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Tag: Immigrant detention

  • Trump’s $45 billion expansion of immigrant detention sites faces pushback from communities – WTOP News

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    A proposed ICE facility just north of Richmond, Virginia, drew hundreds of people last week to a tense public hearing of the Hanover County Board of Supervisors.

    A man takes photos of a warehouse as federal officials tour the facility to consider repurposing it as an ICE detention facility Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Belton, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)(AP/Charlie Riedel)

    With tensions high over federal immigration enforcement, some state and local officials are pushing back against attempts by President Donald Trump’s administration to house thousands of detained immigrants in their communities in converted warehouses, privately run facilities and county jails.

    Federal officials have been scouting cities and counties across the U.S. for places to hold immigrants as they roll out a massive $45 billion expansion of detention facilities financed by Trump’s recent tax-cutting law.

    The fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti during immigration enforcement actions in Minnesota have amplified an already intense spotlight on U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, increasing scrutiny of its plans for new detention sites.

    A proposed ICE facility just north of Richmond, Virginia, drew hundreds of people last week to a tense public hearing of the Hanover County Board of Supervisors.

    “You want what’s happening in Minnesota to go down in our own backyard? Build that detention center here, and that’s exactly what will happen,” resident Kimberly Matthews told county officials.

    As a prospective ICE detention site became public, elected officials in Kansas City, Missouri, scrambled to pass an ordinance aimed at blocking it. And mayors in Oklahoma City and Salt Lake City — after raising concerns about building permits — announced last week that property owners won’t be selling or leasing their facilities for immigration detention.

    Meanwhile, legislatures in several Democratic-led states pressed forward with bills aimed at blocking or discouraging ICE facilities. A New Mexico measure targets local government agreements to detain immigrants for ICE. A novel California proposal seeks to nudge companies running ICE facilities out of the state by imposing a 50% tax on their proceeds.

    The number of ICE detention sites has doubled

    More than 70,000 immigrants were being detained by ICE as of late December, up from 40,000 when Trump took office, according to federal data.

    In a little over a year, the number of detention facilities used by ICE nearly doubled to 212 sites spread across 47 states and territories. Most of that growth came through existing contracts with the U.S. Marshals Service or deals to use empty beds at county jails.

    Trump’s administration now is taking steps to open more large-scale facilities. In January, ICE paid $102 million for a warehouse in Washington County, Maryland, $84 million for one in Berks County, Pennsylvania, and more than $70 million for one in Surprise, Arizona. It also solicited public comment on a proposed warehouse purchase in a flood plain in Chester, New York.

    Federal immigration officials have toured large warehouses elsewhere, without releasing many details about the efforts.

    “They will be very well structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards,” ICE said in a statement, adding: “It should not come as news that ICE will be making arrests in states across the U.S. and is actively working to expand detention space.”

    Detention site foes face legal limitations

    State and local governments can decline to lease detention space to ICE, but they generally cannot prohibit businesses and private landowners from using their property for federal immigrant detention centers, said Danielle Jefferis, an associate law professor at the University of Nebraska who focuses on immigration and civil litigation.

    In 2023, a federal court invalidated a California law barring private immigrant detention facilities for infringing on federal powers. A federal appeals court panel cited similar grounds in July while striking down a New Jersey law that forbade agreements to operate immigrant detention facilities.

    After ICE officials recently toured a warehouse in Orlando, Florida, as a prospective site, local officials looked into ways to regulate or prevent it. But City Attorney Mayanne Downs advised them in a letter that “ICE is immune from any local regulation that interferes in any way with its federal mandate.”

    Officials in Hanover County also asked their attorney to evaluate legal options after the Department of Homeland Security sent a letter confirming its intent to purchase a private property for use as an ICE processing facility. The building sits near retail businesses, hotels, restaurants and several neighborhoods.

    Although some residents voiced concerns that an ICE facility could strain the county’s resources, there’s little the county can do to oppose it, said Board of Supervisors Chair Sean Davis.

    “The federal government is generally exempt from our zoning regulations,” Davis said.

    Kansas City tries to block new ICE detention site

    Despite court rulings elsewhere, the City Council in Kansas City voted in January to impose a five-year moratorium on non-city-run detention facilities. The vote came on the same day ICE officials toured a nearly 1-million-square-foot (92,903-square-meter) warehouse as a prospective site.

    Manny Abarca, a county lawmaker, said he initially was threatened with trespassing when he showed up but was eventually allowed inside the facility, where a deputy ICE field office director told him they were scouting for a 7,500-bed site.

    Abarca is trying to fortify Kansas City’s resistance by proposing a countywide moratorium on permits, zoning changes and development plans for detention facilities not run by the county or a city.

