'Beyond Dehumanizing': ICE Docs Expose Plan to Hold 80,000 People in Warehouses

Eight months after the acting director of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement saidd at a border security conference that the Trump administration aims to carry out its mass deportation operation with the same efficiency as Amazon's package deliveries, a draft document from ICE officials on Wednesday provided never-before-seen details of how the agency plans to do that using massive warehouses repurposed to hold tens of thousands of people.

The Washington Post reported on a draft solicitation document, a version of which ICE plans to send to private detention companies this week.

The proposal calls for contractors to help renovate industrial warehouses across the country, setting each up to hold up to 10,000 people detained by immigration agents at a time—albeit in facilities that will likely have poor ventilation, climate control, plumbing, and sanitation systems.

Warehouses, said physician and journalist Dr. Carolyn Barber, "are built for boxes, not humans."

ICE aims to modify the warehouses and create separate housing units with showers and bathrooms, dining areas, medical units, recreation areas, and law libraries, according to the document.

The agency's new facilities will “maximize efficiency, minimize costs, shorten processing times, limit lengths of stay, accelerate the removal process, and promote the safety, dignity, and respect for all in ICE custody," the solicitation said.

But considering acting ICE Director Todd Lyons' comment last April that the administration should treat deportations "like a business... Like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings," rights advocates said the plan to house people in massive storage facilities was "beyond dehumanizing."

"It is as if they don't see immigrants as people but just things to be warehoused like Amazon packages," said Philip Mai, co-director at the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University.

ICE and other federal agencies have been transporting detainees around the country this year to whichever detention facilities have space, but under the new plan, seven large warehouses in Louisiana, Virginia, Texas, Arizona, Georgia, and Missouri would be used as deportation "staging" facilities for 5,000-10,000 people each.

Sixteen smaller warehouses would each hold up to 1,500 people, allowing the government to detain 80,000 people in immigration facilities at a time—up from about 68,000 who were in detention in early December.

ICE data shows that about 48% of the people currently being detained have no criminal convictions or current charges, the Post reported.

Jonathan Cohn, political director for the advocacy group Progressive Mass, suggested that ICE's claims that it will build facilities that prioritize detainees' "dignity" ring hollow, considering the plan's details.

"They want to build a network of concentration camps," he said simply.