The New Dark Age

The Department of Homeland Security is transforming immigration detention into an industrial logistics operation — warehouses, transport routes, and processing centers linked like a delivery network — that treats human beings as freight.

ICE Director Todd Lyons made this explicit at the 2025 Border Security Expo when he described the new operational model as “like Amazon Prime, but with human beings.”

The “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” allocated $45 billion for detention construction inside a $76.5 billion ICE budget — nearly 10 times the agency’s typical annual funding. The money is flowing into 800,000-square-foot mega-warehouses positioned near major airports, designed to hold 5,000 to 10,000 detainees each.

ICE plans to convert at least 23 industrial warehouses into detention centers capable of holding up to 80,000 people at a time, organized in a hub-and-spoke network meant to move detainees from processing sites into large facilities near highways and airports.

DHS is invoking federal preemption to override local zoning laws to establish these sites, often without the knowledge or consent of local officials.

These facilities are built for throughput, not habitation. They lack climate control, adequate ventilation, running water, and medical care. Most are vacant industrial shells — concrete floors, bare walls, and ceiling beams — never designed for human habitation. DHS is proceeding with the buildout anyway.

DHS has already bought warehouses for detention — paying about $102 million for a site in Williamsport, Maryland and $70 million for one in Surprise, Arizona — with plans to begin housing detainees as early as April.

Even without a formal national “bed quota,” ICE contracts guarantee payment for a minimum number of detention beds. DHS pays whether those cages are occupied or empty — which means arrests are needed to justify the spending.

DHS’s detention expansion isn’t limited to Maryland and Arizona. Federal planning documents and local filings show the former Pep Boys auto parts warehouse in Chester, New York — a 401,000-square-foot industrial site just over an hour from New York City — is being targeted as part of the national network of processing facilities. Former workers say the building routinely became dangerously hot in summer, with poor ventilation and minimal cooling. Residents packed a town meeting in January after learning of the plan through news reports, and local officials say DHS moved forward without notifying them.

Local officials in other communities warn that the planned sites will overwhelm basic infrastructure. One proposed New Jersey facility draws from groundwater already near daily limits. Another sits in a floodplain. At ICE’s Everglades detention camp, drinking water already arrives by tanker truck.

Overseeing this transformation is David Venturella, a former executive at GEO Group — the largest private prison corporation in the United States, whose detention centers have been linked to medical neglect, preventable deaths, and abuse while company executives boast of “unprecedented” profits from Trump’s deportation campaign. Venturella received more than $6 million from GEO before being granted an ethics waiver to manage the very contracts now enriching his former employer. Kaiser Permanente is also a GEO shareholder, tying the health care giant to an industry built on cages and deprivation.

To staff this apparatus, DHS launched a “Defend the Homeland” recruitment drive offering $50,000 signing bonuses and student loan forgiveness, with age limits removed. More than 200,000 applications poured in. DHS plans to hire 10,000 new armed enforcement troopers — a domestic paramilitary force for raids and detention.

Law as obstacle

To fill these warehouses, ICE has gutted constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure. A May 12 internal memo signed by Lyons directs agents to use “administrative warrants” — documents signed by ICE officials rather than judges — to forcibly enter private residences.

Supervisors reportedly show the memo to agents and immediately take it back, keeping the policy largely verbal and untraceable. This secrecy has already led to home raids and forced entries. In Minneapolis, agents used a battering ram to breach a home without judicial authorization. In St. Paul, they broke down the door of Scott Thao, a U.S. citizen.

Agents entered homes with battering rams and administrative warrants signed by ICE supervisors rather than judges.

On Jan. 7, 2026, ICE agent Jonathan Ross fatally shot 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good in her vehicle during a coordinated federal paramilitary raid in Minneapolis. The Hennepin County Medical Examiner ruled her death a homicide.

The killings of Good and ICU nurse Alex Pretti are flashpoints because they are visible. Inside detention, there are no phones or cameras to document what federal agents are doing.

The violence continues.

In Minnesota this January, Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz documented that ICE violated at least 96 court orders in 74 different cases — a tally he warned was almost certainly an understatement. Schiltz said ICE “has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.”

ICE separates families

DHS claims that “ICE does not separate families,” but reports from multiple states show children taken from parents during enforcement operations.

On Nov. 26, 2025, six-year-old Yuanxin’s father, Fei, was arrested during a routine check-in at 26 Federal Plaza in New York City and transferred to a jail in Orange County. His son disappeared into an undisclosed location for over a week. DHS later claimed Fei had “abandoned” his child — a charge witnesses deny.

In Minnesota, five-year-old Liam Ramos was reportedly used as bait to arrest his father. Both were seized from their driveway and transported to a detention center in Texas. School superintendents report ICE circling schools and following buses to apprehend children. The Deportation Data Project estimates that at least 151 minors have been detained since January.

Kin punishment returns

In a break with even bourgeois due-process standards, DHS is holding entire families in detention based on last names and family ties.

Habiba Soliman, 18, and her four siblings — including four-year-old twins — have been held at the Dilley detention facility in Texas for seven months.

Their crime: sharing a last name with their father, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, who carried out a firebombing in Boulder in June 2025. The family condemned the attack and had no prior knowledge of it. They remain imprisoned anyway.

