US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) plans to open a new call center to help law enforcement agencies track down unaccompanied migrant children.
According to a homeland security department Request for Information (RFI) notice released this week, ICE stated there was an “immediate need to establish and maintain” a call center equipped with “data-enabled technology”.
The agency said the center’s purpose was to “support partner encounters in the field … focused on locating unaccompanied alien children”.
The facility, slated to open in Nashville, Tennessee, will operate 24 hours a day and is expected to handle between 6,000 and 7,000 calls daily. The document did not specify why Nashville was chosen for the call center. ICE anticipates the center will open by March and reach full operational capacity by June.
In the RFI, ICE also asked potential contractors to outline what kinds of “enabling technology” they would recommend to “integrate partner and alien data with our systems to maximize call efficiency and reduce call time”.
In response to a Guardian request for comment, assistant homeland security secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an emailed statement: “Your reporting is inaccurate,” without providing any details.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In addition to the planned call center, CoreCivic Inc, the nation’s second-largest private prison operator, is headquartered in Nashville. Since Donald Trump took office in January, the company has reported strong financial gains, announcing $538.2m in earnings for the second quarter of this year, a 9.8% increase over the same period last year.
The surge in profits for private prison companies, along with those of technology firms such as Palantir, which recently secured a $30m contract with ICE to build a database aimed at streamlining detentions and deportations, comes amid an escalation in immigration raids nationwide. These actions have provoked fierce backlash from the public, Democratic lawmakers and civil rights groups alike.
Reports of the planned ICE call center come as the Trump administration appears to have revived the practice of family separations in its renewed effort to deport millions, according to multiple cases reviewed by the Guardian. Immigration attorneys and former officials say the move is intended to pressure immigrants and asylum seekers to leave the US voluntarily.
Meanwhile, in a memo obtained by the Guardian last month, the Trump administration laid out plans to offer migrant children $2,500 as a “one-time resettlement support stipend” in exchange for their self-deportation.
This latest escalation builds on policies from Trump’s first term, which included a “zero-tolerance” approach that directed the justice department to prosecute anyone who crossed the border without legal status. That policy led to the separation of at least 5,500 migrant children from their parents and guardians at the US-Mexico border.
After widespread backlash from the public, as well as from both Democrats and Republicans, Trump signed an executive order in 2018 to formally end the family separation policy.
