Analysis

First in a Three-Part Series

President Trump is aggressively following through on his campaign promise of mass detention and deportations. Two executive orders issued on day one of Trump’s second administration made clear that detention is a center piece of the mass deportation plans. The orders call for the allocation of all available resources to expand immigration detention and for the detention of all non-citizens in deportation proceedings “to the fullest extent permitted.” In the following days various reports, public solicitations, and memos have demonstrated that the administration intends to at least double Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention capacity to more than 100,000 people at any given time. By the summer of 2025, reports revealed plans to add 125 new or expanded facilities to the detention system by the end of the year. This resource is part of a series that explores the various avenues for massive detention expansion. Here, we discuss plans to expand ICE detention into US military bases.

The expansion of large-scale detention facilities on military bases will exacerbate the well-documented abuse inherent to the detention system, and the secrecy and impunity with which ICE operates. It extends ICE detention, a part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), into other government agencies, and obscures transparency and any minimal oversight currently in place. It dangerously conflates immigrants with labels designed to dehumanize people to justify harsh treatment and further entangles a supposedly civil immigration enforcement system with militarism, harkening to some of the darkest moments in global history when people have been targeted, prosecuted and punished simply based on their place of birth, ancestry, race or religion.