Detention center project under consideration in Willacy County

RAYMONDVILLE -- City officials are considering a proposal to build a 200-bed, $30 million detention center to hold illegal immigrant families.

Raymondville city commissioners sent a letter to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to support a plan to build the detention center, City Manager Eleazar Garcia said Wednesday.

"We haven't committed ourselves to anything yet, except we're interested and would like to know more about it," Garcia said.

Since the mid-1990s, Willacy County has built prisons and a detention center in the Raymondville industrial park.

Already located there are a 1,000-bed state prison, a 500-bed county prison, a 96-bed county jail and a 3,000-bed illegal immigrant detention center, the largest in the United States.

Michael Harling of Municipal Capital Markets Group in Dallas, which would help with the financing for the project, said the new facility would create 200 jobs.

Harling called the city to ask if officials would consider the project, Garcia said.

"They asked if the city would be supportive of putting it in the industrial park," the city manager said.

The city would sell bonds to fund construction of the project, Harling said. Federal revenue derived from holding illegal immigrants would pay off the bonds.

Garcia said the facility would allow illegal immigrant parents to be housed with their children.

Harling made a point of saying "it's not a detention center. ... It's a facility for holding families, for holding people who have not committed crimes."

ICE has proposed building as many as three 200-bed "non-criminal family residential" centers across the nation to hold illegal immigrant families, according to information provided by Nina Pruneda, the agency's spokeswoman in San Antonio.

Each would use "minimum security for juveniles and their families in a safe and secure environment while in the custody of ICE," an agency document states.

Municipal Capital Markets Group has worked with developers to build the county prison, the county jail and the existing detention center.