For ICE to build concentration camps quickly, they're leaning on this Dept. of War program

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Border Czar Tom Homan announced late last week that Operation Metro Surge, the ICE and CBP campaign terrorizing Minnesota for more than a month, was supposedly winding down. What that means functionally on the ground remains to be seen, but logistically, though, this timing makes sense: DHS, with the help of the Department of War (née Department of Defense), are laser-focused on outfitting industrial warehouses into prisons for the people they round up. They call them detention centers, but we can call them what there are—concentration camps.

DHS is using a repurposed Navy logistics program to fund the buildings and materials necessary to create these concentration camps quickly, as first reported by CNN in October. The Worldwide Expeditionary Multiple Award Contract (WEXMAC) program was created by the Naval Supply Systems Command (NAVSUP) so that it could call on contractors quickly in the wake of international natural disasters, pandemics and the like, bypassing the traditionally lengthy bidding process. It served 26 designated regions—until last year when the United States itself was added as number 27. That region is called TITUS: Territorial Integrity of the United States. And now, thanks to this relatively new designation, domestic vendors are being fast-tracked by DoW and DHS to expeditiously furnish and run concentration camps around the country.

The first 96 WEXMAC TITUS awards were given in early September 2025, with an additional seven granted later that month. At the start of the year, WEXMAC TITUS added eight new awardees, and just this past Friday, an additional 24 were brought on board. The total contract value was originally $10 billion, but a request for proposals in early January showed a $45 billion increase to the ceiling—as first reported by Migrant Insider—bringing the total value to $55 billion. In their initial reporting, CNN called the program “a joint effort between DHS and the Defense Department and leans on the Navy’s Supply Systems Command as a contracting arm to hire companies for construction and maintenance of the detention facilities.”

By the estimation of Project Salt Box, a Baltimore-based group collecting and organizing public data about ICE’s land purchases and other contracts, the agency has so far purchased 11 warehouses for a sum of $697.4 million in funds from the billions they received in Trump’s funding bill last summer (that total excludes the sale prices that have not yet been made public.) That’s a net gain of 34k beds. Those confirmed sales are in Surprise, Arizona; El Paso and San Antonio, Texas; Social Circle and Oakwood, Georgia; Hagerstown, Maryland; Hamburg and Tremont, Pennsylvania; Romulus, Michigan; Chester, NY; and Lebanon, Tennessee. Another eight warehouses are listed on Project Salt Box’s DHS Contracts Visualizer that ICE intends to buy based on credible news reports and documents. The situation is so fluid that by the time you’re reading this, the numbers above may very well have changed. 

In order to fulfill the Trump administration’s goal of holding more 80,000 people in ICE detention, per a Washington Post scoop from December, as ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons said last year, make deportations “like Prime, but with human beings,” they must outfit the warehouses expeditiously. That means attempting to turn industrial spaces into ones semi-habitable for humans, with appropriate ventilating, plumbing, showers, food, laundry, and medical care. 

“WEXMAC TITUS allows ICE to treat immigration enforcement like a national security operation rather than a standard civil immigration one,” Michael Wriston, a 20-year veteran military analyst who is now a researcher and reporter with Project Salt Box and has been studying these contracts closely, told The Handbasket. “This gives the agency access to a much faster contracting process with less oversight and public visibility.” 

Wriston explained how WEXMAC allowing ICE to quickly issue orders to contractors without going through normal competitive bidding means ICE can expand detention facilities and transportation services in days instead of months. “Essentially, it creates a system where contractors are pre-approved and infrastructure is ready to go, allowing ICE to rapidly scale up operations with far less red tape than typical federal contracting requires.”

The WEXMAC TITUS award solicitation form—which is public on SAM.gov—clearly states this part of the program’s intentions. In a section on page 74 titled “TEMPORARY STAGING FACILITIES” it reads: “The vendor may be required to provide infrastructure, staffing, services, and/or supplies necessary to provide safe and secure confinement for aliens in the administrative custody of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).”

In that same section, the contract solicitation states the contractor “shall furnish all personnel, management, equipment, supplies, training, certification, accreditation, and services necessary for performance of all aspects of the contract.”

Perhaps most tellingly, the solicitation states: “The contractor does not have a right of refusal and shall take all referrals from ICE as applicable.” In other words, being a WEXMAC TITUS contractor doesn’t automatically mean you’re working for ICE, but it does mean you’ve agreed that if asked, you will.

“So if there was a US citizen—a baby, or someone sick that clearly shouldn’t be there—the contractor can’t say they don’t want to take them,” a federal employee familiar with similar government contracts in a different agency told me after reviewing the TITUS solicitation. “That’s super sketchy.”

The federal employee pointed out a few troubling sections, including clause H.2.1.2 which essentially allows DHS to choose whichever vendor they’d like for a job. They were also surprised by the minimum guarantee clause, which states that every WEXMAC TITUS contractor is guaranteed $500 per reward. They said they’d never seen anything like that in other federal contracts. (And just for fun they pointed to clause 2.9.1 which states: “Contractor shall provide one (1) large BBQ Grill with the supporting supplies and equipment included,” plus related supplies.)

