CNN
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The US Army’s base in El Paso, Texas — Fort Bliss — has been chosen as a site to detain and house potentially thousands of migrants, and contracts have already been signed to start the construction of migrant facilities on the base, three defense officials told CNN.
The US Army has now taken control of contracts supporting the construction and maintenance of the facilities on Fort Bliss, as well as a contract to oversee a central processing center in El Paso, the officials said.
Those contracts were originally awarded to private entities by US Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The current plan for Fort Bliss is to build facilities that can hold as many as 5,000 migrants, one of the defense officials said.
“Regarding ICE building a facility on Bliss, I can say that the Secretary of Defense has authorized the US Army to assume control and management of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts supporting the facility construction, maintenance and upkeep at the CBP El Paso Central Processing Center and on Army land at Fort Bliss,” another of the defense officials said.
While the facilities will be on US military property, Army personnel will not be manning them due to laws barring military personnel from engaging in law enforcement activity. ProPublica reported earlier on Friday that ICE had awarded a contract to a private company to operate a migrant detention camp on Fort Bliss.
CNN has previously reported that officials were looking at using US military bases to house migrants instead of Guantanamo Bay, where the administration has been periodically sending migrants before moving onward to their final destinations.
It is unclear if Fort Bliss would be used instead of Guantanamo Bay, or in addition to the naval base. Fort Bliss has previously been used to temporarily house migrants, including during the surge of unaccompanied migrant children under the Biden administration.
Fort Bliss was also used to house thousands of Afghan nationals during Operation Allies Welcome, an initiative launched under the Biden administration to support and resettle more than 11,000 Afghans after the US pulled troops out of Afghanistan in 2021.
The Trump administration’s effort to deport migrants to Guantanamo, meanwhile, has run into significant hurdles. The administration first took the unprecedented step of sending migrants to Guantanamo Bay on US military aircraft in February, sparking fierce backlash from immigrant advocates and prompting a lawsuit from immigrant advocacy groups.
The administration had to pause building tents for migrants on the island last month because they did not have air conditioning or electricity and were not meeting ICE detention standards.
Conditions at the Guantanamo Bay facilities broadly have come under scrutiny. Some detainees have refused meals, which has led to weight loss, the US military officer overseeing the task force in charge of detention operations at Guantanamo Bay, Lt. Col. Robert Green, said in court documents. Green also said a restraint chair was used six times on February 28 — each time because of Venezuelan detainees who were engaging in self-harm.
As of mid-March, the administration had already spent roughly $16 million on the Guantanamo operation, according to Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs, who visited the base as part of a congressional delegation visit.
“What we saw really was that there is very low capacity there, and it’s really expensive, and I could see no operational reasons for using Guantanamo Bay for immigration detention,” Jacobs told CNN last month. “It was clearly just because Donald Trump liked the optics.”
CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez contributed to this story.