    “When federal power is putting communities on edge, local government has a responsibility to act where we have authority,” he said.

    Kansas City is looking to follow a similar path as Leavenworth, Kansas, which has argued that private prison firm CoreCivic must have an operating permit to reopen a shuttered prison as an ICE detention facility.

    As other ICE proposals have surfaced, officials in Social Circle, Georgia, El Paso, Texas, and Roxbury Township, New Jersey, all have raised concerns about a lack of water and sewer capacity to transform warehouses into detention sites.

    Nationally, it remains to be seen whether local governments can effectively deter ICE facilities through building permits and regulations.

    “We’re currently in a moment where it is being tested,” Jefferis said. “So there is no clear answer as to how the courts are going to come down.”

    New Mexico targets existing ICE facilities

    The Democratic-led New Mexico House on Friday passed legislation banning state and local government contracts for ICE detention facilities, sending it to the Senate. Similar bills are pending in Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island.

    The Otero County Processing Center, 25 miles (40 kilometers) from downtown El Paso, Texas, is one of three privately run ICE facilities that could be affected by the New Mexico legislation. The facility includes four immigration courtrooms and space for more than 1,000 detainees. The county financed its construction in 2007 with the intent to use it as a revenue source, and plans to pay off the remaining $16.5 million debt by 2028.

    Otero County Attorney Roy Nichols said the county is prepared to sue the Legislature under a state law that prevents impairment of outstanding revenue bonds.

    Republicans warned of job losses and economic fallout if the legislation forces immigrant detention centers to close.

    But Democratic state Rep. Sarah Silva, who voted for the ban, and said her constituents in a heavily Hispanic area view the ICE facility as a burden.

    “Our state can’t be complicit in the violations that ICE has been doing in places like Minneapolis,” Silva said. “To me that was beyond the tipping point.”

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  • Detainees to testify about legal access at ‘Alligator Alcatraz’

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    FORT MYERS, Fla. — Former detainees planned to testify Wednesday about conditions at an immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” as a federal judge considers during a two-day hearing whether they are getting sufficient access to the legal system.

    Civil rights attorneys representing the detainees were seeking a temporary injunction from U.S. District Judge Sheri Polster Chappell in Fort Myers that would ensure that detainees at the state-run Everglades facility get the same access to their attorneys as they do at federally-run detention centers. The Everglades facility was built last summer at a remote airstrip by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration.

    The detainees’ lawsuit claims that their First Amendment rights are being violated. They say their attorneys have to make an appointment to visit three days in advance, unlike at other immigration detention facilities where lawyers can just show up during visiting hours; that detainees often are transferred to other facilities after their attorneys had made an appointment to see them; and that scheduling delays have been so lengthy that detainees were unable to meet with attorneys before key deadlines.

    “Access to counsel at Alligator Alcatraz is dramatically more restrictive than at other immigration facilities and runs afoul of the requirements that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has in place for detention facilities,” the civil rights attorneys wrote in their request for an injunction.

    State officials who are defendants in the lawsuit denied restricting the detainees’ access to their attorneys and said any protocols were in place for security reasons and to make sure there was sufficient staffing. Federal officials who also are defendants said that no First Amendment rights were being violated.

    “Moreover, any Alligator Alcatraz policy regarding attorney-detainee communications is valid so long as it reasonably relates to legitimate penological interest,” they wrote.

    Among those expected to testify Wednesday was Juan Lopez Vega, deputy field office director of ICE’s enforcement and removal operations in Miami, who unsuccessfully tried to quash a subpoena compelling him to show up in court on Wednesday.

    The case over access to the legal system was one of three federal lawsuits challenging practices at the immigration detention center. Another lawsuit brought by detainees in federal court in Fort Myers argued that immigration was a federal issue, and Florida agencies and private contractors hired by the state had no authority to operate the facility under federal law. That lawsuit ended earlier this month after the immigrant detainee who filed the case agreed to be removed from the United States.

    In the third lawsuit, a federal judge in Miami last summer ordered the facility to wind down operations over two months because officials had failed to do a review of the detention center’s environmental impact. But an appellate court panel put that decision on hold for the time being, allowing the facility to stay open.

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  • Florida awaiting federal approval for 3rd immigration detention center

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    ORLANDO, Fla. — Florida is awaiting approval from federal officials to open a third immigration detention center, following “Alligator Alcatraz” and “Deportation Depot,” and the state also is looking into a potential fourth detention facility, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday.

    Florida officials were waiting for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to sign off on the third detention center in the state’s Panhandle, DeSantis said at a news conference outside the facility which was Florida’s second immigration detention center, dubbed “Deportation Deport,” at the former Baker Correctional Institution in northeast Florida.

