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Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.

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Speaker 2: Questions are melting about what's happening inside Camp East Montana.

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Speaker 2: Another person has died in immigration custody on the Fort

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Speaker 2: Bliss Army base in Elpaso, Texas. It's the third death

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Speaker 2: reported in just a month and a half at Camp

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Speaker 2: East Montana. At Fort Bliss, which is the largest immigration

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Speaker 2: detention facility in the US. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials

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Speaker 2: said in a statement that Victor Manuel Diaz, an immigrant

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Speaker 2: from Nicaragua, appears to have died by suicide.

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Speaker 3: Advocates say the facility has proven to be inhumane and

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Speaker 3: continue to call for it to be shut down. DHS

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Speaker 3: has defended the facility, saying ICE makes everyone safety and

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Speaker 3: health a top priority.

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Speaker 2: Detention facilities like the one at Fort Bliss have been

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Speaker 2: under scrutiny from human rights advocates as ICE detains record

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Speaker 2: numbers of immigrants and ramps up enforcement tactics on the

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Speaker 2: round in cities like Minneapolis.

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Speaker 4: Anger and outrage in the streets of Minneapolis over the

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Speaker 4: fatal shooting of a woman buying Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.

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Speaker 2: But as ICE continues, making arrests across the US even larger,

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Speaker 2: facilities could be on the way. The agency currently has

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Speaker 2: more than seventy thousand people in immigration attention, according to

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Speaker 2: CBS News, and to meet the Trump administration's goals of

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Speaker 2: deporting a million people a year, ICE is now looking

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Speaker 2: to another kind of facility, large converted warehouses.

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Speaker 4: Under previous administrations, many of the people who have been arrested,

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Speaker 4: who are being arrested were not typically targets of immigration

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Speaker 4: enforcement activity, and so now that this administration has decided

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Speaker 4: to cast such a wide net that has required all

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Speaker 4: of this jail space, which is quite expensive.

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Speaker 2: Bloomberg reporters Folla A. Kenneby and Sophie Alexander have been

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Speaker 2: following ISI's plans to expand its detention capacity.

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Speaker 5: These are the facilities talking about now, large empty warehouses

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Speaker 5: that contractors are looking to turn into jails.

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Speaker 2: It's a shift that's backed by a new influx of

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Speaker 2: funding for ICE. The agency got forty five billion dollars

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Speaker 2: for detention and President trump so called Big Beautiful Bill

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Speaker 2: just last year. But the rapid expansion that ICE is

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Speaker 2: proposing has raised questions about which companies will be awarded

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Speaker 2: contracts to convert those facilities and how they will manage them.

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Speaker 2: The Department of Homeland Security and ICE didn't immediately respond

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Speaker 2: to a request for comment.

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Speaker 5: I mean, we're talking about detaining human beings in tents

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Speaker 5: or in warehouses at a large scale. Again, like the

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Speaker 5: sizes of these jails that they're proposing. In some of

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Speaker 5: these warehouses, it's more beds than in entire county jail populations.

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Speaker 5: So whenever you're doing something at this scale that's involving

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Speaker 5: human beings, I think that there is a concern around safety.

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Speaker 2: I'm Sarah Holder, and this is the Big Take from

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Speaker 2: Bloomberg News Today. On the show, I talked to Bloomberg

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Speaker 2: reporters Fola A. Kinneby and Sophie Alexander about ICE's push

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Speaker 2: to expand its detention capacity, the lucrative government contracts that

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Speaker 2: companies are vying for, and the mountain concerns around conditions

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Speaker 2: for the people being detained in the streets of Minneapolis.

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Speaker 2: Over the past few weeks, we've been seeing ICE's escalating

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Speaker 2: arrest tactics on the ground, but you both have also

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Speaker 2: been covering ICE's parallel efforts to open more detention facilities

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Speaker 2: to meet the Trump administration's aggressive deportation goals. What has

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Speaker 2: the administration been doing over the past year to expand

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Speaker 2: its detention capacity?

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Speaker 4: First of all, the administration has been trying to massively

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Speaker 4: and in some ways it has massively expanded its ability

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Speaker 4: to detain immigrants. The administration talk about plans to deport

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Speaker 4: up to a million people a year, right, that's the

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Speaker 4: goal at.

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Speaker 2: The outset of twenty twenty five.

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Speaker 1: At the outset of twenty twenty five.

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Speaker 4: And to do that takes a lot of jail space,

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Speaker 4: more jail space than ICE as an agency has ever had. Right,

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Speaker 4: if you look back under Biden over his four year term,

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Speaker 4: the immigration detention capacity never really exceeded or at his

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Speaker 4: peak was thirty.

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Speaker 1: Nine thousand people. Just over thirty nine thousand people.

