A US-based facility management services company that owns and partially operates two ICE immigration jails.
Target Hospitality Corp. (no relationship to retail company Target Corporation) is a Texas-based rental and facility management services company that specializes in providing temporary workforce lodging (“man camps”) for workers in the fossil fuel industry. The company was formed in 2019 by private equity firm TDR Capital as a merger of Target Logistics Management and RL Signor Holdings.
Target Hospitality owns, maintains, and provides food services at the South Texas Family Residential Center (STFRC) in Dilley, Texas, the largest immigration jail in the United States, with 2,556 beds. The jail opened in 2014 as a youth and family detention center—operated by private prison company CoreCivic—to “increase [the Department of Homeland Security’s] capacity to detain and expedite the removal of adults with children” who cross the U.S.–Mexico border. In 2021, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released families from its three largest family detention centers, placing many of them into alternative forms of incarceration such as electronic monitoring. The last families were released from the STFRC in December 2021, after which it continued to serve as an adult immigration jail. According to ICE, the agency intends to terminate its contract with CoreCivic for services at the STFRC and close the immigration jail by August 2024, allowing the agency to “reallocate funding” to increase its immigration jailing capacity by 1,600 beds across its immigration jails. Target Hospitality still retains ownership of the STFRC.
Target Hospitality also owns the Pecos Children’s Center, a 2,000-bed immigration jail in Pecos, Texas. The immigration jail, formerly named the Pecos Emergency Intake Site, was converted in 2021 from a camp for oil workers into a so-called shelter for holding unaccompanied children who arrive at the U.S.–Mexico border. As of March 2024, the site holds no children but “must be ready to resume operations and accept children within four weeks if needed,” according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). The jail is still operated by Endeavors, a Texas-based nonprofit that provides “migrant wellness” and transition services.
Unsafe conditions at Pecos Children’s Center have repeatedly been documented by immigrant rights organizations and U.S. news outlets. In August 2021, for example, news media reported that children held at the Pecos jail experienced poor conditions, including undercooked food, prolonged stays, and long wait times for medical care. After at least two children experienced “suicidal episodes” at Pecos in early 2021, immigrant rights group RAICES stated that the reports it received “from both attorneys and clients on the conditions at Pecos are the worst [it has] ever observed.”
Target Hospitality also supports the extractive oil and gas industry in the U.S., providing housing camps for workers. The company serves most major fossil fuel companies that drill for oil and gas in the U.S., including Chevron and its subsidiary Noble Energy, ConocoPhillips, Halliburton, Royal Dutch Shell, and TransCanada, responsible for developing the Keystone XL pipeline project that was canceled in 2021.