    “So, if they approve, we will open,” DeSantis said. “If they don’t, then we will stand by, and that’s fine. But I think it should be approved since I don’t think they’re where they need to be on detention space.”

    The governor said there was “another option potentially” in South Florida, where state officials already have constructed an immigration detention center dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz” at a remote airstrip in the Florida Everglades.

    When asked by email about the specific locations of the two potential detention facilities, DeSantis press secretary Molly Best said the Panhandle location would be announced once it’s approved by federal officials.

    “Until this and the proposed additional South Florida location have been approved and finalized, we are unable to provide additional details. Stay tuned!” Best said.

    DeSantis said that there had been 10,000 arrests of people in the U.S. illegally in Florida during the past year through a state initiative with federal law enforcement, and that local law enforcement had made an additional 10,000 arrests for a total of 20,000 arrests. Under the state initiative, 63% of those arrested had a criminal arrest or conviction, DeSantis said.

    Florida has led other states in constructing facilities to support President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, with DeSantis saying the Trump administration needs the additional capacity to hold and deport more immigrants. The Trump administration has trumpeted the Republican governors’ efforts to expand their immigration detention capacity, calling Florida’s partnership a model for other state-run holding facilities.

    Attorneys for detainees at the Everglades facility have called the conditions deplorable, writing in court documents that rainwater floods their tents and officers go cell-to-cell pressuring detainees to sign voluntary removal orders before they’re allowed to consult their attorneys.

    Three federal lawsuits in Florida are challenging practices at the Everglades facility.

    In one lawsuit, detainees are asking for the facility to be closed since immigration is a federal issue, and Florida agencies and private contractors hired by the state have no authority to operate it under federal law. In a second lawsuit, detainees were seeking a ruling that would ensure that they have access to confidential communications with their attorneys.

    In the third lawsuit, a federal judge in Miami last summer ordered the facility to wind down operations over two months because officials had failed to do a review of the detention center’s environmental impact. But an appellate court panel put that decision on hold for the time being, allowing the facility to stay open.

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  • Kansas tribe ends nearly $30 million deal with ICE

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    A Kansas tribe said it has walked away from a nearly $30 million federal contract to come up with preliminary designs for immigrant detention centers after facing a wave of online criticism.

    The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation ‘s announcement Wednesday night came just over a week after the economic development leaders who brokered the deal with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement were fired.

    With some Native Americans swept up and detained in recent ICE raids, the deal was derided online as “disgusting” and “cruel.” Many in Indian Country also questioned how a tribe whose own ancestors were uprooted two centuries ago from the Great Lakes region and corralled on a reservation south of Topeka could participate in the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts.

    Tribal Chairman Joseph “Zeke” Rupnick nodded to the historic issues last week in a video address that called reservations “the government’s first attempts at detention centers.” In an update Wednesday, he announced that he was “happy to share that our Nation has successfully exited all third-party related interests affiliated with ICE.”

    The Prairie Band Potawatomi has a range of businesses that provide health care management staffing, general contracting and even interior design. And Rupnick said in his latest address that tribal officials plan to meet in January about how to ensure “economic interests do not come into conflict with our values in the future.”

    A tribal offshoot hired by ICE — KPB Services LLC — was established in April in Holton, Kansas, by Ernest C. Woodward Jr., a former naval officer who markets himself as a “go-to” adviser for tribes and affiliated companies seeking to land federal contracts.

    The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation said in 2017 that Woodward’s firm advised it on its acquisition of another government contractor, Mill Creek LLC, which specializes in outfitting federal buildings and the military with office furniture and medical equipment.

    Woodward also is listed as the chief operating officer of the Florida branch of Prairie Band Construction Inc., which was registered in September.

    Attempts to locate Woodward were unsuccessful. A spokesperson for KPB said Woodward is no longer with the LLC but she declined to say whether he was terminated. Woodward did not respond to an email sent to another consulting firm he’s affiliated with, Virginia-based Chinkapin Partners LLC.

    A spokesperson for the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation said the tribe divested from KPB. While that company still has the contract, “Prairie Band no longer has a stake,” the spokesperson said.

    The spokesperson said Woodward is no longer with the tribe’s limited liability corporation, but she declined to say whether he was terminated.

    The ICE contract initially was awarded in October for $19 million for unspecified “due diligence and concept designs” for processing centers and detention centers throughout the U.S., according to a one-sentence description of the work on the federal government’s real-time contracting database. It was modified a month later to increase the payout ceiling to $29.9 million.

    Sole-source contracts above $30 million require additional justification under federal contracting rules.

