DAILY TRIFECTA: FEMA Camps 'R' Us
Trump brings home the Global War On Terror
THE SET-UP: I first heard about “FEMA camps” during the “W Years.” Back then, the rumor or speculation or, if you prefer, conspiracy theory that FEMA was building internment camps sounded entirely plausible given the excesses the “Global War On Terror.”
It’s easy to forget how harrowing it was during “The Aughts” … particularly after a decade of daily megadoses of Donald J. Trump. By the time we learned of Abu Ghraib, it really did feel like the rule of law, the Bill of Rights and the Geneva Conventions had been jettisoned and America had been forever changed. I guess it felt that way because it was that way.
The Neocons implemented John Yoo’s novel, extra-constitutional theory of “Unitary Executive” power. They placed the entire nation under surveillance and airline travel became an ominous reminder of 9/11. Lest we forget, they also peppered us with color-coded terror alerts. Overseas, the CIA plucked people off city streets and shipped them to “black sites.” Called “extraordinary “rendition,” it could lead to indefinite imprisonment and systematic torture. Torture kinda became America’s brand and, of course, the failing Iraq War was based on easily provable lies. Set against this backdrop, the idea of “FEMA camps” seemed entirely plausible.
But then Obama won the White House, the Tea Party pivoted from an early, anti-Wall Street bailout agenda to an anti-Obama obsession … and FEMA camps became a perennial Right Wing bogeyman. In a sense, the idea had returned to its roots in the Ruby Ridge/Waco-inspired anti-government movements of the 90s. Fear of and loathing for FEMA flourished inside the nascent MAGA movement, which saw FEMA camps as a critical step in the Globalist plan to disarm and enslave God-fearing Americans. That probably contributes to the animus Trump and DHS Secretary Noem harbor for the emergency responders … it’s still red meat for the base despite the fact that FEMA never actually built camps or interned anybody.
That is … until now.
The Trump Administration has directed FEMA to distribute $608 million to “construct immigrant detention centers as part of the Trump administration's push to expand capacity to hold migrants.” According to Reuters, Secretary Noem will direct some of that money to Florida’s “Alligator Alcatraz.” A FEMA spokesperson told Reuters there is a message in that mammon:
"Secretary Noem has been very clear that the funding for Alligator Alcatraz can be a blueprint for other states and local governments to assist with detention."
Obviously, the irony is lost on everyone involved in this FEMA-funded interment camp construction spree. So, too, is the fact that ICE has imported the CIA’s rendition program, with the domestic version shipping make-up artists to be abused and tortured in a foreign prison. ICE has also enlisted the surveillance state-enthusiasts at Palantir to pore over Americans’ data and, thanks to local law enforcement, Homan’s mask-wearing goon squad is using license plate-readers to track down their prey. The State Department is vetting social media accounts to make sure foreign students and tourists are not expressing unapproved thoughts. And we are supporting the troops by tackling their hardworking father while he’s on the job … because we need to get those dangerous landscapers off America’s streets!
This is what it looks like when the Global War On Terror comes home to roost. And the greatest irony of all is that this also looks a lot like the tyrannical, camp-building, black helicopter-flying federal government the militia movement warned us about back in the 90s. It turns out that FEMA funding camps isn’t such a big deal after all … so long as the camps are meant for “them” and not “us.” - jp
TITLE: Now That They’re Free
https://www.propublica.org/article/venezuelan-men-cecot-interviews-trump
EXCERPTS: Now that he’s free, Leonardo José Colmenares Solórzano, a 31-year-old Venezuelan, wants the world to know that he was tortured over four months in a Salvadoran prison. He said guards stomped on his hands, poured filthy water into his ears and threatened to beat him if he didn’t kneel alongside other inmates and lick their backs.
Now that he’s free, Juan José Ramos Ramos, 39, insists he’s not who President Donald Trump says he is. He’s not a member of a gang or an international terrorist, just a man with tattoos whom immigration agents spotted riding in a car with a Venezuela sticker on the back.
Now that he’s free, Andry Omar Blanco Bonilla, 40, said he wondered every day of his time in prison whether he’d ever hold his mother in his arms again. He’s relieved to be back home in Venezuela but struggles to make sense of why he and the other men were put through that ordeal in the first place.
