The lease covers 7240 Holsclaw Road, on unincorporated land in south Santa Clara County, about 11 miles south of an ICE field office in Morgan Hill, Calif. A review of federal contract records shows the agency awarded it in January 2025 to ECG 6 LLC, which shares a Beverly Hills address with Elmwood Capital Group, at a total contract value of $26.5 million for 18,700 rentable square feet over a term of 20 years, 15 of them firm. County property records show Elmwood acquired the Holsclaw Road parcel weeks after the award.

The occupying agency is withheld from the leasing file under a law-enforcement exemption. The agency requirements package attached to the solicitation is a 104-page Immigration and Customs Enforcement cabling standard marked “For Official Use Only,” carrying the seals of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security.

San José Spotlight, which first reported the project in May, later obtained blueprints dated Sept. 17, 2025, that show detention areas, holding rooms and detainee processing at the property.

Project Salt Box today obtained ten pages of GSA leasing, environmental and procurement records through a Freedom of Information Act request submitted in May, providing new details about how the agency evaluated and advanced the project.

Among the records is a GSA Form 4002 signed Dec. 26, 2024, in which the agency claimed an automatic categorical exclusion, the tier of review under the National Environmental Policy Act that requires neither an environmental assessment nor an impact statement. The category the agency selected covers the acquisition of space within an existing structure where there is no change in the general type of use and only minimal change from the previous occupancy level. While the “Agency” field is redacted in the GSA files, a search of federal contracting databases for the project number, “8CA3614,” shows ICE as the primary federal agency behind the project.

The form lists the existing building on Holsclaw Road as 24,000 square feet, built in 1982, within a 1-percent-annual-chance floodplain, the designation formerly called a 100-year floodplain. It records the action as not a critical action, which the form defines as any activity for which even a slight chance of flooding would be too great a risk.

To lease within that floodplain, the agency prepared a Justification for No Practicable Alternatives. A review of the document shows the General Services Administration posted the requirement on the federal contracting site in October 2022, placed it on hold for a lack of agency funds, reposted it in 2024, and received no additional offers; one property met the requirements. A floodplain memorandum approved by the acting Region 9 commissioner of the Public Buildings Service found no practicable alternative to the floodplain and no impact from the lease.

The leasing records also show the environmental determination came after years of procurement activity tied to the same requirement. Documents state GSA first posted the solicitation in 2022 under the Biden administration, suspended it because of a lack of agency funding, and later reposted it after funds became available. In a separate floodplain justification, the agency said it reviewed commercial listings, advertised the requirement twice and concluded that only one property satisfied the government's specifications.

San José Spotlight has reported that the procurement began in 2020, under the first Trump administration, as a search for detention space and continued through the Biden administration under a solicitation that shares the current contract's identification number. GSA documents show the agency posted the requirement publicly in 2022, suspended it for a lack of funding, reposted it in 2024 and awarded the lease in January 2025.

A review of the leasing file shows the tenant-improvement allowance was $61.22 per occupiable square foot, about $1.04 million, with a separate security allowance of $204,000. The solicitation disclosed that the government anticipated the buildout would exceed that allowance by roughly $182 per square foot, an overage of about $3.1 million before relocation costs. The same documents set the facility’s security level at II — a standard security level comparable with other federal law enforcement offices — on a four-level federal scale and listed a further package of agency requirements “containing sensitive information,” available only to bidders who requested it from the contracting officer.

California and Santa Clara County sued the federal government on June 10 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, seeking to block construction on the grounds that the lease and the work underway are a major federal action that required an environmental assessment or impact statement the government never produced. The complaint also cites the Immigration and Nationality Act, California’s Williamson Act and federal consultation requirements, and describes the site as likely to become an Enforcement and Removal Operations office, a category designed for administrative use and short-term holding. Santa Cruz County has joined the suit, and Monterey County and the Gilroy City Council have passed measures opposing the project.

A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security told San José Spotlight in May: “We have no new detention centers to announce at this time.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement could be planning a $400 million detention facility in Hammond, La., with a construction start date of Sept. 1, according to a project entry in ConstructConnect, a subscription database that construction companies use to find and bid on upcoming work.

