US Navy drafts plans to house tens of thousands of illegal immigrants at remote bases
The US Navy is drawing up plans to house tens of thousands of immigrants on remote bases as the Trump administration scrambles to deal with people detained in its zero-tolerance border stance.
Donald Trump has faced days of outrage over a policy that saw thousands of children separated from parents before he backed down and signed an executive order designed to keep families together.
However, his administration is still struggling to reunite families and has signalled it will need more facilities to house detainees.
According to a draft memo obtained by Time magazine, the navy is planning to build "temporary and austere" tent cities to house as many as 25,000 migrants at three abandoned air fields in Alabama, 47,000 at a facility near San Francisco, and another 47,000 at a training centre in southern California.
The document estimates the navy would spend $233 million to run a facility for 25,000 over six-months.
Lieutenant Colonel Jamie Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said: "The Department of Defence is conducting prudent planning and is looking nationwide at DoD installations should [Department of Homeland Security] ask for assistance in housing adult illegal immigrants.
"At this time there has been no request from DHS for DoD support to house illegal migrants."
The details emerged after Mr Trump on Friday hit back at global condemnation and instead turned the spotlight on Americans who have been killed by undocumented immigrants by hosting a group of what he called “angel families” at the White House.
“Your loved ones have not died in vain,” he told them.
He has faced intense anger for an immigration policy that led to more than 2000 children being taken from their families after crossing the border with Mexico.
Mr Trump made a rare U-turn this week, signing an executive order designed to keep families together.
However, he has returned to his blistering rhetoric ever since.
“We must maintain a Strong Southern Border,” he tweeted on Friday. “We cannot allow our Country to be overrun by illegal immigrants as the Democrats tell their phony stories of sadness and grief, hoping it will help them in the elections.
The White House also launched an angry attack on opponents, accusing Democrats of exploiting a picture that showed a tearful two-year-old girl. Although many reports suggested she had been separated from her mother, it later emerged they had been kept together.
And later in the day, Mr Trump attempted to further turn the tables with the personal tales of people whose lives had been taken by illegal immigrants.
"You hear the other side, you never hear this side," he said, explaining that families separated at the border would be reunited again.
"These are the American citizens permanently separated from their loved ones. The word 'permanently' being the word that you have to think about. Permanently - they're not separated for a day or two days, these are permanently separated because they were killed by criminal illegal aliens."
What is happening at the border?
Some 2300 children are believed to have been taken from their parents since April when Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, announced a crackdown.
While the previous administration had used a case-by-case approach in deciding who should face prosecution, Mr Sessions declared a zero-tolerance approach”.
However, laws designed to protect children means they cannot be held indefinitely in jail and so they are taken away from their parents to be put in care elsewhere.
The result of Mr Trump’s executive order is confusion within his administration about how to keep families together while at the same time prosecuting everyone who illegally crosses the border.
"It's a big question. There have not been a lot of answers," is how Henry Lucero, a director of field operations at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, put it during a forum in Texas.
About 500 children have been reunited with their families since May, according to Homeland Security officials, but no one knows how long it will take the remaining children to be handed back to parents.
What is the solution?
Republicans should stop wasting their time on Immigration until after we elect more Senators and Congressmen/women in November. Dems are just playing games, have no intention of doing anything to solves this decades old problem. We can pass great legislation after the Red Wave!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 22, 2018
Republicans have been scrambling to find enough support for a compromise bill that would reunite families, but win enough Democratic support to toughen border protection - and fund Donald Trump's wall.
Plans for a vote on Friday were shelved and finally pushed into next week. However, Mr Trump has thrown the whole exercise into doubt by offering little in the way of encouragement.
More beds needed in the meantime
On Friday Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a notice that it may seek up to 15,000 beds to detain immigrant families.
Federal agencies have been searching for possible locations. The Department of Health and Human Services said the government was considering using a disused Department of Agriculture property in Arkansas, for example, as well as Little Rock Air Force base.
The interest has sent shares in two private prison operators rising. Shares in CoreCivic have jumped 11.2 percent in the past four days while Geo marked its five straight day of gains, including a 6.6 percent rise since Mr Trump signed the executive order.