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Speaker 4: Almost immediately, the Trump administration, after taking office the second time,

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Speaker 4: really pushed to massively expand its detention space. And so

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Speaker 4: right now there are more than seventy thousand people in

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Speaker 4: ICE custody.

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Speaker 1: That's a record.

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Speaker 2: And in order to house all those people, what did

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Speaker 2: the administration have to go from detaining maybe forty thousand

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Speaker 2: people to over seventy thousand people.

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Speaker 5: First, they into these sort of methods that they had

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Speaker 5: been used to working with private prison companies to look

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Speaker 5: for unused jail space to find more beds for immigrants

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Speaker 5: who have been detained. But after that that's.

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Speaker 1: Just not enough.

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Speaker 5: They're really desperate for more space. They claim that they

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Speaker 5: need one hundred thousand beds to be able to meet

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Speaker 5: their goals of detaining a million people a year, and

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Speaker 5: so they had to pivot and look for other ways

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Speaker 5: to build more detention, which is why they started using

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Speaker 5: soft sided facilities or tents, and they started looking to

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Speaker 5: build more tent camps.

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Speaker 2: What have the conditions been like in these more temporary

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Speaker 2: facilities that ICE has been erecting over the past year.

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Speaker 4: There's been wide reporting about how horrific the conditions are.

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Speaker 1: In some of these facilities.

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Speaker 4: And when the conditions are poor, and when the conditions

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Speaker 4: are bad and they're jail like, people will give up

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Speaker 4: their cases.

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Speaker 1: People ask to be deported.

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Speaker 4: And we've seen cases like this where people give up

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Speaker 4: their case and say, well, I don't want to fight

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Speaker 4: the government anymore, because again, these cases can take years

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Speaker 4: and you don't want to spend years in some of

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Speaker 4: these facilities.

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Speaker 1: And again, in.

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Speaker 4: Order for the adminstration to achieve its goals of mass deportation,

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Speaker 4: to do a million deportations a year. They actually have

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Speaker 4: to be quite efficient, right, Like they have to be

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Speaker 4: getting people out of facilities quickly. I talked to one

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Speaker 4: person who used to work in this world who said,

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Speaker 4: you would have to be getting people out in under

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Speaker 4: a month. You'd have to be moving people through the

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Speaker 4: system and deporting them. That's quite hard to do. And

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Speaker 4: as far as I'm aware that the administration has not

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Speaker 4: achieved that in mass.

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Speaker 2: Well, Trump's so called Big Beautiful Bill, which you signed

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Speaker 2: into law last year, allocated a lot more money to

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Speaker 2: ICE's detention expansion, right, forty five billion dollars. How has

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Speaker 2: that changed the agency's strategy and change the kinds of

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Speaker 2: facilities they're looking to invest in.

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Speaker 5: I mean, forty five billion dollars is so much money,

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Speaker 5: and we should just say that we have not seen

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Speaker 5: that money spent because it is not easy to contract

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Speaker 5: out with the government. It's not easy to build new

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Speaker 5: jails quickly, and so I think the pivot to tents

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Speaker 5: was supposed to be in an effort for speed. It

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Speaker 5: was to try to build more jail space quickly. And

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Speaker 5: you actually saw references to soft sided facilities for immigration

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Speaker 5: detention in Project twenty twenty five. So this was part

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Speaker 5: of the initial plan. I think what you saw with

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Speaker 5: the Everglades facility in Florida that's referred to as Alligator Alcatraz,

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Speaker 5: and then later with the facility at Fort Bliss, these

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Speaker 5: things are just not meant to be turned into jails.

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Speaker 5: It costs so much money to erect these things in

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Speaker 5: the first place, let alone to detain thousands of people

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Speaker 5: in them. Not to mentioned, the conditions inside these facilities

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Speaker 5: are abysmal, according to reports from human rights groups and

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Speaker 5: other news outlets. But it seems like because of all

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Speaker 5: of that, because they haven't been able to contract out

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Speaker 5: for enough bed spaces in these tent facilities, that's why

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Speaker 5: they're turning their attention to warehouses.

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Speaker 3: Now.

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Speaker 2: The Department of Homeland Security and ICE didn't respond to

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Speaker 2: questions about conditions and immigration detention facilities or their plans

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Speaker 2: to expand you alluded to this already, Sophie, but full

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Speaker 2: we're seeing ICE pivot from erecting these temporary structures to

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Speaker 2: converting existing structures into detention facilities. They're looking at warehouses. Now,

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Speaker 2: why what is behind that shift? Is it the new money,

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Speaker 2: is it the lack of space?

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Speaker 1: I think it's a combination of these things. Right.

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Speaker 4: They're looking for sort of hard sided facilities, right, like

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Speaker 4: there's not enough empty jails out there, And I mean,

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Speaker 4: I think it also points to the massive amount of

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Speaker 4: money that the agency has at its disposal.

