2025 was ICE’s deadliest year in over two decades, writes Julia Norman. Detention facilities lack climate control, ventilation, running water, sanitation, medical services.
Overcrowding of families observed by Dept. of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General, June 2019, at Border Patrol’s McAllen, TX Station. (OIG/D.H.S./Public Domain)
By Julia Norman
Common Dreams
The Department of Homeland Security’s (D.H.S.) warehouse detention system is rapidly unfolding across the United States, advancing in open contempt of oversight, outpacing public scrutiny, and operating with the same disregard for the Constitution, the rule of law, and human life that defines the Trump administration’s exercise of power.
In November 2025, NBC News reported that D.H.S. was actively scouting enormous industrial warehouses across the country, particularly in rural areas near major airports and transportation hubs, in an effort to expand the administration’s capacity to execute its mass deportation agenda — a system Secretary Noem recently aptly described as “one of the most consequential periods of action and reform in American history.”
After the “Big Beautiful Bill” allocated an additional $45 billion specifically to ICE for building new immigration detention centers through 2029—a budget 62 percent larger than the entire federal prison system — D.H.S. gained unprecedented financial capacity to expand its system of terror on a massive scale.
Some of the warehouses under imminent consideration exceed 800,000 square feet and could hold far more people than existing detention centers, compressing thousands of human beings into spaces designed for inventory, not habitation.
Further reporting in December showed that with this massive budget increase, D.H.S. is not merely expanding capacity at the margins, but is redesigning the model itself.
All those detained by D.H.S. and ICE agents, including predominantly people without criminal records, both documented and undocumented immigrants, and U.S. citizens, will presumably be swiftly processed at local sites before being funneled into a small number of mega-facilities, each holding between 5,000 and 10,000 people.
The plans outlining the duration of confinement and the conditions under which people will be held in these warehouses while awaiting deportation remain unknown.
Regardless of motive, Americans must confront that this hub-and-spoke detention network is a moral calamity, echoing some of the most inhumane periods in American and world history.
One can only assume the system will operate as Trump’s ICE Director Todd Lyons described at the 2025 Border Security Expo in Phoenix: “like Amazon Prime, but with human beings.”
Concern for fundamental standards of care and due process, or pathways to legal immigration is replaced with the directive to “get better at treating this like a business.” The confinement, neglect, abuse, and exploitation that this process will inevitably worsen will be excused by the administration as “efficient.”
Acting Director of I.C.E. Todd Lyons interviewed on Fox TV, August 2025. (Fox TV video Screenshot)
Since the news first broke, local reporting has confirmed the rapid construction and conversion of mass confinement centers across the country.
Warehouse sites in Maryland, Texas, Florida, and New York’s Hudson Valley were reported to be under active consideration just in the past two weeks. Many communities slated to host these facilities have only learned of the plans through national reporting.
In early January, The Washington Post found that when it contacted local governments in all 23 cities on ICE’s internal list, many officials had not been informed by federal authorities and could not comment.
Multiple members of Congress have also stated publicly that they were not formally notified about the plans to establish these facilities in their districts.
State and local officials near proposed sites are now scrambling to hold emergency meetings, trying desperately to prevent being cut out of decisions with profound moral and ethical consequences that will reshape their communities.
Still, there is widespread fear that the federal government will simply ignore local zoning and land-use laws.
Under the Supremacy Clause, federal agencies are largely immune from local zoning rules unless Congress explicitly requires compliance. Private contractors or lessees are not automatically covered, but in practice, immigration detention facilities and their operators face almost no local oversight.
States like California have passed laws to empower health inspections and enforce standards against operators such as GEO Group, yet counties rarely act, and courts often side with federal preemption.
If this continues, D.H.S. could override community land-use standards entirely, imposing massive detention infrastructure on rural, resource-strained neighborhoods without consent, accountability, or regard for local residents.
Notably, the Trump administration has already made clear its intention to restrict congressional oversight of existing detention facilities, leaving little reason to believe the mega-warehouse model will be any more transparent or accountable.