“We are a group of people who I consider had the bad luck of ending up on this black list,” he said.
These are the accounts being shared by some of the more than 230 Venezuelan men the Trump administration deported on March 15 to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador known as CECOT. Throughout the men’s incarceration, the administration used blanket statements and exaggerations that obscured the truth about who they are and why they were targeted. The president has both hailed the men’s removal as a signature achievement of his first 100 days in office and touted it as a demonstration of the lengths his administration was willing to go to carry out his mass deportation campaign. He assured the public that he was fulfilling his promise to rid the country of immigrants who’d committed violent crimes, and that the men sent to El Salvador were “monsters,” “savages” and “the worst of the worst.”
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans, and Alianza Rebelde Investiga and Cazadores de Fake News.
Few cases have gotten as much attention as the Venezuelans sent to CECOT. They were deported against the instructions of a federal judge, frog-marched off American planes and forced to kneel before cameras and have their heads shaved. The administration rebuffed requests to confirm the men’s names or provide information about the allegations it had made against them. Meanwhile, the deportees were held without access to lawyers or the ability to speak to their families. Then, 12 days ago, they were returned to Venezuela in a prisoner swap.
Now that they’re home, they’ve begun to talk. We interviewed nine men for this story. They are bewildered, frightened, angry. Some said their feelings about what happened were still so raw they had trouble finding words to describe them. All of the men said they were abused physically and mentally during their imprisonment. Their relatives say they, too, went through hell wondering whether their loved ones were alive or dead, or if they would ever see them again. All the men said they were relieved to be free, though some said their release was proof the U.S. had no reason to send them to prison to begin with.
TITLE: Immigrant Kids Detained in ‘Unsafe and Unsanitary’ Sites as Trump Team Seeks To End Protections
https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/immigration-detention-children-monitoring-flores-settlement-agreement/
EXCERPTS: A child developed a rash after he was prevented from changing his underwear for four days. A little boy, bored and overcome with despair, began hitting himself in the head. A child with autism and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder was forced to go without his medication, despite his mother’s pleas.
“I heard one officer say about us ‘they smell like sh–,’” one detained person recounted in a federal court filing. “And another officer responded, ‘They are sh–.’”
Attorneys for immigrant children collected these stories, and more, from youth and families detained in what they called “prison-like” settings across the U.S. from March through June, even as the Trump administration has requested a federal district court judge terminate existing protections that mandate basic rights and services — including safe and sanitary conditions — for children held by the government.
The administration argues that the protections mandated under what is known as the Flores Settlement Agreement encourage immigration and interfere with its ability to establish immigration policy. U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee, who is in California, is expected to issue a ruling on the request after an Aug. 8 hearing.
With the agreement in place, children are being held in “unsafe and unsanitary” U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities such as tents, airports, and offices for up to several weeks despite the agency’s written policy saying people generally should not be held in its custody longer than 72 hours, according to the June court filing from immigrants’ attorneys. In addition to opposing the U.S. Department of Justice’s May request to terminate the Flores consent decree, the attorneys demanded more monitoring for children in immigration detention.
“The biggest fear is that without Flores, we will lose a crucial line of transparency and accountability,” said Sergio Perez, executive director of the California-based Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law. “Then you have a perfect storm for the abuse of individuals, the violation of their rights, and the kind of treatment that this country doesn’t stand for.”
The Flores agreement has set minimum standards and oversight for detained immigrant children since 1997, when it brought an end to a decade-long lawsuit filed on behalf of unaccompanied immigrant minors who had been subjected to poor treatment in unsafe and unsanitary conditions without access to medical care. It is named for Jenny Lisette Flores, a 15-year-old from El Salvador who was taken into U.S. custody in the mid-1980s, subjected to strip searches, and housed alongside unrelated men.
The agreement established national standards for the protection of immigrant children detained by federal authorities, with requirements for safe and sanitary detention facilities, access to clean water, appropriate food, clothing, bedding, recreational and educational opportunities, sanitation, plus appropriate medical and mental health care. Children in immigrant detention range from infants to teens.
In 2015, Gee ruled that the agreement includes children accompanied by adults.