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Speaker 1: Now.

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Speaker 4: I mean that it can even carry out a plan

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Speaker 4: like this is proof that it has a lot of

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Speaker 4: money to use. And I want to note as well

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Speaker 4: that this is not the first time a plan like

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Speaker 4: this has been proposed. Years ago under Trump one, according

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Speaker 4: to some of our reporting, a plan like this was

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Speaker 4: proposed and folks in the agency looked at the plan

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Speaker 4: and decided that it wasn't practical or safe to hold

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Speaker 4: this many people in facilities like this, and so the.

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Speaker 1: Plan is scrapped.

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Speaker 2: So one of the distinctions you're drawing between sort of

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Speaker 2: the old approach and the new approach is soft versus hard.

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Speaker 2: I'm wondering if you could draw out the difference a

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Speaker 2: little bit more between like a temporary ten structure or

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Speaker 2: even using existing local jails and using warehouses as detention facilities.

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Speaker 2: What is the material difference there.

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Speaker 5: I think the idea with the soft side of facil

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Speaker 5: was we want to do this quickly, and you really

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Speaker 5: could see that from the fact that they were tapping

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Speaker 5: all of these tent companies that usually build base camps

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Speaker 5: for oil companies or they respond after natural disasters like hurricanes.

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Speaker 5: They're the ones who are building these great tent cities

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Speaker 5: where you know, there's all these emergency services, rescue services,

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Speaker 5: things like that that are set up. And from the

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Speaker 5: very beginning, the people that we spoke with, who you know,

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Speaker 5: have been looking at immigration detention for a very long time,

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Speaker 5: I had a lot of concerns about whether tents could

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Speaker 5: ever meet immigration detention standards that are nationally set. And

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Speaker 5: I think that the administration is learning that this plan

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Speaker 5: isn't working out as it had hoped because, for example,

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Speaker 5: the facility at Fort Bliss, the initial plan was for

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Speaker 5: that to be a five thousand bed facility. As far

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Speaker 5: as we know, they haven't built that out yet to

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Speaker 5: that extent, I think at this point there are as

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Speaker 5: many as three thousand people who are detained in the

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Speaker 5: facility right now, and again over the past month and

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Speaker 5: a half you've seen three people die there. So I

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Speaker 5: think that the pivot to hard sided facilities with the

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Speaker 5: idea around warehouses is well, this is an actual building.

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Speaker 5: At least that's got to be better. But I think

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Speaker 5: that similar concerns arise when you have what was essentially

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Speaker 5: an empty shell of a building that was not built

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Speaker 5: to hold people, let alone thousands of people.

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Speaker 4: A traditional jail facility is purpose created, right, It's created

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Speaker 4: to detain people. It has the beds, it has the showers,

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Speaker 4: it has the lock up, it has the health areas,

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Speaker 4: it has all of these saintans built in. It's not

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Speaker 4: clear to us, and I think some of the folks

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Speaker 4: we've talked to as well, it's not clear to them

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Speaker 4: either what or how they're going to convert these what

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Speaker 4: is essentially blank shell into a geospace.

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Speaker 2: So just how does ICE plan to get warehouse detention

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Speaker 2: facilities up and running, and what kind of hurdles could

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Speaker 2: the agency's proposal face that's coming up. ICE has aggressive

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Speaker 2: deportation targets. The Trump administration has set a goal of

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Speaker 2: one million deportations a year. To hit that target, the

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Speaker 2: agency says it needs more space to house the people

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Speaker 2: it detains. And I've been talking to Bloomberg reporters Sophie

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Speaker 2: Alexander and Fulla Achinnoby about ICE's plans for a new

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Speaker 2: kind of detention facility, huge converted warehouses, what kind of

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Speaker 2: contractors might be submitting these proposals to convert warehouses into

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Speaker 2: ice facilities.

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Speaker 4: You know, as soon as the Reconciliation build passed and

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Speaker 4: ice was given all these funds, there's been like a

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Speaker 4: feeding frenzy and a level of excitement in these industries

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Speaker 4: about the potential windfall, right, like the potential to make

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Speaker 4: a lot of money. And so we're seeing defense companies

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Speaker 4: orient themselves around this. We're seeing tent companies and companies

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Speaker 4: that provide these like oil and emergency service base camps.

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Speaker 4: We're seeing traditional private prison operators, We're seeing.

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Speaker 1: I'm trying to think of new companies.

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Speaker 4: We're we're seeing new companies that are being purpose built

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Speaker 4: just to try to go for this work. And so

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Speaker 4: it's a wide ranger folks who are reaching for this.

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Speaker 5: And to put into the context, like the amount of

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Speaker 5: money that is on the table here is more than

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Speaker 5: many of these companies have ever seen in you know,

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Speaker 5: their years of contracting with the government. So it really

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Speaker 5: is the fullest point a feeding frenzy. It is just

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Speaker 5: peopot are drawn to this.

