Speeding Up Deportations: ICE's New Plan for Texas

ICE, the U. S. immigration agency, is looking for companies to help move immigrants from Texas jails to detention centers quickly. This new plan could make deportations faster and give ICE officers more time for other tasks. The idea is to have a team ready to pick up immigrants from any of Texas' 254 county jails within 30 minutes. This move is part of a bigger push to increase immigration enforcement. The U. S. government has set aside a huge amount of money for this over the next few years. Texas has a lot of immigrants without legal status, second only to California. All counties in Texas work with ICE through a program called 287(g). This program helps local police work with federal immigration officers. Usually, ICE officers pick up detainees from jails, but now, this job might be given to private companies. There are risks involved in moving detainees. In September, two immigrants were killed and another was hurt when a sniper shot at an ICE facility in Dallas. This shows that transporting detainees can be dangerous. At the same time, another U. S. agency, Customs and Border Protection, is looking for companies to build new border facilities. They plan to spend billions of dollars on this by 2029.