Trump administration rushes to rent space for immigration officers conducting raids : NPR

Federal agents patrol the rooms of the Immigration Court of the Federal Building of Jacob K. Javitz. Immigration and customs’ application agents (ICE) and other federal agencies continue to make detention in immigration courts while people attend their court hearings.

Michael Nigro / Pacific Press / Lightrocket via Getty Images

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Michael Nigro / Pacific Press / Lightrocket via Getty Images

The employees of the General Services Administration – the American agency which manages government facilities and purchases – rush to find offices to accommodate a rapid increase in immigration application agents making widespread raids across the country.

According to three GSA employees, which asked anonymity to discuss sensitive internal operations and to avoid reprisals, the agency has created a “Surgeon” team in recent weeks, referring to an effort to rent private offices to allow agents of the immigration application and customs agency to create a long -term workspace in the cities where they operate.

Last week, the GSA public buildings service published a request for “fully finished and furnished offices in favor of administrative operations for the application of the law” in 19 cities across the country. The list of estimates of each lease would include workstations for 70 people and notes the “unique” quick period of a week to submit offers.

One of the GSA employees said the ice urgently asked the agency to find around 300 properties fully furnished with private offices for rent this winter.

The push occurs only a few months after the informal advisory group of the White House, the Ministry of Effectiveness of the Government, or DOGE, has dismissed a large number of GSA employees and has ended a large part of government leases, decisions which are now reversed in many cases in order to meet the needs of the government. There is no clear evidence that these discounts have saved significant amounts of taxpayers’ money.

This also occurs alongside an effort on the level of the government aimed at diverting resources towards the application of immigration, federal efforts to rent the law on the expertise of the police of other agencies such as the FBI. Limited application resources, including a lack of funding to bring more people to carry out arrests and surveys and disputes, have been one of the biggest challenges to increase the pace of arrests, detentions and deportations.

Congress this summer provided $ 75 billion to hire more agents, widen the detention area and increase arrest and deportations rates. The agency, which started the year with around 20,000 people, is looking to hire more than 10,000 new officers by the end of the year. The agency offers candidates large signing bonuses of tens of thousands of dollars in a rationalized hiring effort that experts in immigration policy and other criticisms fear compromising the verification standards.

The agency also increases its detention capacity and launches application operations across the country aimed at increasing the number of people arrested and held. The administration has promoted large -scale operations in cities like Boston and Chicago.

The most recently available immigration detention data published publicly by ICE show that there are 58,000 people in detention. Immigrant rights defenders have warned that the rapid expansion of arrests and detention leads to general concern about human rights and violations of the regular procedure for immigrants.

Public polls have shown more and more that American voters disapprove of the way in which ice leads its operations, especially in places such as hospitals and other “protected areas”.

Meanwhile, GSA employees find themselves swept away in the repression of immigration.

“It was incredibly chaotic,” said one of the employees of the GSA familiar with the new “emergency” rental project.

In addition to finding new office spaces for rent for ice, the agency has also asked the GSA to identify existing goods held by the federal or rented government which could suit their use in a range of cities across the country. These cities include Baltimore, Philadelphia, Washington, New York, Denver, Chicago, Kansas City, Mo., Greensboro, NC, and Fort Myers, in Florida, according to a list shared with NPR. The list mentions that the properties would be used in application and deletion operations. In Boisse, in Idaho, Ice seeks to spend more than a million dollars to extend an existing rented office space, according to a permit application filed with the city discovered in the reports by the Idaho statesman.

Efforts cause the frustration of certain GSA employees, who have dealt with months of reducing workforce and reorganizing at the agency. Now, with about half of the staff they had before the government’s restructuring efforts, they are forced to renegotiate leases canceled with owners who “considerably increase their prices,” said one of the GSA employees.

“It is hypocrisy to its best,” said another GSA employee.

In a press release, a GSA spokesperson told NPR that GSA was “proud to support the immigration and customs (ICE) forces in the United States to respond to their mission to protect America. We are working closely with our agency partners to ensure that they have the facilities that correspond to their working needs.”