While most of us were finishing our shopping, wrapping presents, or kicking back with a glass of eggnog, the Washington Post broke a story on Christmas Eve, let’s call it Concentration Camps 3.0.
Recall earlier in the year, we had the first renderings of Stephen Miller’s brainchild Concentration Camps 1.0 in which ICE planned to open formerly defunct prisons across the country to incarcerate detainees in the Trump administration’s mass deportation plan. Then in October, ICE pivoted to a soft-sided structure idea involving six states that would get huge facilities like Alligator Alcatraz and the Fort Bliss monstrosities. But that soon attracted Congressional attention necessitating a GAO report on how ICE does business and spends money (still not published, but one interview given in December by a GAO official was not flattering).
Articles circulated prior to the Washington Post report that ICE was eyeing warehouses along the border with Mexico as a final stop for detainees before deportation out of the US. And now, we have arrived at ICE’s new scheme, 3.0. Allegedly up to 80,000 detainees could be accommodated under this new part of ICE’s operation and the warehouse notion has apparently become the prevailing scheme. Under this plan, seven large scale warehouses will function as holding facilities presumably before final deportation. These mega structures will be capable of holding between 5000-10,000 people. The seven centers are:
- Hutchins, TX
- Baytown, TX
- Glendale, AZ
- Hammond, LA
- Social Circle, GA
- Kansas City, MO
- Stafford, VA
These seven deportation hubs will be fed by fifteen smaller warehouse detention facilities spread throughout the country. The smaller warehouses, sometimes referred to as “quick processing centers” will hold between 500 and 1500 people. ICE plans currently mention the following sites for the smaller warehouse structures:
- Los Fresnos, TX
- El Paso, TX
- San Antonio, TX
- Jefferson, GA
- Port Allen, LA
- Oklahoma City, OK
- Jupiter, FL
- Salt Lake City, UT
- Highland Park, MI
- Merrillville, IN
- Woodbury, MN
- Hagerstown, MD
- Tremont, PA
- Roxbury, NJ
- Merrimack, NH
Interestingly, the six states targeted in the soft-sided 2.0 plan will all receive a warehouse except for Kansas. Instead, Kansas City, Missouri becomes the chosen location. Also notice that Colorado has not been targeted in the warehouse scheme. Our closest warehouses would be in Salt Lake City and Kansas City.
We could speculate on why this structure is being advanced and there certainly is a case to be made that ICE’s plans are evolving due to real-world problems with existing soft-sided facilities and political resistance to the administration’s expansion of detention. It’s likely that the warehouse structure affords a kind of physical protection from the elements that soft-sided facilities did not. Contractors are also not tasked with the complete construction of building sites and whole buildings which can take years. But contractors will have to custom retrofit each site. And it appears that ICE is currently looking for a new set of contractors to do this work.
Will ICE build Concentration Camps 3.0 or will we see another version come to pass? Who knows? It seems that versions 1.0 and 2.0 have been set aside in favor of the warehouse idea. Keeping in mind that ICE already has a detention system that currently holds a record 68,000 people, the introduction of this new plan could more than double their bed count.
We are fortunate that the news media has uncovered the places ICE has in mind for these warehouse sites. There are things we can do in Colorado to fight against this expansion. We can reach out to other activist and resistance organizations to build a national network in the fight against mass deportation. Offering resources and partnering in ongoing efforts can build strong alliances that over time successfully help defeat fascism.
ICE plans to hold 80,000 immigrants in warehouses across the country – The Washington Post
Report: Over 80K migrants to be housed in ICE warehouses throughout US
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