US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is exploring plans to launch a privately-run, statewide transportation system in Texas. The company envisions a nonstop operation, funneling immigrants detained in 254 counties into ICE services and staging areas 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 amassing immigrants from native authorities deputized by ICE. It’s a refined switch of the bodily custody course of into the palms of a non-public safety agency—licensed to hold firearms and carry out transport duties “in any and all native, county, state, and ICE areas.”
The proposal emerges amid the Trump administration’s renewed marketing campaign to increase inside immigration enforcement. Over the previous 12 months, 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 matches neatly into that technique; a logistical framework for a system constructed to maneuver detainees sooner 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 consists of draft operational necessities outlining staffing ranges, car readiness charges, and response instances, together with detailed questions for distributors about value constructions, regional protection, and command-and-control capabilities.
In line with the doc, ICE envisions 254 transport hubs statewide—one for every Texas county—every staffed constantly by two armed contractor personnel. Automobiles should be capable of reply inside half-hour, sustaining an 80-percent readiness fee throughout three each day shifts. ICE’s staffing mannequin provides a 50-percent cushion for go away and turnover, elevating staffing wants by half over the baseline essential to hold the system working uninterrupted.
WIRED calculates this is able to require greater than 2,000 full-time personnel, along with a fleet of a whole lot 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 beneath the 287(g) program. These as soon as symbolic gestures of cooperation are as we speak a pipeline for real-time biometric checks and arrest notifications. Transportation is merely the subsequent logical step. For ICE, it can create a closed loop: Native authorities apprehend immigrants. Non-public contractors ship them to both an area jail (paid to deal with 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.
