President Donald Trump plans to pour billions of dollars into building an infrastructure for mass deportations, but he will hit a wall in Illinois where existing laws prohibit immigration detention.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is seeking contractors for what it describes as emergency detention that would include detention facilities, transportation, security guards and medical support estimated to top $45 billion, the New York Times reported .

Across the country, more than 41,000 immigrants were detained by ICE as of February, according to an analysis from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. ICE has not made public exactly how many people the agency arrested in Chicago in the first weeks of Trump’s second term.

The amount of money ICE plans to use is “staggering and shocking” given that the agency’s detention budget had been around $3.5 billion, said Jesse Franzblau, senior policy analyst for the National Immigrant Justice Center. It can also be difficult to get information before a contract is signed especially since Trump is using an emergency power to expand the number of detention beds.

The plan to expand detention is reflective of Trump’s campaign promises to deport as many people as possible, immigration advocates said.

“It’s extremely expensive so what the Trump administration is doing is spending money that could be spent on health care or education and instead spending it on detaining people, the vast majority whom have no criminal record, are family members and contributing members to their communities,” said Tovia Siegel, director of organizing and leadership for the Chicago-based Resurrection Project.

Are immigrants detained in Illinois?

Immigration detention ended in 2022 in Illinois following the passage of the Illinois Way Forward. The law survived challenges from two counties — McHenry and Kankakee — that wanted to keep contracts with the federal government to detain people in immigration custody.

The Illinois Way Forward Act called for local entities across the state to end existing contracts to detain those in immigration custody, and it prohibited law enforcement and other local entities from entering into similar contracts in the future.

Where are Chicago-area immigrants detained by ICE being held?

Immigrants arrested by ICE are being held in out-of-state county jails that have contracts with the federal government to detain people facing deportation.

Many of those arrested in the Chicago area have ended up at the Clay County Justice Center in Indiana and the Dodge County Jail in Wisconsin, according to immigration advocates.

Can private detention centers be built in Illinois?

Private immigration facilities have been banned in Illinois since 2019 when Gov. JB Pritzker signed the Private Detention Facility Moratorium Act into law.

The law prohibits local government entities from entering into agreements or receiving payments from private companies for civil detention services. This law was an extension of a measure that was already in place in Illinois that banned private prisons for those convicted of criminal charges.

The ban happened just as Virginia-based Immigration Centers of America was attempting to build a private detention facility in Dwight , about two hours away from Chicago.

Where in the Midwest could a private detention facility be built?

The GEO Group, a for-profit prison company, announced in March that it secured a contract with ICE to turn the company’s North Lake Correctional Facility in Michigan into an immigration detention center, the Detroit Free Press reported.

There’s also an effort by ICE officials in Kansas to turn a shuttered prison owned by CoreCivic into a private immigration detention facility, said Franzblau, of the National Immigrant Justice Center. The facilities in Michigan and Kansas would increase the number of potential beds to nearly 3,000.

“So this means that people detained in Chicago or in the area or throughout Illinois, could be sent to these prisons to be held under ICE detention,” Franzblau said. “That would significantly expand the detention bed space in the region, and as we’ve seen over the years whenever there’s more detention (beds) there are more people picked up.”

Siegel, of the Resurrection Project, said it will be important to expand legal services for Chicago immigrants who could be detained in other states.

“When people are detained far from where they’re from, far from where their attorney is located, it makes it really difficult for their attorney to provide the highest quality legal counsel because it’s difficult to get in contact consistently with clients,” Siegel said. “It’s hard for family members to be able to visit, to deal with the emotional burden of a person who’s been ripped away from their home, not to mention, of course, the economic burden of a breadwinner being taken away from the family.”

What is ICE’s alternatives to detention program?

The federal agency uses electronic monitoring — ranging from an ankle monitor to phone apps — to monitor immigrants who are facing deportation proceedings but are not detained at a jail or facility.

The federal agency has widely expanded in recent years its use of this program in the Chicago field office, which includes Illinois, Indiana, Wisconsin, Missouri, Kentucky and Kansas.

In September 2019, there were 2,921 people monitored by ICE. As of March, there were 19,727 immigrants monitored by the agency, according to TRAC.

How can I find out the location of someone in ICE custody?

To search for someone in ICE custody, go to locator.ice.gov/odls/#/search . The website, operated by ICE, will ask for the person’s name and country of birth. For additional support, Chicago-area residents can call a hotline, 855-435-7693, operated by immigration advocates.