A US workforce housing company that owns and partially operates two of the largest US immigration jails.
Target Hospitality (no relationship to the department store chain Target Corporation) is a Texas-based publicly-traded company that specializes in providing logistical support for fossil fuel companies. It was formed in 2019 by private equity firm TDR Capital as the merger of Target Logistics Management with RL Signor Holdings. The company specializes in setting up temporary workforce housing camps (“man camps”) for workers in oil and gas fields. It generated $291.3 million in revenue in 2021.
Target Hospitality owns the largest immigrant jail in the U.S., the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, TX, with 2,556 beds. It opened in 2014 as a youth and family detention center and is operated by CoreCivic, which leases it from Target Hospitality on behalf of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). In 2021, ICE released families from its three large family detention centers, placing many of them in alternative forms of incarceration like electronic monitoring. The last families were released from Dilley in December 2021, and it will continue to serve as an adult immigrant jail. Though families were released from detention, there have been no official policy changes by ICE to prevent families from being detained again in the future. Target Hospitality’s contract with CoreCivic was extended in 2020 until 2026. In addition to owning the property, Target Hospitality is responsible for its maintenance and food service.
Target Hospitality owns another immigrant jail in Pecos, Texas, with a 2,000-bed capacity. The Pecos Children’s Center, originally named the Pecos Emergency Intake Site, was originally an oil field workforce camp and was converted in 2021 to hold unaccompanied youth who arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border. The jail is operated by Endeavors, a Texas-based nonprofit that provides transition and emergency services to immigrants. Of the 14 emergency sites that opened in 2021, only the Pecos site and a center in Fort Bliss, Texas remain open as of 2022.
In addition to providing services to the government, Target Hospitality also supports the U.S. oil and gas extractive industry, providing housing camps for workers. The company serves most major fossil fuel companies drilling for oil and gas in the U.S., including Chevron (and its subsidiary Noble Energy), ConocoPhillips, Halliburton, Royal Dutch Shell, and TransCanada, which was developing the Keystone XL pipeline but had to cancel the project in 2021.