Massive migrant center planned in El Paso

EL PASO — U.S. Customs and Border Protection plans to build a massive migrant processing center here to reduce the time families are spending in small holding cells after they are apprehended on the Southwest border, U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, said Thursday. Escobar said the facility would be able to house as many as 800 people at a time and could be open by spring.

The new El Paso processing center would be the Trump administration’s first major response to calls for an overhaul of outdated immigration detention practices on the border, and it would address concerns about how families who seek out Border Patrol agents to request asylum are held. Those families who cross the U.S.-Mexico border have been held for days in small cells designed decades ago to house single Mexican men for short periods after they were apprehended trying to sneak into the country.

The calls for new facilities to handle families, who now make up the bulk of people apprehended at the border, intensified after two Guatemalan children died in December while in the custody of U.S. agents in the El Paso sector.

“It’s long overdue,” said Escobar, who brought several Democratic lawmakers to El Paso in recent weeks to view conditions in detention cells. She said CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan briefed her on the plans last week. “The government has known for almost five years that there are fewer and fewer Mexican single males coming across our border and more and more Central American families and unaccompanied minors fleeing Central America.”

CBP officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday about the plans for the processing center. The General Services Administration posted a bid request on Feb. 7 looking for a 250,000-square-foot facility on the western edge of El Paso. The lease term would be from five to 10 years, with an unspecified government agency taking occupancy by April 15.

The facility likely to be leased as a processing center was formerly used as a Hoover manufacturing center that closed in 2014, Escobar said. The 478,000-square-foot building sits on 33 acres just off Interstate 10 in western El Paso. The compromise border funding bill announced this week in Washington includes $190 million for a new El Paso processing center, she said, though she said it hasn’t been made clear whether that facility would be at the same location that CBP plans to lease.