Travis Air Force Base is apparently among a list of military locations being considered by the Trump administration as a potential site for building an immigration detention facility, according to a report published late Tuesday by KQED, the PBS station based in San Francisco.
The PBS report says it obtained internal government communications including early April emails in which federal officials discussed “efforts to evaluate several military installations, including Travis Air Force Base, for Homeland Security’s immigration detention and removal operations – and tee them up for approval by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.”
President Trump has stated his goal of departing a million people in his first year of office and the proposed installation at Travis would be part of the effort to expand immigration detention nationally, KQED reported.
“The emails show significant coordination among Department of Defense and Homeland Security officials to expedite the plans. The emails do not describe the scope or design of the proposed detention compound at Travis Air Force Base, nor how many people it would be expected to hold,” the report noted.
KQED said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond directly to questions about Travis, but affirmed that ICE is actively working to expand detention capacity.
Base officials could not be reached by The Reporter by press time.
Local Congressman John Garamendi, whose district includes Travis, was furious to learn of the plans.
“It’s outrageous and inappropriate for the Trump Administration to use Travis Air Force Base as an immigration detention facility,” he said in a statement to The Reporter. He said the base plays a “critical role in our national security, providing transportation for personnel and materiel around the world” and “converting it to an immigration facility would undermine its vital national security mission.”
Garamendi has already questioned the use of Travis military personnel and aircraft in deportation efforts. On Tuesday he repeated the complained he called it “alarming, potentially unconstitutional, and a shameful waste of military resources. These flights carry fewer migrants and cost more than three times as much as the Department of Homeland Security’s civilian deportation flights.”
He vowed to keep fighting.
“My work in Congress has been laser-focused on this issue,” he said. “As Trump has ramped up his mass deportation agenda, I have demanded that the Department of Defense cease these unconscionable activities.”
According to the National Public Radio reports, Homeland Security officials have been considering at least 10 military bases around the country for immigration detention. A February Homeland Security memo obtained by NPR described a plan to use Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas, as a model for other facilities, with up to 1,000 people initially detained there, eventually expanding to as many as 10,000.
Previous administrations have used military bases to temporarily house arriving refugees and have deployed soldiers to provide logistical support to the U.S. Border Patrol. But any plan to use Travis and other military facilities for ICE detention would represent a more substantial move toward militarizing immigration enforcement.