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The Trump administration is seeking construction companies to build or expand immigration detention facilities at up to 14 locations across the United States and its territories, including Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
The request for proposals calls for the expansion of an existing detention center in Port Isabel, Texas, while identifying more than a dozen additional sites that could receive new or expanded facilities. Other locations include El Centro, California, Miami, Honolulu, Florence, Arizona, Batavia, New York, Broadview, Illinois, Oakdale, Louisiana, El Paso and Huntsville, Texas, Aguadilla, Puerto Rico, and Guantánamo Bay.
The documents, reviewed by TIME, state construction will proceed only if it is determined to be "in the government's best interest," with a contract expected to be awarded by the end of September.
The expansion effort comes as the administration pushes to increase immigration arrests and detention capacity. According to the outlet, the administration recently set a target of 2,000 ICE arrests per day after failing to meet an earlier goal of 3,000 daily arrests. ICE is currently detaining more than 60,000 people nationwide, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.
The proposal also signals a renewed effort to expand operations at Guantánamo Bay after earlier plans stalled. President Donald Trump announced in January 2025 that the naval base would hold up to 30,000 immigrants awaiting deportation. However, CBS News reported in May that the facility has capacity for only about 400 detainees and was housing just six people on May 11—fewer than 2% of available beds—despite the operation being projected to cost the U.S. military $73 million annually.
Federal records reviewed by CBS also showed that more than 580 government personnel were assigned to the mission, outnumbering detainees by roughly 100 to one. The Department of Homeland Security has said Guantánamo's capacity is scalable and that the facility remains part of its immigration enforcement strategy.
The latest proposal also reflects a shift in how ICE plans to expand detention space. In June, The New York Times reported that the agency had begun abandoning a previous strategy of purchasing and converting commercial warehouses into detention centers after lawsuits, environmental challenges and local opposition stalled many of the projects.
ICE now plans to sell or transfer seven of the warehouses it had acquired while continuing to pursue other forms of detention expansion. According to TIME, the standardized facilities proposed under the new plan would each contain 26 detention cells and are expected to cost between $24 million and $40 million, with total expansion spending capped at $10 billion.
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