Image Credit: Kayla Bartkowski / Staff 
The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) will send $608 million to states so they can build immigrant detention centers, as the Trump administration seeks a dramatic increase in detention capacity and deportations.
The money will be allocated via a new “detention support group program” that will help states cover the cost of new facilities, FEMA announced. States will have until 8 August to apply for the funds.
The funds will be distributed by FEMA in coordination with Customs and Border Protection.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has already said he will seek reimbursement from FEMA to help pay for his new “Alligator Alcatraz” facility in the Florida Everglades, which he estimated would cost $450 million a year to run.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis held a press conference at the facility on Friday and said the numbers of deportations from the site would increase significantly.
“This was never intended to be something where people are just held and we just kind of twiddle our thumbs,” DeSantis said.
“The whole purpose is to make this be a place that can facilitate increased frequency and numbers of deportations of illegal aliens.”
“That is the goal and one of the reasons why this was a sensible spot is that you have a runway that is right here, you don’t have to drive them to an airport, you go a couple of thousand feet and they can be on a plane.”
Alligator Alcatraz was built in a matter of days and currently holds around 2,000 people.
According to Governor DeSantis, the facility can hold double that amount.
“We were able to, under Kevin Guthrie’s leadership, within record time, create a facility that could support intake, processing and eventually deporting these illegal aliens. And that’s important to deport from Florida and obviously from the United States as well, ” DeSantis said.
With the passage of President Trump’s flagship “Big Beautiful Bill,” massive expansion of detention capacity and deportation operations is planned.
The Trump administration has now awarded $1.26 billion to build the nation’s largest detention and deportation center, in Texas.
The center will be constructed at Fort Bliss, a million-acre site close to El Paso, on the Mexican border, with its own airport.
There will be room for 5,000 beds in heated and air-conditioned tents.
An ICE official told Bloomberg that the federal government “is indeed pursuing all available options to expand bedspace capacity. This process does include housing detainees at certain military bases.”
According to a recent report from The Wall Street Journal, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is rushing to expand its detention capacity, after receiving $45 billion in extra funding from President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.
The goalis to expand capacity from 40,000 to 100,000 before the end of the year. This will be done, in part, by building a large network of tent camps nationwide.
ICE will also be offering a $50,000 bonus to former agents who rejoin, as it seeks to boost manpower in order to ramp up deportations.
