Alligator Alcatraz firm to run ICE detention warehouse on San Antonio's East Facet

The East Facet facility beforehand owned by Oakmont industrial Group is among the many largest warehouses in San Antonio. Credit score: Google Maps / Screenshot

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has picked one of many corporations behind Florida’s notorious Alligator Alcatraz detention camp to function the company’s large detention warehouse deliberate on San Antonio’s East Facet, the Categorical-Information studies.

The federal company awarded the $17.3 billion contract to personal jail firm GardaWorld Federal Companies, the paper studies, citing federal paperwork. The positioning is predicted to carry 1,000 to 1,500 detainees at a time whereas their deportations are processed.

In January, ICE paid $66.1 million to accumulate the property at 542 S.E. Loop 410 — a website referred to as Oakmont 410 — as a part of a buying spree of warehouses throughout the nation because the company continues to ramp up arrests and deportations.

Oakmont 410 is the second-largest warehouse property in San Antonio, spanning 639,595 sq. ft, in accordance with a number of media studies. The power, which was’t designed to deal with human beings, must be retrofitted to accommodate the elevated plumbing calls for. That’s raised environmental considerations with native activists and civic leaders.

GardaWorld is certainly one of a number of jail and safety corporations contracted to function the Everglades detention camp Alligator Alcatraz, which closed earlier this summer season. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis introduced the shutdown on June 25, 2026 — almost a 12 months after the power opened.

Although Alligator Alcatraz, formally known as Everglades Detention Facility, was solely open for a 12 months, Amnesty Worldwide referred to that interval as “a 12 months of horrors.” The worldwide human rights watchdog group stated it documented rampant abuse on the facility throughout its transient time in operation.

“Analysis by Amnesty Worldwide concluded that folks arbitrarily detained within the facility have been being held in inhumane and unsanitary situations, together with overflowing bogs with fecal matter seeping into the place individuals are sleeping, restricted entry to showers, publicity to bugs with out protecting measures, lights on 24 hours a day, poor high quality meals and water, and lack of privateness — together with cameras above the bogs,” the group reported.

Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) officers stated the detention camp was shuttered because of security considerations tied to the Atlantic hurricane season. DHS officers stated detainees have been transferred to services all through the nation, together with Texas, however didn’t additional make clear their new whereabouts, PBS studies.

GardaWorld has been embroiled in a number of lawsuits referring to its employment document. In a single, armored truck drivers claimed the corporate didn’t pay staff for time beyond regulation hours, in accordance with Bloomberg Information. One other declare accused the corporate of paying safety guards lower than the obligatory minimal wage for such a place.

A proposed class motion lawsuit in 2025 argued {that a} cyberattack led to an information breach that compromised delicate worker knowledge, together with Social Safety numbers. GardaWorld agreed to a $1.5 million settlement to resolve the proposed class motion lawsuit

In one more lawsuit, a former safety supervisor filed a whistleblower criticism alleging {that a} GardaWorld enterprise unit defrauded the federal authorities by billing the State Division for insufficiently skilled safety personnel stationed on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.