The front gate at Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland Credit: Shutterstock / Patrish Jackson

Military facility Joint Base San Antonio-Lackland will detain migrants as part of the massive deportation sweep undertaken by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) under orders from President Donald Trump, News 4 SA reports.

The Southwest San Antonio base will oversee the detainment of immigrants picked up in the National Defense Area, a 250-mile stretch around the Rio Grande in South Texas’ Cameron and Hidalgo counties, according to the TV station.

The plan to detain immigrants on military bases surfaced within the first month of Trump’s second term. The move represents “a significant expansion of efforts by the White House to use wartime resources to make good on the president’s promised mass deportations,” the New York Times reported Feb. 21.

As of press time, it’s unclear how many immigrants JBSA-Lackland will detain. Fort Bliss, located in El Paso, is expected to detain up to 10,000 immigrants awaiting deportation, the Times reports.

Though it might seem odd to detain migrants in San Antonio, which isn’t on the border, the city’s airport might play a significant role in the White House’s decision. Many of the detainees are likely to be flown to foreign countries when deported, according to News 4 SA.

The news that JBSA-Lackland will detain migrants comes amid reports that the South Texas ICE Processing Center detention site in Pearsall is approaching capacity. After closing last summer, the South Texas Family Regional Detention Center in Dilley, Texas — the nation’s largest migrant detention center — has recently reopened to accommodate the administration’s ballooning demand for migrant detention.

Previous administrations have detained some immigrants at military bases as an overflow solution. However, the Trump administration plans to expand this practice to accommodate its aggressive goal for ICE to conduct 3,000 immigrant arrests daily.

The ramping up of arrests also creates a glut in the court system, compelling the administration to eschew due process. “We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years,” Trump wrote in an April post on Truth Social.

Nonetheless, the backlog is creating a greater need for detention facilities while migrants await processing. To further address this shortfall, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday passed Trump’s “big, beautiful bill,” which would triple the budget for ICE. The version that passed the upper chamber allocates $45 billion for detention facilities, $14 billion for deportation operations and billions more to hire an additional 10,000 new agents by 2029, The Guardian reports.

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This article appears in Jun 26 – Jul 9, 2025.

Stephanie Koithan is the Digital Content Editor of the San Antonio Current. In her role, she writes about politics, music, art, culture and food. Send her a tip at skoithan@sacurrent.com.