AG: ICE is Building a Holding Facility in Billings, Montana
I had a tipster who was sending me traffic that the Feds appear to be building some sort of holding facility in Billings, Montana. Here's the message I received earlier in the week:
I didn't know if you covered this on your show or if you are aware of the processing center the Feds are building on 6th Ave North. I have obtained a set of plans for it last week. Has holding/ processing et.c just like at a jail.
I've been running some traps trying to pin down some concrete info. In the meantime, I had Montana's rock-solid Attorney General Austin Knudsen (R-MT) on the radio Thursday morning, and he told me that he has confirmed that ICE (federal Immigration & Customs Enforcement) is building some sort of a holding or detention facility in Billings.
AG Knudsen: We've run this to ground a little bit, to the extent that we're able, because I was getting the same tips here. And we had several tips coming to the State Department of Justice. Hey, what's going on? What information did we have? Obviously, the Biden administration is not talking to me, because I sue them over their border and immigration policies. But we have confirmed, I mean, we've gotten some information from various sources, but also from the Billings planning department. ICE is building some sort of a processing/detention facility here in Billings. That much I think we can confirm...We do know that they're building some sort of holding cells. I mean, we haven't seen any kind of architectural plans or anything like that, but it begs the question, how much communication have we had? What do we know about this? Are they going to be bringing illegals in for processing? Are they going to be trying to landing them here at the Billings airport? I mean, these are just all the questions we don't have any information about.
Aaron Flint: Yeah, cuz if they're bringing, if they're building a detention facility that would be designed to ship the illegals out of Montana. Okay, that's one thing. But if they're building a facility designed to bring them into Montana- we got problems.
AG Knudsen: Yeah, I mean, again- questions we don't have any answers to. This was kind of like you- a tipster that turned into a couple of tipsters and we started trying to run it down.
Update: On Thursday afternoon, I heard from Jessica Fust, the Buildings and Facilities Manager for the City of Billings. She told me that ICE is building a new office location in Billings.
They are currently located in the Judge Jameson building at 2900 4th Ave N. The new location is an existing building at 1711 6th Ave N. It is about a 3,000 square foot interior remodel project that began construction earlier this year.
Fust says that the new ICE location will have two holding cells for temporary detainment.