Texas Border Business
EL PASO, Texas — U.S. Customs and Border Protection today announced the opening of a new soft-sided facility in El Paso, Texas. The facility’s primary purpose is to safely and expeditiously process individuals in U.S. Border Patrol custody.
CBP consistently evaluates operational requirements to determine if additional temporary facilities will be needed. The new facility on U.S. Highway 54, with a capacity of 1,000, augments the El Paso Sector U.S. Border Patrol Central Processing Center opened at Hondo Pass in El Paso in the fall of 2020. The current Central Processing Center has a capacity of 1,040.
Since April 2020, CBP has seen a steady increase in border encounters from the Western Hemisphere. The El Paso location was chosen because it is central to El Paso Sector Border Patrol stations throughout West Texas and New Mexico.
The facility is weatherproof, climate-controlled, and is expected to provide ample areas for eating, sleeping, and personal hygiene. The new facility’s design is similar to that of recently constructed soft-sided facilities. The 153,300-square-foot facility sits on 28 acres. The temporary facility will provide additional processing capacity for Border Patrol’s El Paso Sector.
