ICE is preparing ‘mobile facilities’ to detain migrants during arrest operations
Official documents obtained by an investigative media outlet describe pickup trucks that would remain alongside arrest teams to hold detained people
Vans parked near immigration enforcement teams, ready for people who are arrested and designed to keep them there while operations continue. That is how U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) envisions the so-called “mobile detention facilities” that the agency is seeking to deploy in Pennsylvania, according to a federal solicitation obtained by an investigative journalism outlet called Project Salt Box.
The document is part of a broader expansion of the immigration detention system and includes 10-year contracts for four regions and 5,500 beds. In Pennsylvania, ICE plans to use these vehicles as temporary detention spaces at the locations where arrests take place so agents can remain in the field rather than interrupting their operations to transport each detainee.
The documents describe these teams as a mobile extension of detention centers. The units would remain at a location near the teams responsible for arrests and would operate as “mobile detention facilities” until the vans were full or operations in the area were completed.
The mechanism fits with an idea that acting ICE Director Todd Lyons had publicly expressed in 2025. During a border security conference, Lyons said he wanted the deportation process to operate “like (Amazon) Prime, but with human beings” and spoke of squads of trucks traveling across the country to make arrests and transport people within a coordinated system.
The new documents offer some details about how that model could work. For the Philadelphia region, which includes Pennsylvania and Delaware, ICE is seeking 12 additional transportation teams each day, seven days a week, distributed across seven locations, as well as new operational hubs in Pittsburgh and Dover, Delaware.
The vans would not be simple transportation vehicles. The requirements state that they must have interior cages, acrylic panels separating the driver from passengers, locks on doors and windows, backup radios and at least one unit adapted for people with disabilities. Each trip would have to be conducted with two agents, and all workers responsible for transportation would be armed.
Although the documents detail the characteristics of the vehicles, they provide little information about the conditions for people held inside them. One of the few restrictions states that, except in emergency situations, women may not be transported by bus for more than 10 hours. There is no equivalent limit for men or a specific duration for how long people may remain in the vans used as mobile detention facilities.
The documents also do not establish specific rules regarding food, water, bathrooms, temperature or medical care during transportation. The only provision concerning the treatment of detainees requires that they be transported in a “safe and humane manner.”
Meanwhile, the solicitation calls for dozens of routes and hundreds of thousands of miles annually. The Pennsylvania routes alone would add about 372,000 miles a year, while those planned for Miami would cover approximately 784,000 miles. Some routes from Denver would take more than 10 hours to travel; one between Denver, Colorado, and Phoenix, Arizona, for example, covers a distance of 865 miles.
The mobile facilities are part of a larger system that ICE plans to contract out to private companies. The documents envision four detention centers in Pennsylvania, Colorado, Washington, and Florida, with capacities ranging from 700 to 1,800 people. They would include immigration courtrooms, offices for ICE attorneys, spaces for asylum interviews, medical care, food services and other operations related to deportation proceedings.
In Pennsylvania, the vans would function as an extension of that model: arrest teams could remain in the field while detainees are held temporarily until the operation is completed or the vehicles are full.
The documentation does not establish how long men could remain in those units or set detailed rules for conditions inside them. At the time of publication, ICE, the private prison company GEO Group, and the Department of Homeland Security had not commented on the units.
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