    Tribal leaders and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security haven’t responded to detailed questions about why the firm was selected for such a big contract without having to compete for the work as federal contracting normally requires. It’s also unclear what the Tribal Council knew about the contract.

    “That process of internal auditing is really just beginning,” the tribal spokesperson said.

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    Hollingsworth reported from Mission, Kansas, and Goodman from Miami.

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  • Immigrant rights group calls for removing pregnant women from detention

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    BATON ROUGE, La. — BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Women taken into custody by U.S. immigration agents while pregnant say they received inadequate care in a letter Wednesday that calls on the Trump administration to stop holding expectant mothers in federal detention facilities.

    The letter to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is part of a broader campaign in recent months by Democrats and immigrant rights groups to draw attention to what they say is the mistreatment of pregnant women who have been detained in Trump’s immigration crackdown.

    The Department of Homeland Security has defended the care given to pregnant detainees, saying they are given regular prenatal visits and nutritional support. The agency did not immediately provide figures on the number of pregnant women in detention, as Democrats have demanded.

    The letter sent by the American Civil Liberties Union gives accounts from pregnant women who say they were shackled while being transported, placed in solitary confinement for multiple days and given insufficient food and water while held in detention facilities in Louisiana and Georgia.

    The ACLU said that over the past five months it has met with more than a dozen females who were pregnant while in ICE custody — including some who had a miscarriage while detained. The women reported “gravely troubling experiences,” the letter states, including lack of translation during medical encounters and medical neglect. One suffered a “severe” infection after her miscarriage.

    In an interview with The Associated Press, one of those woman said she was kept in handcuffs while being transported to Louisiana — a journey that lasted five hours and spanned two plane rides. The woman, who has since been released from custody and given birth, spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of facing retaliation during her ongoing case.

    An officer told her he considered taking off the handcuffs but worried she would escape. “How am I going to escape if I’m pregnant?” the woman said she responded.

    She said she felt as if she’d been kidnapped and experienced dizziness, nausea and suffered from vaginal bleeding. During her time in the detention facility, she said pregnant women were not offered special diets and described the food as horrible. She alleged that detainees had to “beg” for water and toilet paper.

    The ACLU’s letter is the latest call for an investigation into the arrest and treatment of pregnant detainees.

    Senate Democrats wrote Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in September, expressing concerns about the “prevalence and treatment” of pregnant, postpartum and nursing women in ICE custody and demanded that the agency stop detaining such people unless there are “exceptional circumstances.”

    Democratic lawmakers have also said information about the number of pregnant women in ICE custody has been difficult to ascertain.

    DHS has said that pregnant detainees receive regular prenatal visits, mental health services, nutritional support, and accommodations “aligned with community standards of care.”

    “Detention of pregnant women is rare and has elevated oversight and review,” the agency said in an August press release.

    ___ Gonzalez reported from McAllen, Texas.

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  • Judge blocks Trump policy to detain migrant children turning 18 in adult facilities

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    A federal judge has temporarily blocked a new Trump administration policy to keep migrant children in detention after they turn 18, moving quickly to stop transfers to adult facilities that advocates said were scheduled for this weekend.

    U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras on Saturday issued a temporary restraining order to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to not detain any child who came to the country alone and without permission in ICE adult detention facilities after they become an adult.

    The Washington, D.C., judge found that such automatic detention violates a court order he issued in 2021 barring such practices.

    ICE and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond Saturday to emails seeking comment.

    The push to detain new adults is yet another battle over one of the most sensitive issues in President Donald Trump’s hard-line immigration agenda — how to treat children who cross the border unaccompanied by adults.

    The Associated Press reported Friday that officials are offering migrant children age 14 and older $2,500 to voluntarily return to their home countries. Last month a separate federal judge blocked attempts to immediately deport Guatemalan migrant children who came to the U.S. alone back to their home country. Some children had been put on board planes in that late-night operation before a judge blocked it.

    “All of these are pieces of the same general policy to coerce immigrant youth into giving up their right to seek protection in the United States,” said Michelle Lapointe, a lawyer for the American Immigration Council, one of the groups that asked Contreras to intervene in a filing made just after midnight Saturday.

    Unaccompanied children are held in shelters run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which isn’t part of ICE. Contreras’ 2021 order instructed federal officials to release minors who turn 18 from those shelters to “the least restrictive setting available.” He ruled that is what’s required by federal law as long as the minor isn’t a danger to themselves or others and isn’t a flight risk. Minors are often released to the custody of a relative, or maybe into foster care.

