Trump Seeks Monumental Increase in Ability to Detain Immigrant Families

President Donald Trump asked Congress for funds to massively increase detention of immigrant families, proposing an expansion to up to 30,000 beds.

The White House budget proposal released Friday highlights investments focused on stopping violent crime as the Trump administration aims to pivot from its campaign promise of mass deportations. The proposal touts the plan to operate up to 100,000 beds for adult immigrant detention through the tax cut and spending package Trump signed last year. But it also includes a request to lock up tens of thousands of more parents and children.

During Trump’s second term, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained hundreds of families at the only active immigrant family detention center in Dilley, Texas. The detention center for families first opened in 2014, during then-President Barack Obama’s administration and shuttered under Joe Biden’s presidency.

ICE detained nearly 1,100 people in Dilley at its peak in January, according to daily population numbers published by the Deportation Data Project. The family detention center’s population dropped to 240 people in late February. The drastic drop followed ProPublica’s release of letters and drawings from detained children and outcry from the public.

ICE plans to hold families for short-term stays of three to five days inside the Alexandria International Airport in Louisiana, The Guardian reported last month.

Trump’s proposal includes a 15% increase for federal law enforcement, including immigration enforcement agents, and a $99 million increase for immigration courts. The Executive Office for Immigration Review announced in March the appointment of 42 immigration judges that followed firings of judges and the hiring of military lawyers to temporarily take on the jobs.

The Trump administration is also promoting a $300 million investment from the tax cut and spending package for vetting family members and guardians of children who entered the U.S. without their parents. The number of days those children are spending in government custody is twice as long on average as it was in Trump’s first term.

Last year, the administration started a more restrictive process for vetting the people who wanted custody of the children, in most cases family members, while also eliminating protections against sharing sponsors’ immigration status information with immigration authorities.

ICE is looking to hire contractors to conduct site visits to locate an estimated 350,000 children who entered the country unaccompanied, according to documents posted Thursday in the federal government’s contracting database.