On Jan. 8, D.H.S. issued a directive requiring members of Congress to provide prior notice before inspecting immigration facilities, attempting to circumvent a court order that blocked such restrictions.
Although federal law allows for unannounced visits, the Noem memo instructs staff that visits are not considered actionable until acknowledged by the Office of Congressional Relations, which coordinates with ICE and confirms details “as soon as practicable.”
#Never Again protest sign outside GEO Group’s Century City office building in Los Angeles, 2019. (marcywinograd/CCA-SA 4.0)
The only supposed oversight of this expansion is being handled by figures deeply embedded in the detention industry, such as David Venturella, who has been seen in recent weeks touring ICE facilities slated for the “unloading and loading of goods.”
Venturella quietly entered the Trump administration in early 2025 to avoid Senate confirmation, when D.H.S. hired him as a full-time adviser and granted him an ethics waiver.
Prior to this role, he spent more than a decade at GEO Group, one of the nation’s largest private prison corporations, where public filings show he was paid over $6 million to oversee immigrant detention operations.
His career has moved seamlessly between ICE leadership and private security firms, including GEO Group, L-3 Communications, and USIS — companies whose profits depend on surveillance, enforcement, and confinement.
He now oversees the ICE division responsible for detention contracts and infrastructure, the same system he previously expanded for private prison shareholders.
Private contractors such as GEO Group continue to operate facilities housing the vast majority of ICE detainees, positioning themselves to make substantial profit as the administration moves to double detention capacity to 100,000 beds with tens of billions in federal spending.
GEO Group and CoreCivic have already reported soaring revenues under Trump’s second term, with executives describing the expansion as “pivotal” and “an unprecedented growth opportunity.” In this system, human confinement has been transformed into an investment strategy.
Regardless of motive, Americans must confront that this hub-and-spoke detention network is a moral calamity, echoing some of the most inhumane periods in American and world history.
These warehouses lack climate control, ventilation, running water, sanitation, and medical facilities. The public cannot assume they will be retrofitted to meet even basic standards.
Under the pressures imposed by political will and the promise of enormous financial gain for both contractors and the administration, restrained only by Trump’s own notion of “morality,” overcrowding, medical neglect, sanitation failures, family separation, and death are not incidental or isolated.
They are the predictable, systemic outcomes of this design. Frequent transfers between facilities further destabilize those detained, shattering whatever order remains in local custody, tearing families apart, severing access to legal support, and concentrating the suffering of detention out of public view.
2025 was already ICE’s deadliest year in more than two decades, with at least thirty-two people dying in custody. In December 2025, Amnesty International described ICE facilities as “a deliberate system built to punish, dehumanize, and hide the suffering of people in detention.”
Recent site visits documented by Congressman Ro Khanna further revealed the inhumane and degrading conditions detainees face today, including denial of medical care and meals containing rocks and debris.
In this moment of utter chaos — multiple wars looming or underway, international law ignored and explicitly disregarded, pedophiles protected, cities under conditions of terror, with agents told they have “federal immunity” to occupy streets [and execute two U.S. citizens] — the infrastructure for this mass detainment system is expanding largely out of public view.
Facilities may be secured before communities can mobilize, contracts locked in before lawmakers intervene, and once operational, and our communities will be left to reckon with the human suffering they guarantee.
These facilities are instruments of state-sanctioned inhumanity, engineered to evade legal standards and public accountability. The depravity lies not only in the degrading conditions they produce but in the calculus that animates them: speed is treated as a virtue, suffering is deemed acceptable—perhaps even a goal—and profit is treated as proof of success.
The administration is not asking the public to accept this system; it is demanding acquiescence and enforcing it through threat and force.
ICE’s expansion has already reshaped the country’s physical and moral landscape, without consent, transparency, or regard for human life.
The choice is no longer abstract; communities must decide whether to act against this system of cruelty, or let silence stand as consent.
Julia Norman is an independent writer and researcher from Los Angeles, California.
This article is from Common Dreams.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
FYI: “Words to Live By,” ‘Rule by Brute Force: The True Nature of Government,” John W. Whitehead, January 31, 2017
….. Heads Up! “The torch has been passed to a new president.”
