US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is exploring plans to launch a privately-run, statewide transportation system in Texas. The agency envisions a nonstop operation, funneling immigrants detained in 254 counties into ICE facilities and staging places throughout the state.
Early planning paperwork reviewed by WIRED describe a statewide transport grid designed for regular detainee transfers throughout Texas, with ICE estimating every journey to common 100 miles. Each county would have its personal small, around-the-clock staff of contractors gathering immigrants from native authorities deputized by ICE. It’s a delicate switch of the bodily custody course of into the fingers of a non-public safety agency—approved to hold firearms and carry out transport duties “in any and all native, county, state, and ICE places.”
The proposal emerges amid the Trump administration’s renewed marketing campaign to broaden inside immigration enforcement. Over the previous yr, the Division of Homeland Safety, which oversees ICE, has poured billions into detention contracts, reactivated cross-deputation agreements with native police, and directed ICE to scale up removals contained in the US. The plan suits neatly into that technique; a logistical framework for a system constructed to maneuver detainees quicker and farther, with fewer federal brokers ever seen in public.
The proposed system surfaced this week after ICE issued a market probe titled “Transportation Help for Texas.” The itemizing contains draft operational necessities outlining staffing ranges, car readiness charges, and response instances, together with detailed questions for distributors about price constructions, regional protection, and command-and-control capabilities.
In keeping with the doc, ICE envisions 254 transport hubs statewide—one for every Texas county—every staffed repeatedly by two armed contractor personnel. Automobiles should have the ability to reply inside half-hour, sustaining an 80-percent readiness charge throughout three every day shifts. ICE’s staffing mannequin provides a 50-percent cushion for depart and turnover, elevating staffing wants by half over the baseline essential to maintain the system working uninterrupted.
WIRED calculates this may require greater than 2,000 full-time personnel, along with a fleet of tons of of SUVs roving the state in any respect hours.
DHS didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
What the plan describes, in essence, is a shadow logistics community constructed on agreements with native police departments underneath the 287(g) program. These as soon as symbolic gestures of cooperation are right now a pipeline for real-time biometric checks and arrest notifications. Transportation is merely the subsequent logical step. For ICE, it should create a closed loop: Native authorities apprehend immigrants. Non-public contractors ship them to both a neighborhood jail (paid to accommodate detainees) or a detention web site run by a non-public company. The plan even specifies that contractors should keep their very own dispatch and command-and-control methods to handle actions statewide.
