Trump Administration Considering Using Defense Funding to Ramp Up Deportations

The Trump administration is considering tapping into Defense Department funding to hire contractors, a move that would vastly expand the scale and scope of immigrant arrests and deportations in the U.S., according to three sources familiar with the matter.

The defense contracts would allow civilian-run companies to quickly and rapidly expand temporary detention facilities, such as those that house migrants in tents, as well as to staff those facilities and provide transportation between arrest locations and detention areas. Such a move could also increase the number of airplanes available used to deport immigrants, as well as staff for the flights, the sources said.

Border czar Tom Homan has already tapped agents from the FBI; the Drug Enforcement Administration; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and others to help support Immigrations and Customs Enforcement in making immigrant arrests. But the pace of arrests and deportations has failed to meet Homan’s expectations, and President Donald Trump’s.

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One factor has been ICE’s budget. The agency was already facing a shortfall even before the Trump administration came into office and began its deportation push.

The low numbers are in large part due to space. Congress has only given ICE the funding for roughly 40,000 beds to hold detained immigrants at any one time. {snip}

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