“All of the imperial powers amassed by Barack Obama and George W. Bush—to kill American citizens without due process, to detain suspects indefinitely, to strip Americans of their citizenship rights, to carry out mass surveillance on Americans without probable cause, to suspend laws during wartime, to disregard laws with which he might disagree, to conduct secret wars and convene secret courts, to sanction torture, to sidestep the legislatures and courts with executive orders and signing statements, to direct the military to operate beyond the reach of the law, to act as a dictator and a tyrant, above the law and beyond any real accountability—have been inherited by Donald Trump.
Whatever kind of president Trump chooses to be, he now has the power to completely alter the landscape of this country for good or for ill.
[HE HAS THE POWER] because [EVERY] successive [OCCUPANT] of the [OVAL OFFICE] has been allowed to expand the reach and power of the presidency through the use of executive orders, decrees, memorandums, proclamations, national security directives and legislative signing statements that can be activated by any sitting president.”
….. “Those of us who saw this eventuality coming have been warning for years about the growing danger of the Executive Branch with its presidential toolbox of terror that could be used—and abused—by future presidents.” John W. Whitehead, hxxps://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/rule_by_brute_force_the_true_nature_of_government
No doubt about it, “Chain-link barriers, partitions, fences, cages, whatever you want to call them were not invented on January 20, 2017”….. “The kids are being housed in the same facilities built under the Obama administration. If you want to call them cages, call them cages. But if the left wants to call them cages, and the Democrats want to call them cages, then they have to accept the fact that they were built and funded in FY ’15, and I was there,” Tom Homan said, according to a transcript.
“The Associated Press reported in late 2019 that an unprecedented 69,550 migrant children were held in U.S. custody over that year.” JULY 1, 2019: Does an Image Show “Sandy” Ocasio-Cortez “Fake-Crying”at a Migrant Camp?
… A picture taken in 2018 captured “Sandy” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, before she was elected to the U.S. House, protesting a migrant-detention camp in Texas. BUSTED: “Sandy” Ocasio-Cortez was crying over an empty parking lot, not detained migrant children, at a protest in Texas.” The gallery @ the www….
“But Michelle Obama asserts that the Trump administration tore children from their families and threw them into cages alludes to “a frequent and distorted point made widely by Democrats.” The facilities designed during the Obama administration to temporarily hold migrants were used” [are being used & will continue to be used] “for a similar purpose by President Trump.”
No doubt about it Democrats like the DNC’s “Sandy” & FLOTUS Obama, called “Michael” by her husband, POTUS #44, put the “DQ” in Drama Queen criticizing the Trump administration for putting kids in cages, but the cages were built during the Obama administration;” &, Sandy & Michelle, squawk squawk squawk about ‘em, “fake” cry about ‘em!
AUGUST 26, 2020: “Michelle Obama did not mention the holding enclosures were built during her husband’s administration.” Facts @ USA Today @ hxxps://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/08/26/fact-check-obama-administration-built-migrant-cages-meme-true/3413683001/#
Under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, a political party can be legally classified as an “enterprise,” meaning its members or associates can be prosecuted for using the party’s structure to commit a pattern of crimes.
However, the RICO Act cannot “change” a political party in the sense of altering its ideology, platform, or legal status as a political entity. Instead, it is used to hold individuals accountable for criminal activity.
1. How RICO Applies to Political Parties
• Definition as an “Enterprise”: Under 18 U.S.C. § 1961(4), an “enterprise” includes any individual, partnership, corporation, association, or other legal entity. Courts have explicitly included political parties and government agencies in this definition.
• Prosecuting Individuals: RICO is used to prosecute individuals (such as politicians or party officials) who conduct the “affairs of an enterprise” through a pattern of racketeering.
• Civil Remedies: While rare, civil RICO suits can result in court-ordered injunctions to prevent future criminal acts, but they do not typically “reorganize” a political party’s core functions.
Let’s begin to count the ways that Martial Law of dictatorship are taking effect and coming into force.
