Yellow Jacket InitiativeBy E. Lawrence Anderson, Yellow Jacket Initiative
On Monday, October 26, 2026, the Department of Homeland Security's Office of Inspector General released report OIG-27-01, the results of an unannounced inspection of ICE's El Paso Enhanced Hardened Facility in El Paso, Texas. The inspection ran from Tuesday, July 15 to Thursday, July 17, 2025. The booking data cover Monday, March 10 to Monday, September 1, 2025. Every figure below is from the report, read on October 29, 2026.
The facility is closed. That matters, and it comes first.
ICE's side, and the strongest innocent reading. ICE told the inspector general that it removed all detainees from the facility and ended its contract on August 27, 2025, and that it has no plans to house detainees there again. Because of that, the OIG administratively closed all six of its recommendations, while reserving the option to reopen them if ICE resumes housing detainees at the site. ICE objected to the OIG issuing and closing the recommendations that way. ICE neither concurred nor nonconcurred with them, calling them overcome by events. According to ICE personnel, ICE kept the short-term standards it inherited because the existing contract, set up under Customs and Border Protection, named them, and because ICE intended to hold people there for short periods. The OIG says ICE gave timely responses and did not delay or deny access to information.
What the facility was. CBP operated the site from January 2023 to February 2025 as a temporary processing location, then transferred it to ICE on March 10, 2025. Detainees were housed in a large, reinforced tent structure divided into pods, and arranged sleeping pads on the floor. ICE kept applying CBP's TEDS standards (the National Standards on Transport, Escort, Detention, and Search). Under TEDS, CBP should generally not hold detainees longer than 72 hours. TEDS does not require comprehensive on-site medical care, access to legal services or a law library, or classification of detainees by risk. The OIG notes that the facility transferred detainees with identified medical needs to another facility and allowed detainees to call their attorneys.
What the inspector general measured.
- The average booking lasted 108 hours, or 4.5 days, against TEDS' 72-hour standard.
- 6,951 of 15,975 bookings (44%) ran longer than 72 hours. 17% ran longer than a week.
- 992 people were booked in more than once. In 268 instances, a day or less passed between a book-out and the next book-in. Giving the example of one detainee with two 3-day bookings within 7 days, the OIG says such bookings, though each complied on its own, together "effectively constituted a continuous period of detention" past 72 hours.
The OIG also found:
- an incident on June 15, 2025 that the facility documented as a "disturbance," with no use of force described in the incident report, though video shows officers using force; the OIG says it should have been reported as a use of force;
- property belonging to at least two detainees misplaced or lost;
- noncompliance with TEDS hygiene and food-and-beverage standards;
- high-risk and low-risk detainees housed together, which TEDS does not prohibit.
What the report does not establish.
- It is about one facility, now closed, and about 2025. It says nothing directly about sites ICE operates today.
- The counts are bookings, not people. The OIG says available data did not give total time in custody for each detainee.
- ICE's reasons for keeping TEDS, and its contract end date, are ICE's statements to the inspector general.
- Whether other temporary sites now in use follow short-term or long-term detention standards is not addressed.
Why we are following it. Our detention research tracks where the money and the capacity go, and checks announcements against the contract record. This report is something different: the inspector general's measured account of how a short-term, soft-sided site performed when it was used for longer holding. ICE is adding temporary capacity now, including a temporary facility at Port Isabel, Texas, on a September 10 contract we reported on October 24. The El Paso numbers are a record of what the standard on paper and the time in custody looked like at one such site.
Primary source: DHS Office of Inspector General, Results of an Unannounced Inspection of ICE's El Paso Enhanced Hardened Facility in El Paso, Texas, OIG-27-01 (Oct. 26, 2026).
Read the text.
Independent Research. All Documents Freely Reproducible.