    But lawyers who represent unaccompanied minors said they began getting word in the last few days that ICE was telling shelters that children who were about to turn 18 — even those who had already-approved release plans — could no longer be released and would instead be taken to detention facilities, possibly as early as Saturday. One email from ICE asserted that the new adults could only be released by ICE under its case-by-case parole authority for “urgent humanitarian reasons” or “significant public benefit.” From March through September, ICE has paroled fewer than 500 people overall.

    The plaintiffs argued that “release on parole is all but a dead letter” and that children aging out of shelters would experience lasting harm from unnecessary and inappropriate adult detention” in jails that might be overcrowded or in remote locations. The plaintiffs said that was especially true because some of the clients they cited had been victims of trafficking or had been abused, neglected or abandoned by their parents.

    U.S. border authorities have arrested children crossing the border without parents more than 400,000 times since October 2021. A 2008 law requires them to appear before an immigration judge before being returned to their countries.

    Children have been spending more time in government-run shelters since the Trump administration put them under closer scrutiny before releasing them to family in the United States to pursue their immigration cases.

    The additional scrutiny includes fingerprinting, DNA testing and home visits by immigration officers. Over the summer, immigration officers started showing up and arresting parents.

    The average length of stay at government-run shelters for those released in the U.S. was 171 days in July, down from a peak of 217 days in April but well above 37 days in January, when Trump took office.

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  • Feds reimburse Florida $608 million for ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ costs

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    Federal officials on Friday confirmed that Florida has been reimbursed $608 million for the costs of building and running an immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades, exposing “Alligator Alcatraz” to the risk of being ordered to close for a second time.

    The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said in an email that the state of Florida was awarded its full reimbursement request.

    The reimbursement exposes the state of Florida to being forced to unwind operations at the remote facility for a second time because of a federal judge’s injunction in August. The Miami judge agreed with environmental groups who had sued that the site wasn’t given a proper environmental review before it was converted into an immigration detention center and gave Florida two months to wind down operations.

    The judge’s injunction, however, was put on hold for the time being by an appellate court panel in Atlanta that said the state-run facility didn’t need to undergo a federally required environmental impact study because Florida had yet to receive federal money for the project.

    “If the federal defendants ultimately decide to approve that request and reimburse Florida for its expenditures related to the facility, they may need to first conduct an EIS (environmental impact statement),” the three-judge appellate court panel wrote last month.

    The appellate panel decision allowed the detention center to stay open and put a stop to wind-down efforts.

    President Donald Trump toured the facility in July and suggested it could be a model for future lockups nationwide as his administration pushes to expand the infrastructure needed to increase deportations.

    Environmental groups that had sued the federal and state governments said the confirmation of the reimbursement showed that the Florida-built facility was a federal project “from the jump.”

    “This is a federal project being built with federal funds that’s required by federal law to go through a complete environmental review,” Elise Bennett, Florida and Caribbean director at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement. “We’ll do everything we can to stop this lawless, destructive and wasteful debacle.”

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  • Des Moines, Iowa, public school leader detained by immigration agents, school board says

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    DES MOINES, Iowa — Federal immigration agents have detained the head administrator of Iowa’s capital city public schools, the school board said Friday.

    Des Moines Public Schools Superintendent Ian Roberts was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcements agents Friday morning, school board president Jackie Norris said in a statement. A spokesperson for the district said they do not have additional information to share at this time.

    “We have no confirmed information as to why Dr. Roberts is being detained or the next potential steps,” Norris said in her statement.

    U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement records show Roberts in their custody at a county jail in western Iowa. But a Pottawattamie County jail employee said he is not currently at their jail. The jail in Council Bluffs is about 130 miles west of Des Moines.

    An employee at the ICE office in St. Paul, Minnesota, which oversees operations in Iowa, said he had no information on Roberts’ arrest. An email to ICE’s national media line wasn’t immediately returned, and its phone rang unanswered. Additional calls to other regional offices in Omaha, Nebraska, and Kansas City, Missouri, also went unanswered.

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  • ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detainees continue to face obstacles to meet with lawyers, court papers allege

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    ORLANDO, Fla. — There still are no protocols for attorneys to get in touch with clients at the immigration detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz,” and detainees are often transferred just before scheduled lawyer visits, according to new court papers alleging continued unconstitutional obstacles for meeting with legal representatives.

    Thursday’s court papers were filed in response to a transfer from Miami to Fort Myers of the federal lawsuit claiming detainees have been denied private meetings with immigration attorneys while being held at the facility built by the state of Florida in the Everglades wilderness.

    It also comes a week after a federal appellate court panel, in a separate environmental lawsuit, allowed operations to continue at the detention center by putting on hold a lower court’s preliminary injunction ordering the facility to wind down by the end of October. A third federal lawsuit challenging practices at the facility claims immigration is a federal issue and Florida agencies and the private contractors hired by the state have no authority to operate the facility.

