In this handout provided by the U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Customs and Border Protection security agents guide immigrants onboard a removal flight at Fort Bliss, Texas, on Jan. 23, 2025. (Dept. of Defense photo by U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Nicholas J. De La Pena)
New Mexico’s all Democratic congressional delegation on Thursday wrote a letter to President Donald Trump objecting to reported plans by the Department of Defense to use Fort Bliss and Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico for immigrant detention by Homeland Security.
NPR obtained an internal memo that described how Fort Bliss would first detain up to 1,000 immigrants during an interim evaluation period, but eventually hold as many as 10,000 immigrants and serve as “central hub for deportation operations,” and a model for other facilities around the country.
“Using our military installations for these purposes threatens to divert DoD’s resources away from unit readiness and our national security enterprise,” the letter said. “This is a direct contradiction to your Administration’s statement earlier this year that one of your top priorities is to ‘have a ready, able, and lethal military.’”
In addition to the “numerous missions” Kirtland hosts, it also is the home of Sandia National Laboratories, “which is integral to the maintenance and modernization of our nuclear stockpile and develops technologies that support energy resilience for civilian and military applications,” the letter said.
Newly appointed Department of Energy Secretary Chris Wright recently visited both Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratory.
In addition to detailing the strain holding immigrants in military installations places on the defense department’s resources, the letter noted that “detaining children on military installations” violates the “principal purpose” of a settlement of a class action lawsuit, as well as New Mexico law.
“Leveraging legal loopholes to bypass state oversight of the well-being of detained undocumented children, who are often fleeing violence in their home countries, is entirely unacceptable,” the letter said. “The administration’s callous indifference toward federal and state law is especially concerning, given that the last time migrant children were detained at Fort Bliss staff described the facility as ‘filthy, overly loud, and prone to flooding and dust storms.’”