Sounds like Gaza 2.0
America wherefore art thou?
Gone to the dogs
“In keeping with the phrase’s true meaning—why art thou—many share your sentiment that modern America has “gone to the dogs” for several reasons:
Political Fragmentation: Intense polarization and “tribalism” have made many feel the nation is exhausted and divided.
Declining Quality of Life: The U.S. now lags behind peer nations in measures of public health, poverty, and education.
Political Chaos: Commentators often point to a period of “chaos” in leadership and federal operations, such as recent deportation operations in Minnesota that have drawn bipartisan criticism.”
The rampant lawlessness, flagrant corruption, and kleptocracy should enrage everyone with an IQ above room temperature. The obvious abuses of the executive branch are being enabled by the institutionally corrupt judicial branch, and also enabled by the openly bribed Congress. This is the end result of decades of increasing corruption and abuses by both factions of oligarchy (so-called Democratic and Republican parties). The two parties should be viewed as criminal organizations.
The current DT2 regime uses public power to extort 100s of millions, Orange Caligula boasts about accepting 100s of millions in bribes from foreign nationals. US policy has been sold to the highest bidder. The D party are equally complicit in that they have refused to listen to the grievances of their so-called constituents (their real constituents are billionaire oligarchs and corps) and US people have nowhere to turn.
The “best” we can hope for is that the other corrupt faction of oligarchy gain power in the mid-terms to ostensibly check executive power, however I remain skeptical until I see it. If the likely “blue wave” does occur and we have a moderation in the abuse of power, don’t expect any improvement in the quality of life, distribution of income and wealth, health outcomes, improvements in the affordability crisis, improvements in the health care crisis, improvements in the elder care crisis, consumer protection etc. etc..
A D Congress will continue to spend over a trillion a year on war, proxy war against Russia, China etc. Continue to support Genocide, war on Iran, etc. Health care? crack-down on corruption? Nah, no money for that. plenty of billions for subsidies to Musk, Bezos, and the Oligarch bros.
But imagine if the vast majority of the population realized the D/R Bipartisan Consensus offer no meaningful choice, and voted for non-D/R people, what would happen? The media tells us that There IS NO ALTERNATIVE, you MUST vote D/R or “waste” your vote. Yet we call this “democracy”. Political bribery is legal, but we call the bribe-masters “donors” and “campaign contributors” in typical Orwellian fashion. But those OTHER countries are brutal dictatorships and autocracies blah blah blah… The hypocrisy is so deep, I need a full wet-suit and SCBA.
W/o a doubt, JonnyJames, the Republicans control the temperature; and, the Democrats, “Coming In Hot. NOT!!! The heat rises & the “ICEY Kingdom” is melting down, on both $ides, of the aisle. “and US people have nowhere to turn.”
….. Au contraire, “US people” aka “ordinary people” hold the “Power of their household’s “disposable earnings” Purse $trings” &, a best practice, “Keep Your Pocketbook, Your Money, in Your Hands.” Good behavior is your best weapon.
IMO, when the ABC’s of the DNC, “Sandy” 0casio-Cortez, Bernie Sanders, The defunct “Squad”, The Old Guard’s Tour, squawk, squawk, squawk about the woes & lows doled out by DJ “the Ballroom Dancer” Trump-Vance-Rubio-Hegseth-Gabbard, Incorporated, 1) “Shut the Front Door!” 2) The next time the Democrats rally for your money aka your disposable earnings, “Just say NO!”
The owl asks, “WHO, besides Israel, needs the US Congress? 2) WHO in the US Congress is NOT corrupt and/or full of contradictions?” The bird tweets, “Say their Names.”
It’s commonly known as “swimming w/the sharks.” Consider this, “many people,” universally, that do business with POTUS, SCOTUS, the US Congress, wind up dead! NO One Is Safe! “We” gotta act w/purpose, NOT fund the R’s & D’s fundrai$ers. Imo, a “common dream”, A Party of Renegades, Rises!!! TY, JonnyJames. “Keep It Lit!”