(NewsNation) — A large detention center in South Texas is among those that will be reopened and used to house migrant families with members who have previously been ordered to leave the United States, NewsNation has confirmed.
NewsNation sources confirmed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is preparing to open two family detention centers in Texas, including one in Dilley, which is south of San Antonio. A second facility will soon open in Karnes City, Texas, which is located between San Antonio and Corpus Christi.
An ICE spokesperson told NewsNation that the Karnes City facility is already open but that it is being reconfigured for families.
A DHS spokesperson did not confirm how many families will be housed in the detention centers but said the families who have been assigned to the centers have been marked for detention after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. The Department of Justice has already ruled that their immigration cases do not qualify for asylum and that they have been ordered to be deported.
An ICE spokesperson did not immediately respond for comment about how many families would be housed at the centers.
Sources said the number of families that have been assigned to these detention centers is “extremely low.”
“This administration is not going to ignore the rule of law,” the DHS spokesperson told NewsNation.
President Donald Trump said during his address to Congress this week that his goal was to complete “the largest deportation operation in American history.” The administration previously said that it is targeting 11 million migrants for deportation. There are currently about 41,000 detention beds, the majority of which are in use.
Trump and his border czar, Tom Homan, have called for Congress to earmark more funding for the mass deportation effort and urged them to do it “without delay.”
“Let’s get it to me,” Trump told lawmakers this week. “I’ll sign it so fast you won’t even believe it.”
Homan told reporters this week that family residential centers keep families from being separated. Homan said that Trump wants to make sure that migrant children do not becomes of the victims of trafficking.
“This is about saving children, protecting children,” Homan said. “It’s about getting back to enforcing the law and at the same time, protecting children, which the last administration didn’t.”
CoreCivic, Inc. confirmed that it has reached an agreement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to reactivate the South Texas Family Detention Center in Dilley. The center was built for ICE in 2014 to provide an “appropriate setting” for a family population, the company said.
Damon Hininger, the company’s CEO, said that the facility has an extensive supply of available beds and said the company expects to see its federal government partners have an increased demand for space.
The center is expected to generate $180 million in revenue each year, including medical services. The Dilley facility is the largest detention center that ICE uses to detain migrant families, according to multiple reports.
In 2018, a migrant child died weeks after leaving the facility in Dilley and the child’s mother claimed that the facility did not provide the child adequate care after the toddler contracted a respiratory infection a the center. A jury later decided that medical officials at the center were not responsible for the young girl’s death.
Former President Joe Biden ended the practice of family detention in 2021 and converted the facilities in Dilley in Karnes City into detention centers for adults. Biden also closed a facility in Berks County, Pennsylvania. However, in 2023, the Biden administration said it was considering reversing its policy and stated that if families were detained together after crossing the border illegally, it would only be for a short time.
The Washington Post reported that 49,000 migrant parents and children were removed from the United States in the fiscal year of 2024. That figure was up from 18,000 who were deported the year before.
Eunice Cho, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, told The Post that the Dilley facility is “known for neglect and abuse of families and children” and that reopening the center “is the start of another dark chapter in this nation’s treatment of immigrants.”