    “Detained individuals have a First Amendment right to communicate with their attorneys in confidence,” lawyers said Thursday in the legal rights case.

    U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues to omit information about detainees at the facility from its online locator system “so attorneys cannot confirm whether detained clients are held at the facility.” During videoconferences with their lawyers, detainees are placed in cages that aren’t soundproof with staff in earshot, and documents for clients are subject to review by staff, the attorneys said.

    Unlike other detention facilities which don’t require prior appointments, at the Everglades facility, if lawyers want to meet in-person with their clients, they must schedule a meeting three days in advance. That gives the facility the opportunity to transfer out detainees, denying them legal access, they lawyers said.

    Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration in late June raced to build the facility on an isolated airstrip surrounded by wetlands to aid President Donald Trump’s efforts to deport people living in the U.S. illegally. Trump toured the facility in July and suggested it could be a model for future lockups around the nation as his administration pushes to expand the infrastructure needed to increase deportations.

    The center has been plagued by reports of unsanitary conditions and detainees being cut off from the legal system. Other states have since announced plans to open their own immigration detention centers.

    As part of the legal rights lawsuit, the attorneys for the detainees want to make a visit to the facility in mid-October, but the federal and state government defendants said it wasn’t necessary. The detainees’ attorneys also asked for permission to keep their clients anonymous in public court filings and to use pseudonyms instead.

    “At a time of increasingly violent anti-immigrant rhetoric in Florida and across the country, immigrants detained at Alligator Alcatraz are subjected to extreme vitriol, including from officials at the highest levels of government,” they wrote.

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  • Mystery surrounds $1.2B Army contract to build huge detention tent camp in Texas

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    WASHINGTON — When President Donald Trump’s administration last month awarded a contract worth up to $1.2 billion to build and operate what it says will become the nation’s largest immigration detention complex, it didn’t turn to a large government contractor or even a firm that specializes in private prisons.

    Instead, it handed the project on a military base to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a small business that has no listed experience running a correction facility and had never won a federal contract worth more than $16 million. The company also lacks a functioning website and lists as its address a modest home in suburban Virginia owned by a 77-year-old retired Navy flight officer.

    The mystery over the award only deepened last week as the new facility began to accept its first detainees. The Pentagon has refused to release the contract or explain why it selected Acquisition Logistics over a dozen other bidders to build the massive tent camp at Fort Bliss in west Texas. At least one competitor has filed a complaint.

    The secretive — and brisk — contracting process is emblematic, experts said, of the government’s broader rush to fulfill the Republican president’s pledge to arrest and deport an estimated 10 million migrants living in the U.S. without permanent legal status. As part of that push, the government is turning increasingly to the military to handle tasks that had traditionally been left to civilian agencies.

    A member of Congress who recently toured the camp said she was concerned that such a small and inexperienced firm had been entrusted to build and run a facility expected to house up to 5,000 migrants.

    “It’s far too easy for standards to slip,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat whose district includes Fort Bliss. “Private facilities far too frequently operate with a profit margin in mind as opposed to a governmental facility.”

    Attorney Joshua Schnell, who specializes in federal contracting law, said he was troubled that the Trump administration has provided so little information about the facility.

    “The lack of transparency about this contract leads to legitimate questions about why the Army would award such a large contract to a company without a website or any other publicly available information demonstrating its ability to perform such a complicated project,” he said.

    Ken A. Wagner, the president and CEO of Acquisition Logistics, did not respond to phone messages or emails. No one answered the door at his three-bedroom house listed as his company’s headquarters. Virginia records list Wagner as an owner of the business, though it’s unclear whether he might have partners.

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved using Fort Bliss for the new detention center, and the administration has hopes to build more at other bases. A spokesperson for the Army declined to discuss its deal with Acquisition Logistics or reveal details about the camp’s construction, citing the litigation over the company’s qualifications.

    The Department of Homeland Security, which includes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to answer questions about the detention camp it oversees.

    Named Camp East Montana for the closest road, the facility is being built in the sand and scrub Chihuahuan Desert, where summertime temperatures can exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit and heat-related deaths are common. The 60-acre (24-hectare) site is near the U.S.-Mexico border and the El Paso International Airport, a key hub for deportation flights.

    The camp has drawn comparisons to “Alligator Alcatraz,” a $245 million tent complex erected to hold ICE detainees in the Florida Everglades. That facility has been the subject of complaints about unsanitary conditions and lawsuits. A federal judge recently ordered that facility to be shut down.

    The vast majority of the roughly 57,000 migrants detained by ICE are housed at private prisons operated by companies like Florida’s Geo Group and Tennessee-based CoreCivic. As those facilities fill up, ICE is also exploring temporary options at military bases in California, New York and Utah.

