Yves here. The fact presented in the headline is bad enough, but the potential expenditures, even more so, since it shows how Trump’s DHS is setting up widespread incarceration centers. Calling them concentration camps does not seem to be an exaggeration, particularly in light of the massive ICE civil rights abuses in Minneapolis and elsewhere. The fact that the amount potentially available for mass jailing has increased from an already troubling $10 billion to $55 billion speaks to both the scale of the planned imprisonments and looting.
By Stephen Prager, staff writer at Common Dreams. Originally published at Common Dreams
In the wake of immigration agents’ killings of three US citizens within a matter of weeks, the Department of Homeland Security is quietly moving forward with a plan to expand its capacity for mass detention by using a military contract to create what Pablo Manríquez, the author of the immigration news site Migrant Insider calls “a nationwide ‘ghost network’ of concentration camps.”
On Sunday, Manríquez reported that “a massive Navy contract vehicle, once valued at $10 billion, has ballooned to a staggering $55 billion ceiling to expedite President Donald Trump’s ‘mass deportation’ agenda.”
It is the expansion of a contract first reported on in October by CNN, which found that DHS was “funneling $10 billion through the Navy to help facilitate the construction of a sprawling network of migrant detention centers across the US in an arrangement aimed at getting the centers built faster, according to sources and federal contracting documents.”
SCOOP: A repurposed Navy contract to funnel tens of billions to ICE for a nationwide “ghost network” of concentration camps—just got a lot bigger. https://t.co/yvzszpD8t2
— Pablo Manríquez (@PabloReports) February 2, 2026
The report describes the money as being allocated for “new detention centers,” which “are likely to be primarily soft-sided tents and may or may not be built on existing Navy installations, according to the sources familiar with the initiative. DHS has often leaned on soft-sided facilities to manage influxes of migrants.”
According to a source familiar with the project, “the goal is for the facilities to house as many as 10,000 people each, and are expected to be built in Louisiana, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Utah, and Kansas.”
Now Manríquez reports that the project has just gotten much bigger after a Navy grant was repurposed weeks ago. It was authorized through the Worldwide Expeditionary Multiple Award Contract (WEXMAC), a flexible purchasing system that the government uses to quickly move military equipment to dangerous and remote parts of the world.
The contract states that the money is being repurposed for “TITUS,” an abbreviation for “Territorial Integrity of the United States.” While it’s not unusual for Navy contracts to be used for expenditures aimed at protecting the nation, Manríquez warned that such a staggering movement of funds for domestic detention points to something ominous.
“This $45 billion increase, published just weeks ago, converts the US into a ‘geographic region’ for expeditionary military-style detention,” he wrote. “It signals a massive, long-term escalation in the government’s capacity to pay for detention and deportation logistics. In the world of federal contracting, it is the difference between a temporary surge and a permanent infrastructure.”
He says the use of the military funding mechanism is meant to disburse funds quickly, without the typical bidding war among contractors, which would typically create a period of public scrutiny. Using the Navy contract means that new projects can be created with “task orders,” which can be turned around almost immediately, when “specific dates and locations are identified” by DHS.
“It means the infrastructure is currently a ‘ghost’ network that can be materialized anywhere in the US the moment a site is picked,” Manríquez wrote.
Amid its push to deport 1 million people each year, the White House has said it needs to dramatically increase the scale of its detention apparatus to add more beds for those who are arrested. But Manríquez said documents suggest “this isn’t just about bed space; it’s about the rapid deployment of self-contained cities.”
In addition to tent cities capable of housing thousands, contract line items include facilities meant for sustained living—including closed tents likely for medical treatment and industrial-sized grills for food preparation.
They also include expenditures on “Force Protection” equipment, like earth-filled defensive barriers, 8-foot-high CONEX box walls, and “Weather Resistant” guard shacks.
Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and health economist, said the contract’s provision of materials meant to deal with medical needs and death was “extra chilling.” According to the report, “services extend to ‘Medical Waste Management,’ with specific protocols for biohazard incinerators.”
Graphic from Bloomberg
The new reporting from Migrant Insider comes on the heels of a report last week from Bloomberg that US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has used some of the $45 billion to purchase warehouses in nearly two dozen remote communities, each meant to house thousands of detainees, which it said “could be the largest expansion of such detention capacity in US history.”