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Speaker 2: I want to talk more about the way the administration

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Speaker 2: is going to secure these contracts and choose who does

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Speaker 2: this building. What stood out to you about the way

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Speaker 2: the government is running this process.

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Speaker 5: So the administration started by trying to run these contracts

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Speaker 5: through ICE because they are essentially they're going to be

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Speaker 5: ICE detention facilities, but that got stalled. So then later

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Speaker 5: in the year, later last year, the administration started going

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Speaker 5: through a process with the Department of Defense something called WEXMAC,

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Speaker 5: which is this typical Defense Department contracting vehicle that they

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Speaker 5: use for all sorts of things all around the world.

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Speaker 5: And because it's run through the Department of Defense, there

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Speaker 5: is more of a delay in what information is shared,

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Speaker 5: so it's harder to know what is happening real time

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Speaker 5: the contracting process and who is a winning what when,

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Speaker 5: which means you know who is going to be building

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Speaker 5: out these facilities.

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Speaker 2: And where have we been seeing any pushback to the

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Speaker 2: administration's efforts on the ground in Minneapolis after the killing

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Speaker 2: of Renee Good. We're seeing polling shifts slightly, seeing people

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Speaker 2: questioning the extent of ISIS tactics. What kind of pushback

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Speaker 2: is the administration getting, if any, on this expansion plan with.

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Speaker 4: A facility like for Bliss. It's on an army base.

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Speaker 4: It's sort of sequestered from like people's day to day lives.

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Speaker 4: I think with this latest proposal for these sites, these

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Speaker 4: warehouse sites, which seem to include locations across the country

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Speaker 4: that are much closer to towns, to population centers, to

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Speaker 4: I think people's everyday lives, we've already started to see pushback.

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Speaker 4: The Washington Post reported some of the proposed locations, and

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Speaker 4: folks in those towns have already said, well, we don't, don't,

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Speaker 4: we don't want to see it right again. You know,

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Speaker 4: the Ford Bliss facility is the largest immigration detention facility

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Speaker 4: in the US. There's on a daily basis, like an

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Speaker 4: average of twenty nine hundred people there. What's being proposed

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Speaker 4: with these warehouse facilities. We're talking about five, six, seven,

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Speaker 4: eight and nine thousand person facilities.

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Speaker 5: It's interesting to see the list of municipalities where ICE

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Speaker 5: is considering these warehouse facilities. But you talk to people

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Speaker 5: in these towns, and it doesn't matter what their politics are.

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Speaker 5: They do not want a jail a twenty minute walk

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Speaker 5: from the school. They do not feel like they have

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Speaker 5: the sewage capacity or like the water resources to be

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Speaker 5: able to send to an eight thousand, five hundred bed

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Speaker 5: detention facility. So you've already been seeing protests in some

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Speaker 5: of these towns against the proposed detention facility, and these

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Speaker 5: are again, these are just proposals. There's no ground that's

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Speaker 5: been broken yet. We're only aware of one facility that's

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Speaker 5: officially been purchased by ICE. But even still, people do

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Speaker 5: not want these in their town's ideology.

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Speaker 2: Aside as we think through the implications of ICE's rapid

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Speaker 2: detention expansion, I want to bring the conversation back to

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Speaker 2: Fort Bliss, Sophie. You've alluded to some of the questions

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Speaker 2: and the concerns about the conditions there. Over the weekend,

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Speaker 2: another death was reported at the facility. What does this

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Speaker 2: tell you about the risks of ICE's rapid expansion and

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Speaker 2: what we might see next.

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Speaker 5: We are seeing this administration with a goal of deporting

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Speaker 5: a million people a year and building out one hundred

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Speaker 5: thousand beds. There's just so much urgency in this that

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Speaker 5: I think there are questions around the safety and how

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Speaker 5: much attention is being paid to these things like the

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Speaker 5: national immigration detention standards.

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Speaker 4: I've covered deal in prison conditions in the criminal legal contexts,

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Speaker 4: and I think what you find is that as these

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Speaker 4: facilities become larger and larger, and as you deal with

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Speaker 4: issues with crowding, safety becomes a serious challenge. And so

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Speaker 4: as the administration pushes for larger and larger facilities, it

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Speaker 4: just sort of follows that. Safety incidents sort of follow that, right,

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Speaker 4: And Bliss is the largest immigration detention facility in the US,

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Speaker 4: and still the administration has not been able to expand

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Speaker 4: it to the capacity that was originally proposed five thousand beds.

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Speaker 4: I think it's extremely challenging to open facilities that are

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Speaker 4: just large and to run them, to run them well,

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Speaker 4: and to run them safely.

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Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm Sarah Holder.

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Speaker 2: To get more from the Big Take and unlimited access

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