ICE Weighs ‘Mobile Detention Facilities’ in Vans
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is exploring the use of “mobile detention facilities”—a network of vans that would follow enforcement officers into the field and hold arrested immigrants at the scene of operations—according to federal contracting paperwork first obtained by the investigative outlet Project Salt Box and reported by NPR on September 23, 2026.
The detail was buried in a solicitation for a detention expansion in Pennsylvania and represents the latest turn in a sweeping effort to grow the nation’s immigration detention capacity. Neither ICE nor its main private prison contractor, The GEO Group, responded to requests for comment about the vans.
What the Documents Reveal
According to Project Salt Box’s analysis of the solicitation, ICE describes the arrangement in its own words. The vans “would be assigned to arrest teams at the hub site that would remain in a staging location nearby,” the agency wrote, and “these teams would act as ‘mobile detention facility’ until the vans are full and/or all operations in the area are completed.”
The documents say the units would be run by GTI, the transportation subsidiary of The GEO Group, one of ICE’s primary contractors. The rationale, per the paperwork, is efficiency: holding people in vans at the scene spares officers the drive back to an office and keeps them making arrests. Writing about a proposed hub in Pittsburgh, ICE said deportation officers “are better utilized as a force multiplier in the field to make more arrests.”
What the solicitation does not contain is striking. Its only durational limit reads: “Except in emergency situations females may not be transported by bus for more than ten hours.” That leaves no rule governing how long men may be held, and none governing travel by van. The documents are similarly silent on food, water, restrooms, temperature and medical attention for people in transit. The one provision addressing their treatment sits among motor vehicle regulations, between a seat-belt rule and a defensive-driving rule, and requires transporting detainees “in a safe and humane manner.”
“What they describe is a network of vans that would follow officers into the field as they make these arrests,” Michael Wriston, co-founder of Project Salt Box, told NPR. “Very conspicuously missing from this description was: What are the standards? You know, how long a person can be kept in a van. How are people using the bathroom? How are they feeding them?”
A Shift After the Warehouse Plan Stalled
The mobile units are part of what the government internally calls the Detention Reengineering Initiative, a major expansion funded by a $75 billion supplement from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The plan aims to enable detaining roughly 100,000 immigrants at a time, at an estimated total cost of $38.3 billion, according to an overview of the expansion plan.
The new approach follows the broad failure of an earlier strategy. ICE began buying commercial warehouses to convert into “mega detention centers,” spending just over $1 billion on 11 properties. That plan drew at least six federal lawsuits from states and local governments, and the agency has since moved to sell most of the warehouses—an outcome that watchdog data indicated was a near-complete flop.
On Sunday, September 20, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security signed five construction contracts worth up to a combined $7.3 billion to expand detention in New York, Texas, Arizona, Florida and California—the first contracts under a new building program ICE has said could reach $10 billion. The agency has also announced expansions in Colorado, Washington and Pennsylvania.
The Pennsylvania solicitation seeks 5,500 detention beds across four regions on 10-year contracts: 1,800 beds in central Pennsylvania, 1,500 near Denver, 1,500 near Seattle and 700 near Miami. The four sites align with existing GEO Group detention centers whose agreements are expiring, giving the company an incumbent advantage.
A Question of Scale and Standards
Wriston said the focus on Pennsylvania reflects the state’s size and the fact that many local police departments there are not permitted to work with ICE—meaning detained immigrants cannot be held at local jails and must be transported elsewhere. He argued the concept signals something broader than targeted enforcement.
“If this were targeted immigration enforcement, if this were truly ‘worst of the worst’-type enforcement, it stands to reason that ICE would have a list of a couple of names, and then an officer or a team of officers would go out and make an arrest. This describes sweeps, immigration sweeps,” he told NPR.
The emphasis on mobile capacity comes as ICE detains people at record numbers. Data from TRAC Reports show roughly 70% of people currently in ICE detention have no criminal conviction. As of mid-July 2026, ICE held 65,765 people—the most recent available figure—and the agency has released data indicating it arrested about 100,000 people in the past two months.
Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons previously described wanting the deportation process to run like “[Amazon] Prime, but with human beings,” a phrase that has become a touchstone for critics of the expansion.
The solicitation also contains a clause stating that “otherwise applicable or more stringent state or local laws or regulations shall not apply” to contractor performance—a provision aimed at sidestepping state law. A federal judge in Washington rejected that reasoning in July 2026, ordering GEO to allow state health inspectors into its Tacoma facility. The El Pais also reported on the mobile facilities plan, describing pickup trucks that would remain alongside arrest teams.
What to Watch
As of the latest reporting, no work has been ordered and no money committed under the new contracts. Whether ICE will actually deploy the mobile vans—and in what numbers—remains an open question, as does what health, safety and duration standards would apply to people held in them.
Wriston said the mobile units are more than a procedural footnote. They show, he argued, the intended scope of the mass deportation effort. The coming months will test whether the courts, states and communities that slowed the warehouse plan can shape this next phase—or whether the vans simply put the machinery of detention on the road.