The federal government has awarded a $1.26 billion contract to build and operate an immigrant detention center tent facility at the Fort Bliss U.S. Army base in Texas.
According to a U.S. Department of Defense contract notice, the work will turn the base, located in El Paso, into a deportation hub that will include 5,000 beds, reports Bloomberg News on Tuesday.
The base features more than 1 million acres of land and has an airport, and once completed, the detention center would be the largest in the United States.
The contract for Fort Bliss has been awarded to Acquisition Logistics Company, based in Virginia. The project is being funded through a program directing federal dollars to small businesses, sources familiar with the plan told Bloomberg, while asking for anonymity to discuss a situation that had not yet been shared in public.
According to the Defense Department's notice, the Army will spend $232 million toward the project.
The Wall Street Journal last week reported that the contract had been awarded, but did not include the cost of the contract or that Acquisition Logistics had won the project.
Acquisitions Logistics CEO and President Ken Wagner declined to comment.
The Fort Bliss project is reportedly the company's largest ever. Wagner, a retired U.S. Navy flight officer, founded the firm in 2008.
According to his LinkedIn profile, the company specializes in supply chain management and technical services, mainly for the military.
Government records show that Acquisition Logistics has received roughly $29 million in defense contracts during the last five fiscal years, mainly for logistics support work.
Earlier this year, the Army paid the company more than $5 million for "lodging and conference room services" in connection with the military's work at the southern border under President Donald Trump's administration.
An ICE official, who Bloomberg did not name, said the agency is pursuing "all available options" to expand detention capability, including "housing detainees at certain military bases."
Meanwhile, the administration awarded a $3.8 billion contract in April to Deployed Resources, a company that in the past supplied musical festival tents but now contracts with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, but the contract was canceled within days, with little explanation from the government.
It has not been made clear why the Acquisition Logistics contract came in at just about a third of the value of the Deployed Resources contract.
In May, ICE identified 41 companies that can place bids for billions of dollars in detention contracts through an "emergency acquisition" process, reports NPR.
Many of the companies work with tent facilities, signaling the administration could be planning to increase the use of such temporary shelters more widely for immigration detention.
In a letter to Congress last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security plans to use military bases in New Jersey and Indiana for "temporary" detention sites.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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