Trump Awards $1.26 Billion Contract to Build Biggest Immigrant Detention Center in US

[In It to Win It]

The federal government has awarded a contract to build and operate a sprawling tent camp at Fort Bliss, an Army base in Texas, to serve as an immigrant detention center.

In the Trump administration’s latest move to vastly expand space for such detention, the work would turn the base in El Paso, with more than 1 million acres and an airport, into a deportation hub with 5,000 beds, according to a US Department of Defense contract notice. That would make it the largest immigration detention facility in the country.

The contract for Fort Bliss is worth $1.26 billion and was awarded to Virginia-based Acquisition Logistics Company through a special program that directs federal dollars to small businesses, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked to not be named discussing something that hasn’t been shared publicly. The Army is putting up $232 million for the work, the Defense Department notice says. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that the contract had been awarded but did not include its value or the winning bidder. Ken Wagner, president and chief executive officer of Acquisition Logistics, declined to comment.

The Fort Bliss contract is by far the biggest ever for Acquisition Logistics, which Wagner, a retired Naval flight officer, founded in 2008. It specializes in supply chain management and other technical services, particularly for the US military, according to Wagner’s LinkedIn profile. Acquisition Logistics has received contracts worth roughly $29 million from the Defense Department over the past five fiscal years, mainly for logistics support work, according to government records. Most of that was through set-asides for small businesses.

The company doesn’t appear to have any experience with detention, but earlier this year the US Army paid Acquisition Logistics more than $5 million for “lodging and conference room services” related to the agency’s work at the Southern Border under the Trump administration.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-22/trump-awards-immigration-detention-center-contract-for-fort-bliss-in-texas

[Passages]

1. Sick America.

[underpants]

4. It's located not very far from me

https://www.acq-log.com/

Never heard of it.

[lapfog_1]

3. don't tell me, let me guess

Ken Wagner is a huge Trumper and contributor to the Orange Anus re-election???

[underpants]

9. Not sure.

https://www.acq-log.com/leadership/Ken-Wagner

[BOSSHOG]

5. Giving other peoples money to fellow Nazis

At least a dozen Hispanics put new roofs on the homes of trump supporters in town last week. A trump detention center is designed for those roofers. Because republicans have no idea nor desire to do the good thing for the masses.

[Ping Tung]

6. Will he decorate it by moving the Statue of Liberty to the gate of it?

[Moostache]

7. A plank of the Democratic Party platform should promise to convert this to ANYTING else...

Unless we pledge to house the criminals from the Trump administration there pending trials. The graft is strong with this one...I can smell it from there already. $5M for "lodging and conference services"? Unknown, unqualified companies feeding at the trough? Reminds me of Halliburton...

[Lovie777]

8. I strongly dislike the republican party....................

talking away healthcare, childcare, education, et al for this bullshit and while giving the wealthy permanent tax cuts.

To boot, prices are higher, including insurance charging more.

Firing tens of thousand. FEMA no longer viable for people in disasters.

Fuck the RNC and their master shithole.

[lame54]

10. Everything's bigger in Texas...

Even their concentration camps

[bucolic_frolic]

11. More profitable than border walls

[dalton99a]

12. $1.26 billion for a bunch of tents

The Fort Bliss contract’s reliance on tents for detention is concerning to immigrant advocates, who say such facilities are unlikely to meet federal standards.

“All the reasons why you and I live not in tents but in homes are going to inevitably come up in a facility that doesn’t offer people walls and floors and insulation,” Emma Winger, deputy legal director at the American Immigration Council, said of tent detention in general. She points to basic needs that are significantly harder to meet with tents: protection from the elements, adequate medical facilities, safe and clean food preparation and storage. “It’s very hard to imagine how soft-sided facilities could satisfy even the low detention standards that are reflected in ICE’s most recent standards.”