By Ted Hesson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is asking companies to submit proposals for how they would provide round-the-clock services to transport immigrant detainees from Texas jails to ICE custody, documents published this week showed, a move that could speed up deportations and free up ICE officers.
ICE is seeking a contractor who can ferry suspected immigration violators from Texas jails to three dozen ICE facilities, according to a request for information posted on a government contracting website on Tuesday. The contractor would need to set up a transportation hub near each of Texas’ 254 county jails and be staffed to pick up immigrants at the jails within 30 minutes, the document said.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
The rapid-transportation plan would be part of a major increase in immigration enforcement spending in the coming year as President Donald Trump tries to ramp up deportations. A Republican-backed spending package signed into law by Trump in July devoted $170 billion to immigration enforcement over a little more than four years, an unprecedented sum that could reshape operations.
Nearly 2 million immigrants without legal status resided in Texas in 2023, according to an estimate published this month by the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute. Only California had more, the report found.
The 254 Texas counties all participate in an ICE partnership known as 287(g) that increases state and local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
ICE officers typically retrieve detainees from jails, but that work would be contracted out under the new plan. In September, two immigrant detainees were killed and another injured when a sniper opened fire on an ICE facility in Dallas as the detainees were moved out of a vehicle, underscoring possible risks to the work.
In a separate contracting notice, U.S. Customs and Border Protection on Wednesday sought input from companies for 30 to 40 construction projects. The projects would include new Border Patrol buildings, checkpoints and other facilities, and upgrading existing structures at the border by 2029 for $3.6 billion.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson; Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke; Editing by Chris Sanders and Diane Craft)
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