    At Fort Bliss, construction began within days of the Army issuing the contract on July 18. Site work began months earlier, before Congress had passed Trump’s big tax and spending cuts bill, which includes a record $45 billion for immigration enforcement. The Defense Department announcement specified only that the Army was financing the initial $232 million for the first 1,000 beds at the complex.

    Three white tents, each about 810 feet (250 meters) long, have been erected, according to satellite imagery examined by The Associated Press. A half dozen smaller buildings surround them.

    Setareh Ghandehari, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Detention Watch, said the use of military bases hearkens back to World War II, when Japanese Americans were imprisoned at Army camps including Fort Bliss. She said military facilities are especially prone to abuse and neglect because families and loved ones have difficulty accessing them.

    “Conditions at all detention facilities are inherently awful,” Ghandehari said. “But when there’s less access and oversight, it creates the potential for even more abuse.”

    A June 9 solicitation notice for the Fort Bliss project specified the contractor will be responsible for building and operating the detention center, including providing security and medical care. The document also requires strict secrecy, ordering the contractor inform ICE to respond to any calls from members of Congress or the news media.

    The bidding was open only to small firms such as Acquisition Logistics, which receives preferential status because it’s classified as a veteran and Hispanic-owned small disadvantaged business.

    Though Trump’s administration has fought to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs, federal contracting rules include set-asides for small businesses owned by women or minorities. For a firm to compete for such contracts, at least 51% of it must be owned by people belonging to a federally designated disadvantaged racial or ethnic group.

    One of the losing bidders, Texas-based Gemini Tech Services, filed a protest challenging the award and the Army’s rushed construction timeline with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, Congress’ independent oversight arm that resolves such disputes.

    Gemini alleges Acquisition Logistics lacks the experience, staffing and resources to perform the work, according to a person familiar with the complaint who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity. Acquisition Logistics’ past jobs include repairing small boats for the Air Force, providing information technology support to the Defense Department and building temporary offices to aid with immigration enforcement, federal records show.

    Gemini and its lawyer didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.

    A ruling by the GAO on whether to sustain, dismiss or require corrective action is not expected before November. A legal appeal is also pending with a U.S. federal court in Washington.

    Schnell, the contracting lawyer, said Acquisitions Logistics may be working with a larger company. Geo Group Inc. and CoreCivic Corp., the nation’s biggest for-profit prison operators, have expressed interest in contracting with the Pentagon to house migrants.

    In an earnings call this month, Geo Group CEO George Zoley said his company had teamed up with an established Pentagon contractor. Zoley didn’t name the company, and Geo Group didn’t respond to repeated requests asking with whom it had partnered.

    A spokesperson for CoreCivic said it wasn’t partnering with Acquisition Logistics or Gemini.

    ___

    Goodman reported from Miami. Associated Press writer Alan Suderman in Richmond, Va., and Morgan Lee in Santa Fe, N.M., contributed to this report.

    ___

    Contact the AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/.

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  • Mystery surrounds $1.2 billion Army contract to build huge detention tent camp in Texas desert

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    WASHINGTON — When President Donald Trump’s administration last month awarded a contract worth up to $1.2 billion to build and operate what it says will become the nation’s largest immigration detention complex, it didn’t turn to a large government contractor or even a firm that specializes in private prisons.

    Instead, it handed the project on a military base to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a small business that has no listed experience running a correction facility and had never won a federal contract worth more than $16 million. The company also lacks a functioning website and lists as its address a modest home in suburban Virginia owned by a 77-year-old retired Navy flight officer.

    The mystery over the award only deepened last week as the new facility began to accept its first detainees. The Pentagon has refused to release the contract or explain why it selected Acquisition Logistics over a dozen other bidders to build the massive tent camp at Fort Bliss in west Texas. At least one competitor has filed a complaint.

    The secretive — and brisk — contracting process is emblematic, experts said, of the government’s broader rush to fulfill the Republican president’s pledge to arrest and deport an estimated 10 million migrants living in the U.S. without permanent legal status. As part of that push, the government is turning increasingly to the military to handle tasks that had traditionally been left to civilian agencies.

    A member of Congress who recently toured the camp said she was concerned that such a small and inexperienced firm had been entrusted to build and run a facility expected to house up to 5,000 migrants.

    “It’s far too easy for standards to slip,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat whose district includes Fort Bliss. “Private facilities far too frequently operate with a profit margin in mind as opposed to a governmental facility.”

    Attorney Joshua Schnell, who specializes in federal contracting law, said he was troubled that the Trump administration has provided so little information about the facility.