The project, which is not publicly available, was described in screenshots provided to Project Salt Box by a reader. It names ICE and the Department of Homeland Security as the project’s owners.

The entry describes the project as the remodeling of a mixed-use development to include a detention facility, a medical facility, and multi-residential development. Its status is listed as conceptual, and the record was last updated May 5.

Six companies have registered interest in the Hammond facility: Diamond Scaffold Services of Bogalusa, Road Warriors Construction of New Orleans, Stone Mountain Access Systems of Atlanta, and Security Constructors of Oklahoma City, each listed as an interested subcontractor; and Economy Brick Sales of Gonzales and HRM Concrete of Baton Rouge, listed as interested suppliers. None responded to a list of questions about the project, and the database does not indicate that any has submitted a bid.

Neither the $400 million figure nor the Sept. 1 start date appears in any public government record, and ConstructConnect, which compiles project data from permits and industry contacts, may have estimated them.

Neither DHS nor the General Services Administration have posted contract solicitations to SAM.gov, the federal system agencies use to advertise contracts and solicit competitive bids. But it has awarded other detention contracts without one, using a Navy contracting vehicle called WEXMAC TITUS under which pre-approved contractors bid on and are awarded work through a non-public system closed to other firms.

Hammond Mayor Pete Panepinto said in late December that no federal agency had contacted the city. “No one from ICE, DHS, or any other entity has reached out to me about such a facility,” he wrote on Facebook, adding that he would share information if that changed. Mr. Panepinto’s office did not respond to a list of questions sent by Project Salt Box.

Permit records showed no construction on that scale as of late December. Hammond, the largest city in Tangipahoa Parish, sits about 45 miles east of Baton Rouge and 45 miles northwest of New Orleans, with a population of roughly 21,000 at the 2020 census. The largest new commercial project permitted by the parish government in the preceding three months measured 7,541 square feet, according to parish reports reviewed by The Times-Picayune.

The prospect of a facility in Hammond has circulated in local Facebook groups since at least the spring, where residents have speculated about possible sites and raised concerns about the effect on water, electricity, and city infrastructure. Some have pointed to vacant warehouses near the Hammond Northshore Regional Airport, though no record reviewed by Project Salt Box identifies a site.

Hammond has appeared in ICE’s plans before. A draft solicitation reported by The Washington Post in December described seven large warehouse detention centers nationwide, including one in Hammond holding up to 9,000 detainees, as part of a plan to detain more than 80,000 people at a time. The draft required each facility to begin accepting detainees 30 to 60 days after construction starts; a Sept. 1 start would put the first detainees inside by October or November.

DHS has identified more than 20 potential locations for warehouse detention facilities, according to a spreadsheet verified by NBC News in November 2025, and members of Congress investigating the program’s contracts have put its planned cost at $38.3 billion in public funds. A second Louisiana site, a 250,000-square-foot former Conn’s HomePlus warehouse in Port Allen, is as a proposed location for a smaller facility holding roughly 500 detainees.

But in recent weeks, ICE has moved away from the warehouse purchases. The agency bought eleven warehouses for the program before pausing new acquisitions after Markwayne Mullin became secretary in March. On June 18, The New York Times reported that ICE planned to offload seven of them, purchased for more than $700 million, by transferring them to other federal agencies or selling them. The seven are in Romulus, Mich.; Social Circle and Flowery Branch, Ga.; Hamburg and Tremont, Pa.; Salt Lake City; and Roxbury, N.J. It is unclear if this retreat from the warehouse strategy would impact the proposed project in Hammond.

ICE has awarded construction contracts to refit only two of the eleven, in Williamsport, Md., and Surprise, Ariz., and neither is on the list of those to be offloaded. The Hammond project is in neither group; the entry describes a remodeling of an existing development, and no record shows ICE has purchased property there.

More than four months after the mayor’s statement, the entry’s location field still read “To Be Determined, Hammond, LA 70401.”

