Overview

El Valle Detention Facility is an active ICE detention facility at 1800 Industrial Drive in Raymondville, Willacy County, TX, operated by Management & Training Corporation (MTC) under an IGSA (70CDCR23DIG000007). It opened in 2018 on the same site as the former Willacy County Correctional Center — the notorious Kevlar-tent “Ritmo” (Raymondville’s Gitmo) federal facility that a 2015 inmate riot rendered uninhabitable, forcing its 2015-2017 closure and the transfer of all ~2,800 inmates elsewhere. MTC, the same operator, later rebuilt/reopened the site as El Valle. This is the currently operational facility on this stretch of Industrial Drive — the “tent city” itself is closed and gone, but the site did not stay dark.

Average daily population per Vera Institute ICE Detention Trends data: 922 — making this one of the larger active ICE facilities in South Texas, well above the county-jail-scale numbers at the nearby Willacy County Regional Detention Center (see companion entry).

Key Details

• Operator: MTC (Management & Training Corporation), same contractor that ran the original Willacy tent-city facility before its 2015 riot closure.
• IGSA: 70CDCR23DIG000007 P00001, ICE AOR: Harlingen / San Antonio Field Office.
• 2025 Alien Enemies Act litigation: Venezuelan men held at El Valle were among those the Trump administration attempted to deport in March 2025 under Presidential Proclamation 10903 (invoking the Alien Enemies Act against alleged Tren de Aragua members). U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. (a Trump appointee, Southern District of Texas) ruled in April/May 2025 that this use of the Act was unlawful, blocking the deportations — one of several district rulings nationally that halted Alien Enemies Act removals in spring 2025.
• Bond-hearing exposure: El Valle detainees sit squarely inside the Fifth Circuit, which in Buenrostro-Mendez v. Bondi (Feb 6, 2026) upheld indefinite no-bond detention under 8 U.S.C. § 1225(b)(2)(A) — see bond-hearing-circuit-split-2026. NOTE FOR FOLLOW-UP: a July 2, 2026 Fifth Circuit panel ruling (reported by the Texas Tribune) held the government cannot hold undocumented immigrants more than 90 days without a bond hearing — this appears to be a second, later Fifth Circuit panel decision that may conflict with or narrow Buenrostro-Mendez. Not yet reconciled with the existing circuit- split note as of this write-up; flagging for the next research pass rather than asserting a resolution here.

Why It Matters

El Valle demonstrates that a “closed” notorious facility site does not mean the county exits the detention pipeline — the same operator (MTC) returned to the same Raymondville site under a new name and a new IGSA, with a daily population (922) that dwarfs the original heat-score signal’s framing. Willacy County carries both a live, large-scale ICE facility AND active circuit-split bond litigation risk for the people held there.

Sources

• El Valle Detention Facility — Wikipedia
• El Valle Detention Facility — ICE facility page
• 70CDCR23DIG000007 P00001: El Valle Detention Facility IGSA – Raymondville, TX — ICE
• Trump-appointed federal judge blocks use of Alien Enemies Act for Venezuelans in South Texas — NPR (May 1, 2025)
• Federal judge rules against Trump, halts deportation of Venezuelans held in Texas under wartime act — Texas Tribune (Apr 11, 2025)
• Appeals court says undocumented migrants must get hearing — Texas Tribune (Jul 2, 2026)
• Willacy County Correctional Center — Wikipedia (tent-city history/closure)
• bond-hearing-circuit-split-2026