The plans have been met with backlash from locals, even in the largely Republican-leaning areas where they are being constructed:
This month, demonstrators protested warehouse conversions in New Hampshire, Utah, Texas and Georgia after the Washington Post published an earlier version of the conversion plan.
In mid-January, a planned tour for contractors of a potential warehouse site in San Antonio was canceled after protesters showed up the same day, according to a person familiar with the scheduled visit.
In Salt Lake City, the Ritchie Group, a local family business that owns the warehouse ICE identified as a future “mega center” jail, said it had “no plans to sell or lease the property in question to the federal government” after protesters showed up at their offices to pressure them.
On January 20, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) joined hundreds of protesters outside a warehouse in Hagerstown, Maryland, that was set to be converted into a facility that will hold 1,500 people.
The senator called the construction of it and other detention facilities “one of the most obscene, one of the most inhumane, one of the most illegal operations being carried out by this Trump administration.”
Reports of a new influx of funding from the Navy come as Democrats in Congress face pressure to block tens of billions in new funding for DHS and ICE during budget negotiations.
“If Congress does nothing, DHS will continue to thrive,” Manríquez said. “With three more years pre-funded, plus a US Navy as a benefactor, Secretary Kristi Noem—or any potential successor—has the legal and financial runway to keep the business of creating ICE concentration camps overnight in American communities running long after any news cycle fades.”
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Just waiting for the cover of a war to implement a final solution.
If that was the material used to construct the temporary camp buildings, would it be the vinyl solution?
Oh, that’s funny. It is always good to maintain a sense of humor. Good work.
Like that pool party scene in the film “The Graduate.”
“I’ve got one word for you son,” he uttered, “plastique.”
The by party demonasation of Cuba has been sad to watch over the decades.
Another case of the two parties basically having the same policies
And what could have been by opening up trade and all that instead of strangulation?
I want to believe that trumps short term “wins” will equal long term losses but?
Sorry I don’t know how I posted this here.
You posted this here because demonizing external “enemies” to whip up “patriotism” at home goes hand in glove with the suppression of domestic “enemies” as defined by the regime. It all works together to advance today’s quite reactionary economic and political elites’ policies.
Stay safe.
Agree, seems appropriate to me too.
On-shoring Guantanamo.
racism-related
Lawrence Wilkerson with Glenn Diesen about the scandal that Hegseth ordered to remove Powell´s memorabilia from the Pentagon because “black man.” Wilkerson expects something smiliar to happen at the War College.
First three minutes:
Lawrence Wilkerson: Trump Withdrawing from the Middle East & Europe?
Febr. 3rd 2026
https://glenndiesen.substack.com/p/lawrence-wilkerson-trump-withdrawing
There is a decent amount of the electorate that is ALL for the development of these camps – how one quantifies it, I don’t know. but I do know I’ve spoken with some 3 x Trump voters who are all in on this kind of action. Their reasoning is a mixture, from why should we support a concerted action by Democrats to replace our votes with illegal immigrants (there is some evidence Dems pushed more immigrants in to “red” states to tip the election balance in their favor), to pure law and order arguments (illegally crossing border = breaking the law), to we have enough people without good jobs here and these new arrivals depress our bottom 1/4s wages.
What I have NOT heard from any of them is race based arguments.
How we square this circle, I don’t know…
I hope you corrected them and pointed out it is the techbros that are suppressing wages.
Their argument seems odd to me though. Weren’t MAGAts the vast majority of the anti-FEMA loonies a decade ago? Shipping containers and coffins being warehoused in Malwarts across the country, preparing to ‘take all the guns’ and put americans in camps and all that paranoia.
Maybe Carolinian has more direct info, but after Helene hit the Carolinas and Tennessee, it was they that threatened to shoot FEMA and other feds on sight.
Ah, silly me Biden was in at the time.
The key videotape heavily circulated in patriot militia circles after Ruby Ridge/ Waco was Mark Koernke’s 1993 America in Peril (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAqQ8W8ECUU).
It’s interesting to watch now, both for the bogus stuff (UN one world government, nativist fears or foreign FINCEN troops), and the stuff that looks a lot like ICE’s mandate (MJTF forces, FEMA camps, regional governments under control of the executive branch).
Koernke was in leadership of the Michigan Militia, if I remember right. What made the federalized ATF/ FBI/ SWAT police back down back then, if they did back down?
Simple: the current target of the icestapo are blue areas which never have open carry laws.
Minnesota is an open carry state.
