The huge US army base of Fort Bliss at the Texas-Mexico border is poised to become a deportation hub under plans proposed by the Trump administration – prompting an outcry from critics as it once again becomes a focal point in the immigration debate.
Situated in the heart of El Paso, the base has already been used by Donald Trump since he returned to the White House to fly deportees on military aircraft to Guantánamo Bay and Central and South America amid intense publicity around his wider anti-immigration agenda.
Now it is reportedly being considered for large-scale detention as well as expulsion purposes.
Opponents of any such plan disapprove of the effect it would have on the armed forces and also condemned it as treating migrants as if they are “reality TV”.
The Democratic Texas congresswoman Veronica Escobar whose congressional district includes Fort Bliss, warned that turning military installations into detention centers would pose a significant threat to the effectiveness of US military forces.
“It is not good for our readiness, and it degrades our military,” she said.
The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is considering a White House proposal to use military installations to detain undocumented migrants.
Last month Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff, told reporters: “We are shortly on the verge of achieving a speed and pace of deportations that this country has never before seen.”
Under the proposal, Fort Bliss would initially hold up to 1,000 detainees during a 60-day “evaluation period”. The base’s capacity could then expand to accommodate up to 10,000 migrants, according to New York Times and NPR reports citing unnamed sources, with the west Texas base leading a network of military deportation staging posts created nationwide to supplement limited Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention capacity.
Fort Bliss and Ice directed requests for comment to the DHS, which has yet to respond.
Escobar said: “There is no reason to use a military installation. We are not in an emergency situation where we are seeing an overwhelming number of people arriving at the border.”
She warned the proposal would set back Fort Bliss’s core military responsibilities and readiness by two years, by shifting its focus from national defense and military preparedness towards immigration enforcement.
Her assessment, she said, was based on Fort Bliss’s experience during Operation Allies Welcome, in which the base played a central role in resettling Afghan refugees brought to the US after American troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021 under Joe Biden.
The base was one of eight Department of Defense installations at the time used to temporarily house 75,000 such refugees.
At the time, Fort Bliss turned its Doña Ana Range Complex, a military training site located in southern New Mexico, into a temporary housing location. Between August and December 2021, federal workers, military personnel and volunteers cared for 11,400 Afghans awaiting resettlement across the US.
This was just one of several previous chapters in recent years when Fort Bliss became an immigration hub – but for people coming into the US, not being thrown out.
The sprawling base in the westernmost corner of Texas is the second largest military base in the US, larger than Rhode Island, backed by the Franklin Mountains in a desert landscape with the city of El Paso, the Rio Grande and the US-Mexico border at its flanks.
Established in 1848 to defend the new US border after the Mexican war, Fort Bliss is now one of the army’s fastest-growing bases, with a population of almost 50,000 among full-time military personnel and civilians and home to the First Armored Division, and the Joint Task Force North, which helps US law enforcement with border security.
The Biden administration used Fort Bliss as an emergency intake shelter from 2021 to 2023 to house thousands of unaccompanied migrant children who had crossed the Mexico border into the US in record numbers, overseen by the Department of Health and Human Services’ office of refugee resettlement.
The children stayed in large, warehouse-like tents erected at the base until they were reunited with relatives already living in the US, placed with sponsors, often family friends, or transferred to licensed care facilities.
And in 2016, late in the Obama administration, Fort Bliss also housed several hundred unaccompanied minor migrants in a temporary shelter at the same complex later used to house the Afghan refugees.
And under Trump’s “zero-tolerance” policy, in 2018 the administration had eyed Fort Bliss for tent encampments to house migrant children and their parents before instead selecting a site at Tornillo, 40 miles east of El Paso. Holding migrant children there in a fast-expanding detention camp sparked protests from lawmakers and advocates that it was inhumane and the children should be released. It was later closed over safety concerns, while other camps were opened amid chaos at the border.
The Democratic congressman Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico said Trump’s policies were like a “reality TV game of mass deportation”.
He said: “Our military bases should be prepared to support national security and readiness, not serve as processing centers for mass deportations.”
Meanwhile, advocates foresee legal and human rights risks.
“Gaining access to immigrants in a military base to try to make sure they have their rights respected, that they have access to information that affects them, and that there is oversight will be incredibly difficult,” said Marisa Limón Garza, executive director of Las Americas Immigrant Advocacy Center, an El Paso legal aid non-profit.
She added that the federal government has designated agencies for immigration matters, including Ice and border patrol and said the military was harmful to migrants. Others agreed.
“Military involvement is a serious mistake,” said Jacob Wedemeyer, an attorney from the Estrella del Paso organization, a Catholic legal services ministry for migrants. “Civil immigration enforcement should remain with DHS and not mix with the military.”
On 4 February, the Pentagon began transferring what officials have said are “high threat” detained migrants, described as the “worst of the worst”, in C-17 and C-130 military cargo planes to the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The first flights took off from Biggs army airfield at Fort Bliss.
The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who visited Fort Bliss and the southern border in early February, called Guantánamo Bay a “perfect place” to house migrants with criminal records.
But Ice has been expanding arrest criteria to include anyone in the US without permission, which is typically a civil violation, and has put them at risk of detention.
Local migrant advocacy organizations have seen a shift in those being detained at Ice detention centers in El Paso and in Otero county, New Mexico.
The detention centers had been temporarily containing mostly Venezuelans who crossed the US-Mexico border to request asylum after fleeing the grinding political and economic crisis in their country. But in a recent surge there are now also migrants held there from many other countries after being detained during Ice raids all over the US, many without criminal records, according to Las Americas.
“This indicates there is high pressure on Ice to make arrests of non-citizens with or without permission to be in the United States. It’s very concerning,” said Wedemeyer.
He currently represents two teen Honduran siblings with no criminal history who were taken into custody by Ice in Las Cruces, New Mexico, in January and spent two weeks held at the Otero county processing center before being released. They had arrived in El Paso as unaccompanied minors in early 2021 and currently have pending asylum applications, allowing them to stay in the US while they await their immigration court hearing, he said.
Alan Lizarraga, a spokesperson for the Border Network for Human Rights, said the non-profit had documented cases of Ice raids and arrests of migrants at their workplace, during their check-ins at immigration offices, and even at the official ports of entry on the border.
“That’s part of a strategy to create fear within the migrant community, to criminalize them and continue with a narrative that does not represent them,” he said.
Advocates now wonder whether such people will find themselves detained at Fort Bliss before long, maybe then to be dispatched out of the US on military planes by the thousand.
