President Donald Trump's administration is seeking more federal lockups in sanctuary cities to keep up with the pace of illegal immigrants being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), USA Today reports.
ICE sent out Request for Information (RFI) notices to private jails in Chicago, Detroit, St. Paul and southern Texas to find lockups for an additional 4,000 detainees, USA Today reported.
ICE is arresting illegals at a 43 percent uptick compared to this time last year, and because sanctuary cities don't allow local law enforcement to aid ICE in detention efforts, the Trump administration is looking to for space in those cities.
"ICE cannot rely on local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with them in holding deportable criminal aliens, so they have to acquire their own space that they control," Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, told USA Today. "This is very encouraging."
ICE is looking to "identify one or more facilities (existing, renovation, or new construction) to be turnkey ready and able to provide housing, medical care, guard services, meals, and the day to day needs for approximately 1000 ICE adult male and adult female detainees," read the RFI sent to southern Texas.
"To me, this is a signal that ICE wants to be ready, pen in hand, to sign new detention contracts as soon as Congress appropriates more money for detention," Carl Takei, a staff attorney with the ACLU's National Prison Project, told USA Today.
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