The Brief

The Trump administration is looking to build an immigration detention facility at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, and pushing to speed up a review process, according to internal government communications obtained by KQED.

The proposed installation is part of an aggressive effort to expand immigration detention nationally, and specifically to use property owned by the U.S. Department of Defense in service of President Donald Trump’s stated goal of deporting 1 million people in his first year in office.

In the early April emails, 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.

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.

A spokesperson for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond directly to questions about Travis Air Force Base, but he did affirm that ICE is actively working to expand detention capacity.

“While we cannot confirm individual pre-decisional conversations, we can confirm that ICE is exploring all options in California to meet its current and future detention requirements, which include new detention facilities and possible support from partner agencies,” a written statement from the agency said.

Officials at Travis Air Force Base declined to comment, and the Department of Defense did not respond to KQED’s request for comment by press time.

Homeland Security officials have been considering at least 10 military bases around the country for immigration detention, NPR has reported. 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.

A U.S. Air Force C-5 Galaxy and a C-17 Globemaster sit on the tarmac at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, on July 17, 2008.

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Saul Loeb

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The revelation that Travis is on the list of military facilities came as a shock to East Bay Rep. John Garamendi, a Democrat and senior member of the House Armed Services Committee whose district includes the Fairfield base.

“Travis Air Force Base is absolutely inappropriate for an immigration detention facility,” Garamendi told KQED. “Travis has a critical national security role of providing worldwide transportation services for personnel and material around the world. An immigration facility would significantly hamper the national security work that Travis is responsible for.”

Earlier this year, Garamendi and other members of Congress raised strenuous opposition when military aircraft from the base — C-17 planes typically meant for troops or cargo — were used for deportation flights to remove immigrants from the country.

“Just in terms of the cost factor, to say nothing of the readiness, every time you take a military aircraft and you use it for purposes that are not directly related to the national security work, that degrades the ability of the military to do what it’s supposed to do,” he said.

Meanwhile, a plan to use the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to detain as many as 30,000 immigrants appears to have been scaled back drastically in the face of obstacles, including public outcry over the $40 million price tag to lock up a couple of hundred men during its first month of operation.

ICE is currently holding nearly 48,000 immigrants in detention facilities nationwide. Last year, ICE’s detention capacity was 41,500 beds. However, last month, Congress added $430,000 to ICE’s current-year detention budget, allowing the agency to increase capacity to 54,500 beds.

The number of detention beds is one factor limiting the Trump administration’s ability to increase deportations. ICE would also need to increase staffing and other resources, beyond last year’s $3.4 billion detention budget, which advocates say was already a historic high. The administration is looking to the Republican-controlled Congress to vastly expand the Homeland Security budget, and the New York Times has reported that ICE has already solicited proposals from contractors worth as much as $45 billion for the next two years.

A KC-10 Extender is parked on the ramp as a C-5M Super Galaxy takes off at Travis Air Force Base, California, March 16, 2017.

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Hum Images

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Universal Images Group via Getty Images

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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 the plan to use Travis and other military facilities for ICE detention represents a more substantial move toward militarizing immigration enforcement.

Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, has called the Department of Defense a “force multiplier” for his deportation plans.

However, Jehan Laner, a senior staff attorney at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center in San Francisco, argues that using military bases for ICE detention violates the Posse Comitatus Act, a 19th-century law that limits the use of military personnel to enforce domestic policies within the U.S.

“Our country is kind of turning toward authoritarianism when you have the military starting to do civil law enforcement,” she said. “It becomes a very scary prospect.”

In a cozy dance studio in Garden Grove, dancers of all experience levels, ages and backgrounds flock to Queer Latin Dance OC to learn the steps to salsa, cumbia and bachata.

For many, the dance class is more than educational — it’s a place to get away from it all, to find community and to uplift one another through art.

When Rodrigo Marquez founded Queer Latin Dance OC at the beginning of this year, he said he was filling a gap in Orange County that often lacks safe spaces for the LGBTQ+ community.

“I wanted to make creative communities for us to learn in a safe environment,” Marquez said. “Everyone's here to learn, and I want the pressure of whatever's going on in the world, just to forget for the next hour.”

Queer Latin Dance OC meets three times a week to learn the steps to salsa, cumbia and bachata.

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Destiny Torres

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What are the dance lessons like? 

When creating his teaching plan, Marquez said he considers the range of experience his students might have. Everybody starts somewhere, he added, and the hardest part is showing up.

