While Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers are nearing their breaking point, Border Patrol is closing temporary holding facilities with the massive drop in illegal crossings under President Trump — and more are expected to shut their doors, Homeland Security sources told The Post.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is shutting the doors to the soft-sided detention center dubbed “Firefly,” sources said.
The Biden administration opened the more than 150,000-square-foot facility as it scrambled to find the space to process the thousands of illegal migrants streaming across the border into Eagle Pass, Texas.
“They were always supposed to be temporary … that temporary solution became four years,” said one CBP source.
With fewer migrants crossing illegally, Border Patrol facilities have sat largely empty.
In February, border agents encountered roughly 8,000 illegal migrants crossing the southern border, marking the lowest month in at least 25 years, according to leaked data first obtained by The Post.
In response, Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks offered ICE his temporary facilities.
“We’re offering up our space to ICE because if you look at the numbers … they’re apprehending more people at the border than we are having come in,” the chief recently told The Post.
“So as ICE is making those arrests in the interior and reducing the number of illegals that are in our country, we’re ensuring that that cup doesn’t refill,” Banks continued.
“Our intent is to offer that up to ICE. If ICE has a need for that, they can take that and move forward with it. If they don’t, then we, we will get out of the temporary detention space business,” he added.
ICE currently has the funding to hold 41,500 illegal migrants, but it’s already “burning well over that to the tune of several hundred million dollars,” a senior agency source previously told The Post, revealing that the agency had opened four new federal prisons to address the issue.
If ICE declines the offer, Banks vowed to shut down the temporary processing centers, emphasizing the massive costs of operating the facilities.
It is likely that ICE declined because the facilities do not meet the agency’s high requirements for detention facilities. Trump’s border czar Tom Homan is reportedly working to lower those standards to allow more local cops to detain migrant criminals for ICE.
The closure of the processing center comes as Vice President JD Vance visited the border in Eagle Pass Wednesday, where he touted the Trump administration’s successful crackdown.
“President Trump has empowered — and, in fact, demanded — that his whole government take the task of border control seriously,” he said.