U.S. troops conduct a deportation flight from Fort Bliss, Texas, on Feb. 10, 2025. (Griffin Payne/U.S. Army)
AUSTIN, Texas — Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said Wednesday during a visit to Fort Bliss that he approved federal immigration officials to establish a migrant detention facility at the base, which is in west Texas along the U.S. border with Mexico.
Final approval for the detention site must come from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has strongly supported President Donald Trump’s order to make southern border security a priority for the military.
Driscoll described Fort Bliss as a “natural fit” to support Trump’s border crackdown because of its location, according to KTSM, an El Paso news station.
Sprawling across roughly 1,700 square miles of desert terrain, Fort Bliss has vacant land near already existing Department of Homeland Security facilities that will host a building for detention, said an Army official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Fort Bliss engineers are standing by to clear the site along Montana Avenue in El Paso, near a Border Patrol station and an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility with a capacity to hold up to 2,000 detainees.
The new facility at Fort Bliss will allow for another 8,000 migrants to be detained at the base, according to the Army official. But the site would not be managed or operated by the Army.
Plans for the site have circulated among the media but had not yet officially been confirmed by the Army.
Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, said last month in a news conference that she has concerns about the increased use of the military for immigration enforcement because it pulls troops away from their training and essential mission to fight and win wars. She represents El Paso and Fort Bliss and is a former member of the House Armed Services Committee.
She described three previous instances where Fort Bliss was used to house migrants — twice when there was an influx of unaccompanied minors crossing the border and then in 2021 to house Afghan refugees who fled their country when the government collapsed and the U.S. military left.
An analysis conducted after housing Afghan migrants at the base found pulling soldiers and equipment from their mission to work this immigration-related mission set back readiness by two years, Escobar said.
“There’s no reason to use a military installation. We are not in an emergency situation where we’re seeing an overwhelming number of people arriving at the border,” she said.
People crossing between legal ports of entry peaked in December 2023, with federal agents recording nearly 302,000 migrants, according to Customs and Border Protection. Numbers have declined since then, with the agency reporting more than 61,000 migrant crossings in January and slightly more than 11,700 in February.
Fort Bliss is also a start point for military aircraft being used for deportation flights returning migrants to countries including Guatemala, Ecuador and Honduras. It also serves as a hub for troops deployed to the border to receive training before moving out to support Customs and Border Protection operations.
More than 10,000 service members are working on the mission and received new authorization this week to conduct mobile patrols, according to U.S. Northern Command. Troops cannot detain migrants or conduct law enforcement activities, but they can drive their vehicles along the border to alert federal agents to specific locations. They can also transport federal border agents in military vehicles, such as the Stryker armored vehicles that recently arrived from Fort Carson, Colo.
Previously military personnel could only use stationary detection and monitoring equipment in support of Border Patrol agents.