“It is scary, but if you're already showing up, then just jump in and just forget about the world. It's a great distraction, and dancing makes you feel better,” Marquez said.

Philip Lee, an elementary school teacher from Tustin, took his first class with the group Monday night, trying the quick steps of salsa.

“I had a stressful day. … All my stress that I had in my neck and upper back just kind of went away,” Lee said, adding that the high energy in the room is infectious. “It was nice just laughing with people in the community and meeting new people.”

Lee said the dance lesson gave him a space to be with community.

“The queer community specifically, and just kind of let my guard down and just be free and laugh and enjoy being me and celebrated for a love for the arts,” Lee said. “That's not a space that is always safe.”

Before taking lessons at Queer Latin Dance OC, Melba Rivera said she came in with zero dance experience.

“You come as you are. No matter what level you're at or how you identify or what your experience is, everybody's here and everybody's learning,” Rivera said. “It's a very encouraging and motivating space.”

Salsa and bachata are social dances, Marquez said, but one thing that makes his class unique to many is that regardless of gender identity, anyone can follow or lead.

Typically, the lead falls to the male dancer, and women follow. Marquez said it was important that no one feels pressured to be one or the other.

“That's why I created this, so people like me can just come and learn, not be expected to be in a gender role based on how they look,” Marquez said. “They want to dance how they feel.”

Why it matters

Taryn Heiner said, especially in Orange County, it’s challenging to find spaces that are queer-friendly and queer-open.

“That's really what makes this space so kind and warm and welcoming,” Heiner said. “We have all that base understanding of respecting one another, no matter who they are, who they love and what they do.”

Growing up in Orange County, not every room you walk into is a safe space, Rivera added.

“So walking into a room like this, where everybody's friendly, everybody's learning, everybody's just here for the same purpose to get better, to support each other, is really important,” Rivera said. “Not just in the class, but [in] the friendships we make outside of the classroom.”

Outside of dance class, Marquez’s students meet up for monthly hikes and other get-togethers. Marquez said it is a privilege and an honor to bring people together through his love for dance.

“I've seen people become friends since January, and I see them practice outside of practice,” Marquez said. “I've always had a dream to do my own dance classes, but to do it in a way where people can connect and just be themselves. It's far greater than that.”

Queer Latin Dance OC offers lessons to dancers of all experience levels and has created a new community hub in Orange County.

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Destiny Torres

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LAist

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Want to dance? 

Salsa, cumbia and bachata classes are held three nights a week on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Classes are $20 per session, but Marquez also offers a free beginner salsa class every Monday.

You can register for the class of your choice here. Payments are taken in person.

Border Patrol agents have been roving from city to city over the last 15 months, far from their home bases in California and elsewhere along the U.S.-Mexico border, engaged in an unprecedented mass deportation campaign.

A collaboration between CalMatters, Evident Media and Bellingcat has tracked these agents, documenting their tactics on the ground and through mountains of video footage, since their first proof-of-concept raid in Bakersfield in January 2025.

Exactly one year later, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renée Good in Minneapolis, followed weeks later by the killing of Alex Pretti by a Border Patrol agent.

Our investigation shows that beyond those two shootings, immigration agents engaged in a pattern of force and questionable detention, aggressive tactics that courts have said likely violated the Constitution, as they moved from Bakersfield to Los Angeles, and then Chicago and Minneapolis.

In each city, federal courts stepped in to restrain them from violating civil liberties in that jurisdiction. Agents later deployed to another city. The video evidence suggests agents’ tactics became more brazen with each stop.

Under President Donald Trump, immigration agents have operated without typical public accountability. Many agents wear masks. Incident reports are largely hidden from the public.

“We are in a completely uncharted world now with these masked agents,” said John Roth, who served as inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security under Presidents Barack Obama and Trump.

“The first thing that you do when you give an agent a gun and a badge and the authority over American people is to make sure that they follow the Constitution, period,” he said.

In this new film, we focus on the activity of five agents from the US-Mexico border whose identities we’ve been able to confirm.

Watch the documentary

We are not aware of any disciplinary action taken against these agents. DHS did not respond to requests for comment; the individual agents either declined to comment or didn’t respond to calls or emails.

We showed the incidents to Roth and Steve Bunnell, former DHS general counsel. Both have testified before Congress, raising the alarm about what they see as a dismantling of the department’s accountability and credibility. Roth called the incidents “difficult to watch.”

“There are sort of two essential components of DHS and law enforcement generally being effective, and that’s trust and credibility,” Bunnell said. “And they have lost those things to the extent they had them.”