The U.S. government is set to build a large new immigrant detention facility in West Texas, significantly increasing its capacity to hold undocumented individuals as President Donald Trump intensifies his crackdown on illegal immigration.
According to a Department of Defense announcement on Monday, Virginia-based contractor Acquisition Logistics has been awarded a $232 million contract to construct the facility in El Paso. Designed to house up to 5,000 single adult migrants, the site will be a “soft-sided facility,” a term typically used to describe large-scale tent encampments.
The El Paso facility will be located near Fort Bliss, one of the largest U.S. Army bases, which stretches across parts of Texas and New Mexico. This project follows the recent construction of another controversial detention center in Florida, dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” which was rapidly built on a remote swampland airstrip in the Everglades.
The move comes amid a sweeping expansion of immigration enforcement efforts under President Trump, who recently approved a record $170 billion in funding for border security and immigration control. Of that, $45 billion is dedicated to building and upgrading detention infrastructure, while Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is set to receive $76.5 billion over the next five years—nearly ten times its current annual budget.
Despite a recent decline in illegal border crossings, the Trump administration has renewed its pledge to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. The construction of new high-capacity detention centers is seen as a key part of that strategy.
However, immigrant rights advocates have raised serious concerns about the scale and conditions of the facilities, warning that they may further deteriorate human rights standards and resemble mass incarceration camps. Critics argue that the expansion reflects a punitive approach rather than a humanitarian response to immigration challenges.
