douglas MacMillan:

      Yeah, it’s hard to say. I mean, on the one hand, if they’re trying to make the system more efficient, maybe they would have, be able to track people better.

      But I think at this point, it’s hard to believe that anything this administration does will make it things easier or better or more transparent or accountable for immigrants and the people and their friends and family.

    • Ralph Fox:

      And when you look at it globally, a hub and spoke makes sense if you’re trying to move certain things and not speaking specifically about humans. But, do we have an idea what kind of price tag taxpayers could be looking at here?

    • Douglas MacMillan:

      That’s a good question. We don’t have any idea the numbers yet, but we do know they have a lot of money to spend.

      Congress made available over $100 billion to the Department of Homeland Security in their budget bill this year, $45 billion of that is allocated towards immigrant detention. It’s the largest amount this country has ever dedicated towards immigrant detention.

      So, they have almost a blank check to go out and buy buildings and to renovate them. Whether they can do this in a way that is humane and actually respects the lives that they’re going to be holding in these buildings, I think will be a big question, and one that we’ll continue to be looking at in our reporting.

    • Ralph Fox:

      And again, just to confirm, at least half, or nearly half of these people that have been deported so far have no criminal convictions or pending criminal charges. Is that right?

    • Douglas MacMillan:

      That’s right.

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    © 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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    Valerie Bonk

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  • What’s the cost of the National Guard deployment in DC? – WTOP News

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    D.C. Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton is calling for the Pentagon to provide an estimate of the cost of deploying 2,000 National Guard personnel in the District during the federal law enforcement surge against crime.

    D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton is calling for the Pentagon to provide an estimate of the cost of deploying 2,000 National Guard personnel in the District during the federal law enforcement surge against crime.

    Norton sent a letter on Monday to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Chief of the National Guard Bureau, Gen. Steven Nordhaus, outlining her opposition to the deployment.

    “A tenet of our democracy is that the military does not engage in civilian law enforcement, and it is not trained to do so in any case, which puts service members and the public at risk,” she said. “I urge you to end this gross abuse of power and withdraw the troops immediately.”

    The Democratic lawmaker questioned the legal basis for sending in the National Guard, seeking more information about its scope and mission, as well as the cost.

    President Donald Trump has held out the possibility of keeping the National Guard in D.C. beyond 30 days, which requires the approval of Congress.

    Cost may be close to $1 million a day

    The Pentagon so far has not provided a formal estimate of what the National Guard deployment is costing. But a past deployment in D.C. may provide some guidance.

    In 2020, Trump ordered the deployment of more than 5,000 National Guard personnel to support law enforcement during demonstrations that took place in the wake of the killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died after a Minneapolis police officer pinned him under his knee.

    After the protests, U.S. officials told Reuters it cost about $530 per guard member, per day, to be deployed.

    The D.C. National Guard said it cost roughly $2.6 million a day for the 5,000 National Guard troops that were deployed five years ago.

    Based on those estimates, the current deployment in D.C. likely costs more than $1 million a day.

    Former guard members question D.C. deployment

    The Trump administration and many Republican lawmakers credit the presence of the National Guard with helping to decrease crime in the District over the past two weeks.

    But some military veterans from Ohio — one of the six states that have sent in guard personnel — said on Monday that they oppose the deployment.

    On a media conference call, they argued that the deployment sets a dangerous precedent and potentially undermines the readiness of guard units in their home states.

    “I think it goes without saying that if our citizen-soldiers wanted to become (MPD officers) or ICE agents, they would have signed up for that instead of the National Guard,” said Jermaine Collins, a former Ohio National Guard member who now lives in D.C.

    The president, meanwhile, is still holding open the possibility of sending the National Guard to other cities, including Baltimore and Chicago. In response to a reporter’s question, he also said he would be open to sending National Guard units to red states with crime problems. But he suggested major cities led by Democrats have larger problems.

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    © 2025 WTOP. All Rights Reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.

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    Mitchell Miller

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