    “The lack of transparency about this contract leads to legitimate questions about why the Army would award such a large contract to a company without a website or any other publicly available information demonstrating its ability to perform such a complicated project,” he said.

    Ken A. Wagner, the president and CEO of Acquisition Logistics, did not respond to phone messages or emails. No one answered the door at his three-bedroom house listed as his company’s headquarters. Virginia records list Wagner as an owner of the business, though it’s unclear whether he might have partners.

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth approved using Fort Bliss for the new detention center, and the administration has hopes to build more at other bases. A spokesperson for the Army declined to discuss its deal with Acquisition Logistics or reveal details about the camp’s construction, citing the litigation over the company’s qualifications.

    The Department of Homeland Security, which includes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to answer questions about the detention camp it oversees.

    Named Camp East Montana for the closest road, the facility is being built in the sand and scrub Chihuahuan Desert, where summertime temperatures can exceed 100 degrees Fahrenheit and heat-related deaths are common. The 60-acre (24-hectare) site is near the U.S.-Mexico border and the El Paso International Airport, a key hub for deportation flights.

    The camp has drawn comparisons to “Alligator Alcatraz,” a $245 million tent complex erected to hold ICE detainees in the Florida Everglades. That facility has been the subject of complaints about unsanitary conditions and lawsuits. A federal judge recently ordered that facility to be shut down.

    The vast majority of the roughly 57,000 migrants detained by ICE are housed at private prisons operated by companies like Florida’s Geo Group and Tennessee-based CoreCivic. As those facilities fill up, ICE is also exploring temporary options at military bases in California, New York and Utah.

    At Fort Bliss, construction began within days of the Army issuing the contract on July 18. Site work began months earlier, before Congress had passed Trump’s big tax and spending cuts bill, which includes a record $45 billion for immigration enforcement. The Defense Department announcement specified only that the Army was financing the initial $232 million for the first 1,000 beds at the complex.

    Three white tents, each about 810 feet (250 meters) long, have been erected, according to satellite imagery examined by The Associated Press. A half dozen smaller buildings surround them.

    Setareh Ghandehari, a spokesperson for the advocacy group Detention Watch, said the use of military bases harkens back to World War II, when Japanese Americans were imprisoned at Army camps including Fort Bliss. She said military facilities are especially prone to abuse and neglect because families and loved ones have difficulty accessing them.

    “Conditions at all detention facilities are inherently awful,” Ghandehari said. “But when there’s less access and oversight, it creates the potential for even more abuse.”

    A June 9 solicitation notice for the Fort Bliss project specified the contractor will be responsible for building and operating the detention center, including providing security and medical care. The document also requires strict secrecy, ordering the contractor inform ICE to respond to any calls from members of Congress or the news media.

    The bidding was open only to small firms such as Acquisition Logistics, which receives preferential status because it’s classified as a veteran and Hispanic-owned small disadvantaged business.

    Though Trump’s administration has fought to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs, federal contracting rules include set-asides for small businesses owned by women or minorities. For a firm to compete for such contracts, at least 51% of it must be owned by people belonging to a federally designated disadvantaged racial or ethnic group.

    One of the losing bidders, Texas-based Gemini Tech Services, filed a protest challenging the award and the Army’s rushed construction timeline with the U.S. Government Accountability Office, Congress’ independent oversight arm that resolves such disputes.

    Gemini alleges Acquisition Logistics lacks the experience, staffing and resources to perform the work, according to a person familiar with the complaint who wasn’t authorized to discuss the matter and spoke on the condition of anonymity. Acquisition Logistics’ past jobs include repairing small boats for the Air Force, providing information technology support to the Defense Department and building temporary offices to aid with immigration enforcement, federal records show.

    Gemini and its lawyer didn’t respond to messages seeking comment.

    A ruling by the GAO on whether to sustain, dismiss or require corrective action is not expected before November. A legal appeal is also pending with a U.S. federal court in Washington.

    Schnell, the contracting lawyer, said Acquisitions Logistics may be working with a larger company. Geo Group Inc. and CoreCivic Corp., the nation’s biggest for-profit prison operators, have expressed interest in contracting with the Pentagon to house migrants.

    In an earnings call this month, Geo Group CEO George Zoley said his company had teamed up with an established Pentagon contractor. Zoley didn’t name the company, and Geo Group didn’t respond to repeated requests asking with whom it had partnered.

    A spokesperson for CoreCivic said it wasn’t partnering with Acquisition Logistics or Gemini.

    ___

    Goodman reported from Miami. AP reporter Alan Suderman in Richmond, Va., contributed to this report.

    ___

    Contact the AP’s global investigative team at Investigative@ap.org or https://www.ap.org/tips/.

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