I doubt the average racist is just going open up in public about it. But to be fair, there are plenty of non-racially based arguments against mass immigration, the primary one being that it squeezes down the labor rate and contributes to the immiseration of the working and now middle classes. The racialization of the immigration “debate”/endless street fight has snuffed out all economic discourse around the topic. It’s gotten to the point of concentration camps, storm troopers, and mass censorship in large part because talking about the effect on the labor market became taboo and so the laborers have mostly starting screaming back into the void.
Why must the circle be squared? Maybe they are saying what they think, and race isn’t a part of it.
Well Hillary mused publicly about sending Trump voters to “Reeducation” camps. So I’m sure some of them are thinking better get the Dems first.
We have been getting good coverage of this issue by local news here in Minneapolis in the past few weeks:
Concerns raised about potential plan to turn vacant Woodbury warehouse into ICE detention facility
Lots of wordplay around the word “tent”, they want the focus on that particular keyword. Exploiting our tendency to think of “soft-sided” structures as impermanent. And concentration camps were only camps, too.
Intensities in tent cities in ten cities…
Sometimes a wigwam.
Other times a teepee.
Too tense. ;p
How long will it take to detain and deport 100 million people (all non-white)? Will these concentration camps then be torn down when the job is done and the United States is a 100% white evangelican christian zionist nation?
So, a US gulag, under construction.
re: Dems´ complicity
JACOBIN
Democrats Aren’t Reining in ICE. Here’s How They Could.
ICE is out of control. Democrats have numerous ways to restrain the agency, from barring ICE from domestic spying and terminating its contracts with tech companies to creating and fully funding an independent body to investigate its many abuses.
By Branko Marcetic
https://jacobin.com/2026/02/democrats-ice-killings-congress-reforms
“(…)
Most absurdly, Democrats are doing this even as leading members of the party widely compare ICE to the Gestapo, Adolf Hitler’s secret police. Take a second to think about that: the Democrats believe ICE is literally transforming into the feared secret police used by an infamous dictator to kill and jail his political opposition but are going to punt on their one big chance to halt that same transformation.
Democratic leaders would likely counter that, no matter what the polling says, outright abolishing ICE is still too radical a position that would prove unpopular. Let’s, for the sake of argument, grant them that. But there are plenty of serious reforms that would meaningfully change ICE and other DHS agencies’ conduct for the better — if any lawmakers actually took them up.
(…)
Way before agents terrorized Minneapolis this winter, they were using that surveillance to target journalists, activists, protesters, and immigration attorneys — in other words, Americans exercising their constitutional rights.
(…)
If Democrats truly believe what they say about the dangers of Trump’s deportation machine, then they can’t act like there will be a later, better time to do something about it.
(…)”
p.s. No surprise – surveillance state was set up by the uniparty and carried on and expanded since
Great article.
Sure the Democrats could do all of that.
They won’t.
But they could!
Jacobin writers just peddle the most inane propaganda for the Dem party.
‘…The senator called the construction of it and other detention facilities “one of the most obscene, one of the most inhumane, one of the most illegal operations being carried out by this Trump administration….” ‘
Illegal yes, but there is a long list of bipartisan crimes here: genocide, siege warfare resulting in the deaths of untold thousands – mostly women and children, and now on a personal level, we can very likely add child rape and abuse to some of these people. Oh well, despite the typical, pandering partisan hypocrisy from the senator, no one will be held to account for some of the most heinous crimes in history.
Hmm…genocide, mass slaughter of children, murdering US citizens, concentration camps…”Are we the baddies?”
If these ‘authorities’ were kind and just minded then all I could say is stop subverting the countries where their people lose hope and leave their homeland for some glimmer of opportunity. But that is not the case. Fie!
Spend the money on social uplift here, and there.
From my experience, the reporting seems somewhat sketchy, though I don’t dispute that the intent is to procure detention sites.
The Economy Act allows intra-governmental use of contracts. Part of what makes a good bureaucrat is figuring to how to use existing contract vehicles to avoid having to go through the new contract process.
The Navy (NAVSUP) will get some overhead money for their contracting shop, but for a long time contract administration has been a DoD/DoW function via DCAS. DCAS will get some overhead money.
The contract is “indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity” (IDIQ) meaning DHS will send funding documents for specific things and task orders will be exercised on the basis contracted for. So the contract mod award comes with no actual money. I suppose anything billed as “world-wide” would include the US.
