While President Donald Trump’s administration has moved to gut essential nutrition assistance for Americans, the Department of Homeland Security has managed to scrounge up a whopping $10 billion to build immigration detention facilities—and they’re using the U.S. Navy to do it.
CNN reported Friday that the DHS had launched a new contracting program with the Department of Defense that would make use of the Navy’s Supply Systems Command for construction and maintenance.
Multiple sources familiar with the program told CNN that the new internment camps would likely be soft-sided tent facilities, similar to the recently revived Alligator Alcatraz, where detainees said they were treated worse than animals, and hundreds of people are still considered missing.
One source said that the new facilities would be built to house as many as 10,000 detainees each. For comparison, Camp East Montana, the country’s largest immigration detention camp recently built on Fort Bliss, has a capacity of 5,000 beds. Within the first 50 days of its operation, the sprawling camp had already racked up 60 federal code violations, according to a September inspection.
The process of organizing contractors to build the apparatus for the Trump administration’s gargantuan deportation efforts hasn’t been easy. The company behind Camp East Montana had no experience in detention. Sources told CNN that by going through the DOD, the government hopes to accelerate the contracting process.
In order to take on the government’s load, the Navy quietly amended an existing contracting solicitation mechanism that was previously used to support operations abroad. The Worldwide Expeditionary Multiple Award Contract was expanded to address the “Territorial Integrity of the United States,” or TITUS.
A contract notice posted Friday listed several contractors that would receive money through the TITUS program, including Virginia-based 701C, Florida-based KDP Global Enterprises, and Texas-based firms Anovaeon, SGK Global Services, Guardian 6 Solutions, and Worldwide Employee Housing Solutions. The notice said that the total estimated contract maximum for each contractor could be up to $20 trillion, and cites the Defense Support of Civil Authorities support, which authorizes the use of military personnel to assist civil authorities during disasters.
The new TITUS agreement states that building and staffing contractors for the DOD “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 DHS and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
According to CNN, DOD contractors are not permitted to refuse work for ICE.
This isn’t the first time the Trump administration has tapped the U.S. Navy for support in its immigration crackdown. The government previously asked the U.S. naval base outside of Chicago to house DHS and ICE agents as part of Operation Midway Blitz.
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