Despite the horrifying nature of what the TITUS money is being used for, the federal worker said it all appears legitimate. “It's just corrupt.” In Wriston’s opinion, the fact that it’s a Navy program puts it within Congress’ power to rein it in—particularly because this is the first time ICE specifically has had access to the program. 

When WEXMAC was founded in 2021 under the Biden administration, the NAVSUP Fleet Logistics Center in Yokosuka, Japan served as the procuring contracting office. A Navy press release for the original program announcement quoted a contracting officer as saying, “Our team enjoyed rising to the challenge and being part of the positive impact the WEXMAC program will have on the warfighter in the years to come.” In the case of TITUS, however, it appears the war fighters are the federal government and the opponent is the people.

Perhaps the most astonishing awardee in the latest WEXMAC TITUS announcement is GEO Group, the massive private prison company that runs many of the existing facilities used to cage and torture immigrants. “Now, when ICE needs to staff, supply or operate a detention facility, it can call GEO directly and issue a work order within weeks,” Project Salt Box wrote on Saturday. 

Independent journalist Jack Poulson provided more context in his newsletter on Sunday:

Poulson also reported that Cart.com, an e-commerce platform backed by PayPal Ventures, was one of the 24 new vendors added on Friday. In response Cart.com told Poulson that “WEXMAC is a multi-award Department of War contract vehicle and is not specific to ICE or any single program,” adding that, “Cart.com has not been awarded or announced any related WEXMAC task orders.” But as stated above, the very fact that they’re an awardee is tacit agreement to serve ICE if ordered to do so. And the fact that no money has changed hands yet doesn’t negate that fact.

It can often feel like we’ve reached this point because of ignorance of history. Prior to 1933, Dachau was a suburb of Munich; now, decades after the Holocaust ended, for many it remains synonymous with the genocide of the Jewish people. Similarly, while many of the plantations of the southern United States have been whitewashed and turned into wedding venues, for the millions of descendants of enslaved people, those properties will always hearken the ghosts of their ancestors.

There does, however, seem to be some sense on the part of Americans that they don’t want their cities and towns directly linked to human and civil rights abuses. As the Project Salt Box tracker points out, rumors or even seemingly confirmed stories of pending ICE purchases are not a foregone conclusion. 

There have been nine potential sales canceled since news of the planned camps broke. On February 6th, we learned a warehouse sale in Mississippi was canceled thanks in part to the opposition of Senator Roger Wicker, a hardcore MAGA Republican. As I was writing this piece, the fate of multiple prospective warehouses changed, like one in Kansas City, Missouri: The owner of the property slated to be sold to the federal government announced the sale wasn’t happening. This came after the city’s port authority voted unanimously to cut ties with the real estate company. While their announcement didn’t mention this aspect of the situation, the timing was notable. (The day after the deal fell through, someone set fire to the warehouse. If you know anything about the person who did this—no, you don’t.) 

An effort to turn a former Virginia state prison into a concentration camp met a similarly unfortunate end, with the Augusta County Board of Supervisors announcing last week that the conversion would not go forward. This was thanks, at least in part, to a change in policy by Governor Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat who in January took over for Republican Glenn Youngkin. But according to documents that were given to the ACLU via a FOIA request and were combed through by Project Salt Box, a handful of existing facilities stand as potential options for additional camps. There were eight, as of this writing.

The truth is that the ICE detention centers that already exist are rife with human rights abuses, especially as the Trump administration fills them far beyond their capacity to serve their accelerationist anti-immigrant agenda. 

At Dilley Detention Center near San Antonio, Texas, families are held in squalor, sometimes for months. Rep. Joaquin Castro confirmed Tuesday that a two-month old named Juan Nicolás remains caged at Dilley with bronchitis, and that he was unresponsive at some point in the last several hours. 

“Juan’s mom went in front of an immigration judge this morning,” Castro posted on social media Tuesday afternoon. “She was told she will be deported, but was not told when or where. Both Juan and his mom are back at Dilley and their future remains uncertain.”

Recently ProPublica published letters from children trapped inside Dilley, sharing their heartbreaking stories of hunger, illness, and homesickness. A 12-year-old named Ender wrote that when you finally get medical attention at Dilley “the only thing they tell you is to drink more water and the worst thing is that it seems the water is what makes people sick here.”

I’ve continued wondering while writing this why WEXMAC TITUS hasn’t gained greater mainstream traction. Is an obscure Navy contract program simply too dry to convey the danger it poses? Perhaps. Does the fact that it isn’t flagrantly illegal—unlike other actions of the adminstration—lend it some legitimacy? It’s possible. 

Here’s the bottom line: DHS is buying warehouses across the country to build out concentration camps for caging and deporting immigrants, and WEXMAC TITUS is allowing them to be operational in a matter of weeks.

Maybe it’s not as pithy as “Fuck ICE,” and you’re unlikely to see a protest sign that says “End WEXMAC TITUS now!” but not only is it worth understanding this pivotal program, it’s important for the Trump administration to know that we know. While they’re trying to pull a fast one, they should know we see what they’re doing—taking spaces built for storing goods, using them to torment human beings, and pulling in accomplices to do it quickly.