By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. military said on Tuesday it will allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain migrants at Buckley Space Force Base in Colorado, further widening the Pentagon’s role in President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
The decision comes on top of U.S. military deportation flights of migrants out of the country and the deployment of just over 1,600 active-duty troops to the U.S. border with Mexico following Trump’s emergency declaration on immigration last week.
The U.S. military’s Northern Command said in a statement it started providing facilities at Buckley to ICE starting on Monday “to enable U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to stage and process criminal aliens within the U.S.”
“ICE requirements for the facility include a temporary operations center, staging area, and a temporary holding location for the receiving, holding, and processing of illegal aliens,” Northern Command said in the statement.
“This facility will be manned by ICE senior leaders, special agents, and analysts, as well as members of (Department of Homeland Security) components and other federal law enforcement agencies.”
Northern Command did not say how many migrants might be detained at Buckley or whether additional U.S. military bases might soon be opening for detention of migrants.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Buckley Space Force Base is located in the city of Aurora, a Denver suburb, which figured prominently during Trump’s presidential campaign last year. Trump said during his campaign that apartment complexes in Aurora had been taken over by members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, a claim refuted by top city officials at the time. During a campaign event there in October, Trump pledged to launch an Operation Aurora targeting gang members
This is not the first time a military has been used to house migrants. The Pentagon had approved requests to house unaccompanied migrant children under Joe Biden’s administration and migrant children and families during Trump’s first term.
Trump, a Republican, issued an array of executive orders on Monday aimed at deporting record numbers of migrants in the U.S. without legal status.
In a little more than a week in office, Trump rolled back Biden-era guidance that limited arrests of non-criminal migrants, ordered other federal law enforcement to assist with immigration work, and scrapped a Biden policy that restricted enforcement at schools, churches, hospitals and other sensitive locations.
Immigration arrests have reached about 1,000-1,200 per day in recent days, according to ICE, far above the daily average of 311 in fiscal year 2024.
Critics say Trump’s immigration crackdown could separate families, hurt U.S. businesses and violate due process rights of migrants.
(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; additional reporting by Kristina Cooke; Editing by Leslie Adler)
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