You might’ve seen this article making the rounds from Migrant Insider: “How the Pentagon is Quietly Building Trump’s Concentration Camps.” While the article itself doesn’t outright make the claim that these are death camps, the way it’s written makes it easy for the reader to make that leap and many people have.
The issue is, they’re all referencing the Migrant Insider article. But the Migrant Insider article uses this spreadsheet to back-up those very provocative bullet points. I reached out to Migrant Insider and the author, Pablo Manriquez and have yet to receive a response.
However when I download that spreadsheet and search inside, it’s not nearly as sinister as the article would imply.
Further digging on this page provides a PDF which has more detail: https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/fc38d5a3e2b049f6ab71ef32b113e003/view
Scroll to the bottom and download the PDF titled: N0002326R0001 WEXMAC 2.2 TITUS FINAL.pdf
Forward Operating Bases(FOBS) on U.S. Soil
When I read through the source documents these sound like Forward Operating Bases, like the ones we built in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria… and Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Turkey.
See the above screenshots, this $55 billion dollar contract is for the United States and Outlying Territories.
These paragraphs outline the scope of the contract, which again to me reads like a military deployment of forces into a war zone and all of the logistics, facilities, and force-protection requirements you would need to sustain forward deployed troops in a warzone.
They’re “setting the theater”(which is the U.S. and outlying territories) and “planning to ensure responsiveness (i.e., 72-hour response to emerging requirements.)” This $55 billion is to build up the capability to “rapidly provide the sustainment capabilities necessary to set theaters, enable Joint, Intergovernmental, and Multinational operations from phase 0 through phase 5.”
Damn I have a lot of questions!
Why does this document keep referring to U.S. territory as a “theater”? I’ve only ever seen that language used for “theater of war.”
Why are we prepping this “theater”(the United States) for the “six phases of the continuum of military operations”?
Why are we enabling MULTINATIONAL operations on U.S. soil?? What other nation(s) is this $55 billion dollar contract going to enable?!
The Six Phases of the Continuum of Military Operations
See that big red area in the middle called “dominating activities.” That is sanitized language which means “killing, bombing, destroying infrastructure, and detaining(without due process) any opposition that we haven’t killed.” The “dominating activities” post 9/11 killed over 940,000 people in the Middle East.
We’ve always operated detention camps that held humans without due process, camps that committed horrific atrocities. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay are just two well-known examples from the hundreds of such camps that the U.S. has run throughout history.
DHS/ICE Concentration Camps?
Hit Ctrl+F in the document to search. Search words like detention, detainee, DHS, immigration. You’ll find the document actually doesn’t talk too much about detention. However, the section above where I did find keyword hits certainly gives this contract the power to build detention centers.
“For detention facility procurements, the contractor shall not house any non-ICE population at the facility without the expressed prior written approval of the CO.”
I find this line especially troubling. So, it’s an assumption that ICE populations will be held at the facility. This now allows non-ICE populations(i.e. everyone else) to be held at the facility and all they require is the CO(an ICE employee) to sign off. Just like how US citizen activists are now routinely held in Whipple and other ICE facilities.
The Trump administration has begun buying warehouses in small towns and cities as part of its $45 billion push to rapidly expand immigration detention space. It recently purchased two warehouses — one in Hagerstown, Maryland, and another in Surprise, Arizona — for a total of $172 million. A third in El Paso, Texas, could be among the largest jails of any kind in the US, with 8,500 beds. -Bloomberg
I’m unclear whether this $55 billion contract is part of the $45 billion allocated by the “Big Beautiful Bill” to expand immigration detention. The reporting on this $55 billion contract conflates the two, but, I haven’t specifically found anything in my own research that definitively says this $55 billion contract is part of the $45 billion allocated to immigration detention.
For example, this $55 billion contract has a section for USFK, in the Republic of Korea. This contract reads to me like contracts for forward operating military bases.
Conceivably, this regime just copy and pasted military contracts they’ve used for overseas bases. They’re evil, they’re conniving, but they’re also lazy and love to copy and paste and use AI.
More Than Detention Warehouses
I think this story is bigger than detention warehouses. I don’t think this section was copy and pasted from a different contract, because it lists the name of the contract, WEXMAC 2.2, and it is featured at the beginning of the document, right after the introduction.
A human wrote this, and specifically included language about the six phases of the continuum of military operations, and intergovernmental and multinational operations. A human wrote in “setting the theater” for “72-hour response to emerging requirements.” Once again let me remind you the contracted location that all of this will take place is the United States and outlying territories!
This isn’t just DHS buying warehouses to turn into big detention centers. This is $55 billion dollars outlaid to create the capacity for Middle East style Forward Operating Bases to be built in the United States.
Will these FOBs have the capacity to hold detainees? Almost certainly. But the language of the contract specifies supporting the six phases of the continuum of military operations. A detention warehouse would not meet this requirement.
Phase 3 of that continuum, dominate, requires logistics that facilitate force projection. To fulfill all of these requirements means building bases that allow for the military, federal law enforcement, or even multinational forces to operate from. To conduct patrols from, to conduct raids from. Bases that can be put in place within 72 hours as requirements “emerge.” Having facilities to hold detainees is a feature of most FOBs, but they’re so much more than just a detention center, and that’s what worries me.
Let’s be clear - we don’t know how much of the language of this contract is simply copy/pasted in order to expedite the process of building detention camps. This CNN article suggests that this is all it is, the administration looking for a way to use different contracting vehicles to expedite building more camps. That’s bad enough, because we should all know by now that it will not only be immigrants held in these camps.
But I can’t get past the fact that the language of this contract is talking about Forward Operating Bases that will facilitate multinational operations on U.S. soil.
Project 2025 was unbelievable for most, despite the dire warnings of a few. Voters ignored it, not believing that they would just write out exactly what they intended to do.
Well. I think we have to take the same approach here. This $55 billion contract is laying out the framework for Forward Operating Bases on U.S. soil. It explicitly talks about supporting the six phases of the continuum of military operations on U.S. soil. It explicitly talks about enabling multinational operations on U.S. soil. If I take it at face value that tells me they are allocating $55 billion dollars with the intent to wage war on U.S. soil in the same way that we waged war in the Middle East post 9/11.
Action Steps
Some warehouse owners have decided not to sell to Immigration and Customs Enforcement under pressure from elected officials and advocates. Some cities are issuing statements urging ICE to look elsewhere, and Kansas City has passed a moratorium on non-city-run detention facilities.
ICE has offered few specifics, even to the cities, but said in a statement that the sites wouldn’t be warehouses but “well structured detention facilities” and said it should come as no surprise that the agency is working to expand detention space.
https://apnews.com/article/immigrant-detention-warehouses-ice-trump-52244cad6413704d4bacfcb0cb06b6bb
We’re not powerless in all of this! They can outlay all the money but if they can’t find workers, if they can’t secure land, then it can’t happen! And citizens have been banding together across the country to put a stop to these immigration detention warehouses. So if you live in a community where ICE is looking to build/buy a detention center, raise hell with your city council, zoning, local businesses, etc. It works!
Canadian company cancels sale of Virginia warehouse to ICE per the NYT.
Where the hell are our elected representatives! This is grossly unacceptable.
Can you please share this with Adam Kinzinger, HCR, etc? This story has to be more widely read and exposed - immediately.