Soldiers based at Fort Bliss believe construction of detention center is imminent as locals speak out against Trump’s crackdown

The military base of Fort Bliss is so sprawling that it is bigger than Rhode Island and almost as large as Delaware. Sitting on the outskirts of El Paso, Texas, on the border with Mexico, the base and its host town remain at the epicenter of Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigration.

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Locals believe when the government starts erecting the “cities of tents” the president boasted about for detaining people crossing the border unlawfully, even if they seek asylum from gang violence, Fort Bliss will be ground zero.

Many are outraged at the prospect of the military flying in hundreds of tents to Fort Bliss then guarding thousands of exhausted migrant families bussed into El Paso after being detained all along the US-Mexico border.

“We know that both Fort Bliss and Goodfellow [air force base, in San Angelo] are being prepared to house migrants,” said Fernando Garcia, executive director of the advocacy group Border Network for Human Rights.

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He was speaking at a demonstration last weekend, where up to 100 people marched in El Paso towards one of the nearby international bridges and a neighborhood where a border fence is being built, protesting the mounting militarization of the border.

“It’s very concerning to us,” Garcia continued. “Recently the administration limited the ability of migrants to ask for asylum and we are concerned that this is only an effort to bring migrants into these facilities and to continue expanding the administration’s deportation machine.”

In late June, the Department of Defense (DoD) unveiled plans to use Fort Bliss and Goodfellow to house thousands of migrant families as the government struggles to accommodate rising numbers of immigrants being detained upon entering the US. Since the initial announcement few further details have been disclosed.

But some soldiers based at Fort Bliss believe that the construction of a temporary detention facility there is imminent, according to a local soldier who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he is not authorized to address the media.

“What I can tell you is that the word circling around the base is that they are expecting the federal government will soon green-light such construction,” he said.

“I’m in and out [of the base] all the time but I haven’t seen any construction taking place [yet].”

Fort Bliss is one of the largest military facilities in the US, with more than 20,000 military men and women calling it base. It is nestled on the north-east side of the city near El Paso’s international airport and covers more than 1,700 square miles.

Many active-duty soldiers live off-base in El Paso itself and have a continuous presence in local supermarkets, schools and stores, while the daily ebb and flow also includes 7,000 local residents who work inside the base.

Hispanics make up 80% of El Paso’s population, while a quarter of the city’s residents were born in another country, and Spanish is the language most commonly heard on the streets. While opinions about migration and detention policies inside the base are hard to discern, many civilians in El Paso reject the ethics of Trump’s policies.

This is not a step but a stride in the completely incorrect direction Eli Beller, the Hope Border Institute

“Military bases are not meant to house children, they’re not meant to house migrants. This would set a dangerous precedent,” said Eli Beller of the Hope Border Institute, a grassroots organization in El Paso. “This is not a step but a stride in the completely incorrect direction.”

In early October a spokesman for the DoD said the department was on standby to prepare Fort Bliss to accommodate migrants but had not received any request as of 8 October. The DoD, the Department of Homeland Security and the Health and Human Services Department, which administers refugees, did not respond to requests for information and comment this week.

But Fernando Garcia believes migrants will begin to be housed in Fort Bliss soon because the federal government is running out of capacity to accommodate all the people it has already taken into custody, after detaining them for crossing the border.

He noted the current, controversial detention facility for minors in nearby Tornillo, which has expanded rapidly since the summer but is quickly approaching capacity. Also, last month Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) had to release more than 100 immigrants from its holding facility in El Paso due to capacity issues. The US government currently has almost 45,000 migrants in custody, an all-time high, according to a report by the Daily Beast. The thousands of migrants traveling in groups and expected to arrive at various points along the border in the coming weeks could force the federal government to begin housing detainees at military bases. Several hundred migrants have arrived at Tijuana, bordering California, in recent days.

This is far from the first time El Paso has been at the forefront of the immigration debate. Last year Ice conducted a pilot program there, where it began to separate children from their parents as they crossed the border. The policy, later labelled “zero-tolerance”, was fully implemented in April. It caused chaos and misery in border towns like El Paso and McAllen, and such public uproar among critics, including some Republicans and even Melania Trump, that the president eventually had to back down a step. And El Paso was among the first border cities in which Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) officers began to block access to the ports of entry to asylum seekers last month, as the president again ramped up inflammatory talk and aggressive actions ahead of the midterm elections, talking at rallies and tweeting repeatedly about closing the border and declaring a national emergency against an “invasion” by migrants traveling together as caravans.

But since the election on 6 November, Trump has ignored the topic, even as soldiers were sent to the area on his command and started rolling out razor wire.

On Thursday, a Pentagon official said the number of US active-duty troops deployed to the border has “pretty much peaked” at 5,800, far below the 10,000 to 15,000 Trump said would be needed.

The defense secretary, Jim Mattis, and the homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, visited the troops on Wednesday.

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Mattis argued it was a “moral and ethical mission” and said the short-term objective is to get sufficient wire and other barriers in place. The longer-term objective was “somewhat to be determined”.

But the idea that those reaching the border from Central America will encounter heavily armed troops and face being violently repelled or arrested and locked in an army camp disgusted El Paso student Alonso Sanchez.

Talking to the Guardian during the protest against troops on the border, he said: “Although officials say they [migrants] are being accommodated and fed it’s a prison nonetheless, and the kids and people there are not criminals,” he said.

Looking across the Chihuahuita neighborhood of El Paso, where a portion of new border fence is currently being erected, Sanchez said: “They’re looking for a chance to live, a chance to be somebody. Anybody willing to risk their lives and their freedom, I think, deserves an opportunity here in the US.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report