Privately run immigration detention center that previously held families in Texas will reopen

LAREDO — A private prison company has signed an agreement to reopen an immigrant detention facility in Texas that previously held families with children for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the business said.

Nashville-based CoreCivic announced the contract with ICE and the city of Dilley regarding the 2,400-bed South Texas Family Residential Center, located about 85 miles (135 kilometers) north of Laredo and the Mexico border.

The center was used during the administration of President Barack Obama and Donald Trump’s first presidency. But President Joe Biden phased out family detention in 2021, and CoreCivic said the facility was idled in 2024.

“We do acknowledge that we anticipate housing families” at Dilley, CoreCivic spokesman Ryan Gustin told The Associated Press.

CoreCivic said in a statement that the facility “was purpose-built for ICE in 2014 to provide an appropriate setting for a family population.” The new contract runs through at least March 2030.

ICE officials did not immediately respond to messages seeking information about who will be held at Dilley and how soon.

The agency — which mostly detains immigrants at privately operated detention facilities, its own processing centers and local prisons and jails — entered this year with zero facilities geared toward families, who last year accounted for about one-third of arrivals on the southern border.

The Trump administration has expanded the detention of migrants to military bases including Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Cuba, via flights out of Army installations at El Paso, Texas, as it promises to ramp up mass deportations.

Private detention contractors with longstanding ties to ICE, including CoreCivic and GEO Group, say they offer less expensive options than the military for an array of immigrant detention services and transportation including international flights.

During Trump’s first administration, he authorized the use of military bases to detain immigrant children, including Army installations at Fort Bliss, Texas, and Goodfellow Air Force Base.

In 2014, Obama temporarily relied on military bases to detain immigrant children while ramping up privately operated family detention centers to hold many of the tens of thousands of Central American families crossing the border illegally.

By MORGAN LEE/Associated Press