From contract data site (AI generated): “The prime contractor, African Contract Solutions Inc. (doing business as Global Strategies Global Solutions), is a veteran-owned, service-disabled veteran-owned small business that will perform the work worldwide, both inside and outside the United States. The contract was awarded under FAR Part 15 without any set-aside designations”. If I owned “African Contract Solutions” I would be very happy.
Contract N00023-25-D0005
Our local old-man billionaire got in hot water last week when someone found out his company was selling a $50M warehouse to ICE in Virginia. It was all over national news. He backtracked immediately.
BC’s Pattison Says Ice Warehouse Sale Won’t Proceed:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/article/bcs-pattison-says-ice-warehouse-sale-wont-proceed/
Perhaps now he is going to “donate” the use of the facility in exchange for the “free” labour the inmates could provide for his other interests?
Stay safe. Stay out of the clutches of the Organs of State Security.
ICE is looking for another Virginia location. There are plenty of these buildings available, particularly in the outer exurban reaches of the Imperial capital.
I don’t think that Democrats have the sand to be an effective opposition. And ICE is not out of control. ICE is a paramilitary organization, not a law enforcement organization. They appear to have no law enforcement training. They have difficulty with people in vehicles because they don’t know how to direct traffic, block traffic, or even characterize and label vehicles that enter their perimeters. They have “leaders” but no actual leadership for real law enforcement agencies to contact and coordinate with. Their “leaders” do not maintain effective functional heirarchies to transmit orders and information, instead a “leader” is just a big dog who says “come on guys, let’s fuck these people.” No one is responsible for what they do, because ICE does not keep the same kind of records and documentation that law enforcement does. And they do not have rules of engagement like the military does. Again ICE is a PARAMILITARY. They give contradictory orders to civilian bystanders and to detainees, because one ICE operative does not know and has not been made to care, what the immediate task on site is, or what the guy next to him is supposed to do. There is no real planning, no effective assignment to the diverse tasks that make it possible to control an area or an incident, other than with random “us versus them” violence.
There are a lot of interviews online of local police and local people who have military service. Both groups are not just horrified by the violence, they are horrified by the amorphousness and disorganization from which that violence arises.
The United States has long had one very large paramilitary organization, the CIA. Now, with the recent growth of ICE, it has another. Regime change is a big part of the goal for both organizations, foreign regime change for the CIA (well, mostly), and for ICE? Domestic regime change, in blue cities and states.
Paramilitaries are partisans in wars that have no rules. American peacemaking has come home.
Remember, everything trump is doing is to elicit a violent response so he can implement the insurrection act. He may wait awhile until more concentration camps are built.
Only a law abiding government needs an excuse. Does that term remotely describe this administration?
We’ve hit the tipping point here in MN- a majority of my contacts, both personal and business, think that the insurrection act invocation is inevitable and will be used to cancel elections. There’s no point in tiptoeing around something that’s going to happen anyway.
This is what we should be watching. The insurrection act followed by martial law followed y cancelled elections.
Republicans will lose the house and perhaps even the Senate. If that happens, many people in the Trump administration know they’ll be going to jail. They will do anything not to have another election where they might lose.
They could take refuge in Venezuela. I hear that the Bolivarian Republic does not have an extradition treaty with the United States. I’m certain that ‘they’ could get reasonable rates for travel from Air America.
Stay safe.
I imagine Miller and his ilk are hoping to stock the camps with leftists and election officials.
Well done, Clwydshire. The Dems have so consistently brought a ‘knife to a gunfight’ I no longer consider them an actual party. They seem to exist only to fend off any move towards the left, and to scoop up as much loot as possible. At some point in the future, I hope we can do away with the two party system.
55 Billion$ for quick-deploy tent cities? Waste, fraud, and abuse.
Not to mention the entire thing stinks to high heaven–like Trump’s diapers.
Somehow it feels a bit obscene to say “I told you so.”
I have been “joking” about FEMA repurposing abandoned malls and factory buildings for “Re-education Centres” for a year or so. It is sad to consider that this “conspiracy theory” has become the latest such to have been proven true.
You can never be too cynical.
Stay safe.
The question for me is whether the next (likely Democrat) regime will close them?
Think Guantanamo Bay.
Think of all the lobbies that will be getting rich from this “system”, and the careers based on it.
I also thought the intention was to deport people, so this does sound odd. Are they purely intended as transit camps?
My own sense is that there is far more continuity across regimes than we all like to think.