OUR DAILY THREAD: Trump's Big Trap
On second thought...
THE SET-UP: White House Deputy Chief of Staff James Blair put the “retreat” in the House Republicans’ annual policy retreat at a Trump-owned resort in Doral, Florida.
According to an Axios “scoop,” Blair “privately urged” attendees to “stop emphasizing 'mass deportations‘ and instead focus their messaging on removing violent criminals.”
That telling admonition comes on the heels of Kristi Noem’s epic flameout as head of the Department of Homeland Security. Her tenure was a bizarre mix of cosplay, callousness and calumny. Trump decided to drop her after a particularly disastrous appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee, where North Carolina Republican Senator Thom Tillis compared Noem’s mismanagement style to her experience training and then executing a puppy. Louisiana Republican Senator and noted Foghorn Leghorn impersonator John Kennedy iced her once and for all when he highlighted her $220 million selfie campaign, which funneled money to her associates.
Now that she been reassigned to serve as a glorified Walmart greeter for Trump’s “Americas Counter Cartel Coalition” protection racket, it appears that DHS is attempting to take the “mass” out of mass deportations. That’s sparked a backlash from “allies” who are, according to Politico, “furious at the White House’s new rhetorical emphasis on deporting violent criminals over all unauthorized immigrants.”
However, a separate analysis of court filings by Politico indicates that the retreat is more than rhetorical:
A POLITICO analysis found that immigration habeas petitions peaked at about 300 to 400 per day from Jan. 16 to Feb. 17, at the height of Operation Metro Surge. It was in this timeframe — which includes the Jan. 24 shooting death of demonstrator Alex Pretti — when public opinion began to sour on the Trump administration’s mass deportation tactics.
Habeas petitions peaked at more than 400 on Feb. 6 but have since steadily declined, dipping below 300 per day late last month and approaching 200 per day by early March.
The decline in habeas cases tracks with a similar decline in immigration arrests reported by The New York Times, citing internal DHS data.
In response, “furious” deportation enthusiasts formed the “Mass Deportation Coalition to lobby the Trump administration to refocus its efforts on deporting all eligible migrants.” They’ve got favorable polling and Trump’s repeated promises, but neither of those things seems particularly reliable. The same could easily be said for the current recalibration given the $38.3 billion slated to “acquire warehouses across the country and turn them into detention facilities.”
Dubbed the “Detention Reengineering Initiative,” DHS has targeted buildings that need “expensive renovations to add wastewater infrastructure, water supply and fire protection.” According to Bisnow, that includes eight “Large-Scale Detention Facilities” capable of “holding up to 10,000 people for about 60 days at a time.”
Thus far, attempts to buy warehouses have been hampered by local opposition in a number of states. But where they have purchased warehouses, officials are paying a “eye-popping” amounts that a cynic (like me) might see as a sign of potential corruption. Here’s a sampling from a recent USA Today report:
In February, DHS purchased an empty warehouse in Social Circle, Georgia, for $128.5 million. The property’s current value: $29.7 million, according to the Walton County Tax Assessor’s website.
[I]n Oakwood, Georgia, the government paid $68 million for a warehouse and surrounding land that was appraised in 2025 for a combined $7.1 million, according to Hall County records.
[I]n Hamburg, Pennsylvania, DHS paid $87.4 million for a warehouse that sold in 2024 for $57.5 million, public records show.
And at the fateful hearing that cost Noem her job, New Jersey Democratic Senator Cory Booker accused her of supporting an "incredible empire of for-profit companies that are profiting at rates we've never seen":
"You paid $129.3 million for a facility in my state that was assessed at less than half of that, at $62 million," Booker said to Noem, who has since been ousted by President Donald Trump. "To work for a president who says he's a great dealmaker ... I can't believe he thinks that you're a great dealmaker."
For what it’s worth, USA Today consulted with “experts in federal property acquisition” who speculated that DHS may be paying high prices “to compel developers and commercial landowners to sell their property despite local opposition.”
It’s plausible, but Noem’s track record of conveniently cozy contracting stretches back to her time as governor of South Dakota when the same company—Strategy Group for Media—scored an $8.5 million contract for an ad campaign back in 2023.
In her defense, none of this is unusual for a party that books its meetings at Trump-owned properties:
The Republican National Committee held several meetings at Trump National Doral in early 2020, and the first GOP meeting was held there in 2018, raking in a whopping $630,000 for Trump’s resort, The Washington Post reported at the time. The RNC spent nearly $500,000 on rental and catering alone, according to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW.
The price tag for the just completed policy retreat at Doral is as yet unknown, but The Daily Beast’s Substack (a.k.a. “The Swamp”) notes “nothing was on the house”:
Rooms at the four-star luxury 643-room Trump National Doral Golf Club start at $600 a night. (You do get access to a pool with a 125-foot water slide, though.) All the expenses—the $1,100-a-night-suites, the $31 burger, and the luxury $420 spa treatments—go into the pockets of the owner.
Amazingly enough, House Republicans were lapping-up luxuries while trying to figure out how to appeal to voters struggling with affordability. And they were doing so at the same time a President who promised to stay out of stupid wars in the Middle East was driving up the cost of living with a stupid war of choice in the Middle East. And that war has already displaced over three million Iranians … many of whom may end up as migrants and asylum seekers thanks to a President who wants to deport all the migrants and asylum seekers. - jp
911 call records show frequent medical emergencies at Camp East Montana as DHS disputes AP report on detention conditions
https://kvia.com/news/top-stories/2026/03/11/911-call-records-show-frequent-medical-emergencies-at-camp-east-montana-as-dhs-disputes-ap-report-on-detention-conditions/
ICE Detainment Center Guards Allegedly Set Up Suicide Death Pools
https://www.techdirt.com/2026/03/09/ice-detainment-center-guards-allegedly-set-up-suicide-death-pools/
DHS Is ‘Upgrading’ a Detention Facility Rife With Abuse Claims. It Should Close It Instead.
https://reason.com/2026/03/12/dhs-is-upgrading-a-detention-facility-rife-with-abuse-claims-it-should-close-it-instead/
DHS terminates Camp East Montana operations contract, hires new provider
https://www.elpasotimes.com/story/news/immigration/2026/03/11/new-ice-detention-center-operator-at-camp-east-montana-dhs-says/89101624007/
ICE buys $87M warehouse in Pennsylvania − can local officials block a detention facility?
https://www.inkl.com/news/ice-buys-87m-warehouse-in-pennsylvania-can-local-officials-block-a-detention-facility
Who will profit off of ICE’s new detention warehouses?
https://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2026/03/09/ice-plan-warehouses-detention-centers