5. Department of Homeland Security · Minor
Mandate ICE use all detention space and report capacity weekly
Printed page 151 5. Department of Homeland Security
“Mandate that ICE use all detention space in full compliance with Section 235 of the INA, issue weekly reports on detention capacity, and provide authority for low-level temporary capacity (for example, tents) once permanent space is full.”
What has happened
- Partially done
Public Law 119-21 section 90003 appropriated $45 billion for single adult and family detention capacity through 2029, and section 90003(b) put a single federal detention standard set at the Secretary's discretion into statute. The temporary-capacity limb of the Quote is funded: the appropriation covers construction and operation of facilities without restricting them to permanent construction, and DHS has stood up state-partnership facilities on that money. The weekly-reporting limb has not happened - ICE publishes its detention and Alternatives to Detention statistics as a periodically refreshed workbook, most recently on 2026-07-20, under a Fiscal Year 2020 appropriations requirement that predates the window, not weekly and not as a capacity report.
- Attempted
EO 14159 section 10 directs the Secretary to "allocate all legally available resources or establish contracts to construct, operate, control, or use facilities to detain removable aliens" and to ensure detention pending removal; EO 14165 section 5 orders detention to the fullest extent permitted by law and the end of catch-and-release. Both are directions to use detention capacity fully; neither mandates the use of all space in terms of INA section 235, and neither creates a reporting requirement.
Research log
What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence
Research notes
Three limbs: use all detention space in compliance with INA section 235; weekly detention-capacity reports; authority for low-level temporary capacity.
Capacity and temporary capacity are funded and being built; the weekly capacity report does not exist. Partial.
Overlap: #304 (p. 139) reads Public Law 119-21 section 90003(b) as the detention standard; #318 (p. 143) reads the same section as detention capacity. This item is the ICE-directive version of the ask and carries the same Evidence with its own reading, because progress is measured on each ask in its own words.
- Action
- issue
- Object
- ICE detention space usage and capacity reporting
- ID
- 371