“We are six innocent people — including four-year-old twins — trapped in a nightmare we didn’t create and punished for our father’s actions,” Habiba said.

Collective punishment has long been a feature of U.S. counterinsurgency abroad. DHS is now applying it at home.

Detention as coercion machine

Inside immigration courts, detainees are increasingly abandoning their cases rather than remaining in custody. Court observers report detainees withdrawing asylum claims, requesting “voluntary departure,” or signing deportation orders because detention has become unbearable. Since fall 2025, voluntary-departure filings have surged more than 1,300%, with people selling homes or signing papers directly inside detention centers.

The administration has paired warehouse detention with cash incentives for people who agree to leave. ICE now advertises payments of up to $2,600 for those who agree to leave — money reportedly diverted from refugee programs. Many never receive it. Some are held for months after accepting “voluntary departure,” only to end up deported anyway because ICE failed to schedule flights in time.

Guards routinely lie to detainees about their rights. People report being told they have none.

Inside detention, word spreads quickly about deaths, medical neglect, and retaliation.

The deadliest year

The drive for industrial “efficiency” made 2025 the deadliest year in immigration detention in two decades, with 35 confirmed deaths — nearly triple the annual average during Trump’s first term and more than five times the rate under Biden.

In El Paso, the death of 55-year-old Geraldo Lunas Campos was ruled a homicide after witnesses reported guards slamming him to the ground.

Deaths have continued in 2026. At Camp East Montana, a detention facility on the grounds of Fort Bliss in Texas, two people have already died. Victor Manuel Martinez’s Jan. 14 death was labeled a “presumed suicide” by DHS, but his family disputes that account. His autopsy was assigned to an Army medical facility rather than a local medical examiner, raising alarm about federal control over the investigation.

ICE’s own inspectors documented 60 violations of federal detention standards at Camp East Montana last fall, months before those deaths.

At the Dade-Collier Training and Transition facility in the Florida Everglades — which detainees call “Alligator Alcatraz” — warehouse detention has created conditions for disease to spread. Attorneys report a respiratory outbreak affecting most detainees. Showers are allowed once or twice a week.

When Venezuelan detainee Luis Manuel Rivas Velásquez spoke out about conditions, guards confiscated his poetry and letters and forbade him from writing. After he collapsed, fellow detainees performed CPR because staff had denied him medical care for 48 hours.

Resistance and contradiction

People are responding on the ground.

• Minneapolis–St. Paul: On Jan. 23, more than 100,000 people took part in a general strike — shutting down businesses, skipping work and school, and marching in bitter cold against ICE and DHS. Neighbors have built rapid-response networks to track raids and warn targeted families. School workers document ICE activity near buses and campuses. Detainees and loved ones gather testimony and medical records while risking retaliation.
• Chicago: Immigrant defense groups and family members packed hearings and organized outside detention centers, pushing federal officials into court and aiding the release of 615 detainees. Organizers continue mobilizing around detention sites and hearings.
• Kansas City: Residents organized against proposed ICE warehouse sites, and the city council passed a five-year ban on new detention facilities.
• Baltimore: Hundreds joined a Unity March in solidarity with Minneapolis’ “No Work, No School, No Shopping” general strike, rallying against ICE and federal enforcement while local justice coalitions organized demonstrations outside federal buildings calling for an end to ICE operations.
• New York City: Large groups assembled in public spaces to protest federal immigration enforcement actions, joining the national wave of demonstrations.
• Boston: Hundreds marched through downtown streets in anti-ICE protests.
• Philadelphia: Community groups, including activists associated with historic movements, held demonstrations against ICE, and local lawmakers introduced proposals to curb ICE operations.
• Detroit: High school and college students led walkouts as part of coordinated actions opposing ICE enforcement.
• Seattle: Hundreds rallied downtown in anti-ICE protests, chanting and calling on lawmakers to reject ICE funding. Demonstrators marched through Seattle neighborhoods.
• Portland, OR: Protesters took to the streets and faced arrests during demonstrations against ICE following federal shootings.
• Los Angeles and Southern California: Community members organized rallies and street protests in response to ICE raids and shootings.
• San Francisco Bay Area: Workers, students, and organizers joined coordinated demonstrations as part of nationwide anti-ICE actions.
• New Orleans: High school students staged a walkout against ICE. On Jan. 23, protesters marched down Freret Street and blocked St. Charles Avenue to oppose federal immigration operations.
• South Texas (Dilley): Demonstrators gathered outside the South Texas Family Residential Center to protest the detention of a father and child transferred from Minnesota, facing off with state troopers in visible clashes.
• Austin: Organizers held multi-day protests against federal immigration enforcement following Minneapolis shootings.
• Nationwide: Organizers report actions in more than 300 cities — from marches and walkouts to packed council meetings, courthouse rallies, and residents confronting ICE officials during warehouse tours and documenting inspections with phones and cameras.

These are practical acts of defense.

The warehouses, the budgets, the recruitment drives, the deaths ruled homicides, the children taken from classrooms — these warehouses and raids exist because Congress funded them, DHS built them, and ICE enforces them.

The general strike in Minneapolis on Jan. 23 shows how the working class confronts repression.

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