Federal detention center in Willacy County set to expand

RAYMONDVILLE — Willacy County is set to enter into a $45 million contract with the federal government to construct a building to hold 1,000 beds that will expand the country’s largest detention center for illegal immigrants, an official said Tuesday.

The new detention center will be in addition to the existing cluster of 10 tent-like domes set up a year ago to hold as many as 2,000 illegal immigrants.

Willacy County’s contract with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement will expand the detention center to 3,000 beds, County Judge Eliseo Barnhart said.

“This will bring jobs that are needed in Willacy County and it means income, which we desperately need,” Barnhart said. The detention center will create about 200 jobs within Raymondville’s sprawling prison complex, he said.

“With this permanent facility, this would be a permanent (government) contract,” Barnhart said, distinguishing the new detention center from the domed tents.

A spokeswoman for ICE did not return phone calls Tuesday.

The building is set to go up just south of the temporary $60 million 2,000-bed detention center tent-like domes, Barnhart said.

Built under a two-year contract, it is the nation’s largest detention center, becoming a centerpiece of the federal government’s crackdown on illegal immigration when it was completed in September 2006.

The federal government is expected to pay the county $2.50 a day for each detainee held in the detention center, Barnhart said, noting that officials project a 75 percent capacity.

The county plans to borrow about $45 million to build the new detention center, he said, and is set to construct the building on county-owned land next to the sprawling complex of tents that hold men and women.

Two indoor gymnasiums and a mess hall for 520 detainees are planned at the center.

The government will hire Management Training Corp. to operate the detention center, Barnhart said. A Utah-based company, Management Training operates the new 2,000-bed tent complex, as well as a nearby county-owned 525-bed prison that houses federal inmates.