Officials with the Department of Homeland Security are quietly attempting to find up to 5000 more jail and prison beds to cope with record numbers of undocumented immigrants in detention in the US, according to insiders.
Jeh Johnson, the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, met with senior Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection agency leaders on Tuesday. This was to allow officials to review plans for coping with the thousands more undocumented immigrants that are expected to be crossing the Mexico southern border over the course of the next few weeks, the official claims.
There are currently over 40,000 immigrants being held in detention centers by ICE – higher than ever recorded. The agency has warned that they are going to need a speedy infusion of money to the tune of $136 million simply to keep the centers up and running until the beginning of December, officials and internal documents from the Department of Homeland Security suggest.
The news follows the revelation earlier this month that the most recent surge of undocumented immigrants from Mexico did not, as expected, slow down in August. It is now on the brink of breaking the previous record number established two years ago back in 2014. Experts believed that the influx would slow in August, as it usually does due to factors such as the summer heat, but that did not happen in 2016.