The Justice Department and the Department of Homeland Security, which includes both the Customs and Border Protection agency and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, declined to respond on the record to questions about the administration’s intent to end the Flores agreement or about the conditions in which kids are detained. In a May court filing, government attorneys argued, among other points, that the agreement improperly directs immigration decisions to the courts, not the White House. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi also has said that the Flores agreement has “incentivized illegal immigration,” and that Congress and federal agencies have resolved the problems Flores was designed to fix.
Terminating the Flores agreement would remove all outside oversight of immigration detention facilities by court-ordered monitors and attorneys. The public would have to depend on the government for transparency about the conditions in which children are held.
“Our system requires that there be some oversight for government, not just the Department of Homeland Security, but in general,” said Daniel Hatoum, a senior supervising attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project. “We know that. So, I do not believe that DHS could police itself.”
In the months after Trump took office and the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency began cuts, the administration shuttered DHS’ Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, the Office of the Citizenship and Immigration Services Ombudsman, and the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman, which were intended to add a layer of oversight. After a lawsuit, the Trump administration reversed action and noted the offices would remain open, but it is unclear how those offices have been affected by shifts in policy and cuts in staffing.
Leecia Welch, an attorney with the legal advocacy group Children’s Rights, said the Flores agreement itself, or efforts to hold the government responsible for abiding by its requirements, are not rooted in partisan politics. She said she raised concerns about conditions during Biden’s administration, too.
“These are not political issues for me,” Welch said. “How does our country want to treat children? That’s it. It’s very simple. I’m not going to take it easy on any administration where children are being harmed in their care.”
TITLE: Trump Awards $1.26 Billion Contract to Build Biggest Immigrant Detention Center in US
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-07-22/trump-awards-immigration-detention-center-contract-for-fort-bliss-in-texas
EXCERPTS: The federal government has awarded a contract to build and operate a sprawling tent camp at Fort Bliss, an Army base in Texas, to serve as an immigrant detention center.
In the Trump administration’s latest move to vastly expand space for such detention, the work would turn the base in El Paso, with more than 1 million acres and an airport, into a deportation hub with 5,000 beds, according to a US Department of Defense contract notice. That would make it the largest immigration detention facility in the country.
The contract for Fort Bliss is worth $1.26 billion and was awarded to Virginia-based Acquisition Logistics Company through a special program that directs federal dollars to small businesses, according to two people familiar with the matter who asked to not be named discussing something that hasn’t been shared publicly. The Army is putting up $232 million for the work, the Defense Department notice says. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier that the contract had been awarded but did not include its value or the winning bidder. Ken Wagner, president and chief executive officer of Acquisition Logistics, declined to comment.
The Fort Bliss contract is by far the biggest ever for Acquisition Logistics, which Wagner, a retired Naval flight officer, founded in 2008. It specializes in supply chain management and other technical services, particularly for the US military, according to Wagner’s LinkedIn profile. Acquisition Logistics has received contracts worth roughly $29 million from the Defense Department over the past five fiscal years, mainly for logistics support work, according to government records. Most of that was through set-asides for small businesses.
The company doesn’t appear to have any experience with detention, but earlier this year the US Army paid Acquisition Logistics more than $5 million for “lodging and conference room services” related to the agency’s work at the Southern Border under the Trump administration.
The Fort Bliss contract’s reliance on tents for detention is concerning to immigrant advocates, who say such facilities are unlikely to meet federal standards.
Issues have already emerged at a new tent facility in the Florida Everglades that was erected in just eight days by a group of disaster response companies chosen by the state. The Associated Press reported earlier this month that there have been bugs in food, inconsistent air conditioners that leave people in sweltering heat, and faulty toilets that have led to wastewater flooding. Florida officials have denied accusations of inhumane conditions.
“All the reasons why you and I live not in tents but in homes are going to inevitably come up in a facility that doesn’t offer people walls and floors and insulation,” Emma Winger, deputy legal director at the American Immigration Council, said of tent detention in general. She points to basic needs that are significantly harder to meet with tents: protection from the elements, adequate medical facilities, safe and clean food preparation and storage. “It’s very hard to imagine how soft-sided facilities could satisfy even the low detention standards that are reflected in ICE’s most recent standards.”