You do not need to be a journalist, a lawyer, or an advocacy organization to file a request. Any person can request federal records under FOIA. State sunshine laws vary, but most extend broad public access rights — and in some states, residents who live in a jurisdiction have legal standing that out-of-state requesters do not.

Readers who file requests and share what they find are a direct part of how Project Salt Box tracks and documents ICE's expanding detention footprint across the country.

What these laws cover

The Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552, requires most executive branch agencies — including the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Customs and Border Protection — to release records upon request unless a specific statutory exemption applies. The nine exemptions cover areas including classified national security information, internal personnel rules, trade secrets, and certain law enforcement records. Agencies cite these exemptions often, and most can be appealed.

State public records laws govern state and local agencies: county governments, planning departments, fire marshals’ offices, city councils, and public utilities. For example, Maryland’s Public Information Act, codified at Md. Code, Gen. Prov. § 4-101 et seq., requires agencies to respond within 30 days and mandates that the first two hours of search and preparation time be provided at no charge.

Before you write a request

Check existing FOIA reading rooms and disclosure libraries first. Many agencies are required to post frequently requested records online. DHS maintains a public reading room and ICE posts responsive documents at ice.gov/foia/library. A document already posted is available immediately; submitting a new request for it delays your access and consumes agency processing time. MuckRock, a nonprofit platform that facilitates records requests, maintains a searchable archive of records obtained by other requesters across thousands of agencies — check it before you start.

Then narrow your request before you write it. FOIA and its state equivalents do not require agencies to answer questions or conduct research on your behalf — they require agencies to search for and produce records. A request asking what an agency’s plans are for a particular facility will likely come back as not describing an identifiable record. Before drafting, identify the specific document types you want — contracts, correspondence, permits, inspection reports — and pair each with a named party, a facility address or contract number, and a defined date range. The narrower the request, the faster it tends to move and the less it is likely to cost.

You can submit the same request to multiple components of a large agency if you are not certain which one holds the records. ICE and CBP are separate components of DHS, and records about a facility may exist in one, the other, or both.

Submitting your request

Most federal agencies and many state agencies accept requests through online portals, which confirm receipt and assign a tracking number. The national FOIA portal at foia.gov allows you to submit requests to most federal agencies, track their status, and receive productions electronically. As of early 2026, DHS and ICE no longer accept requests by mail; requests must go through foia.gov or the ICE FOIA portal. CBP uses a separate SecureRelease portal. The Department of Justice maintains a directory of federal agency FOIA contacts with submission links for agencies that operate their own systems.

For state agencies, your state attorney general’s office typically maintains a directory of agency public records contacts. Many county and municipal agencies accept email submissions; some still require written requests by mail. When in doubt, call the agency’s main public affairs line and ask where to send a records request.

Keep a copy of every request you submit, the confirmation of receipt, and all subsequent correspondence. Response deadlines run from the date the agency acknowledges receipt, not from the date you submitted it.

Writing the request

A records request can be written plainly, but it needs to be precise. Every request should include your name and contact information, a description of the specific records you want, a reference to the Freedom of Information Act by name, and a fee waiver request. If you have grounds for expedited processing, include that as well.

When describing the records, be concrete. Name the facility, the contractor or agency, the document type, and the date range. Requests that describe a broad topic rather than specific records — “all documents related to ICE detention in [state]” — will likely be rejected outright. Specific requests move faster and cost less.

Requesting a fee waiver

FOIA authorizes agencies to charge fees for search time, duplication, and review. If you are requesting records for a noncommercial public interest purpose, you can ask the agency to waive those fees — and you do not need to be a journalist or affiliated with a news organization to do so.

The request should explain what you are looking for, why it matters to the public, and that you have no commercial interest in the records. Keep it short. Agencies receive boilerplate fee waiver language constantly; a clear, specific explanation of your purpose carries more weight.

If your fee waiver is denied, you can appeal that denial separately from any appeal of a withheld record.

Requesting expedited processing

Federal FOIA allows requesters to ask for faster processing when delay would harm the public’s ability to get timely information about what the government is doing. To qualify, you generally need to show that you are sharing information with the public and that there is a specific, time-sensitive reason the records are needed now. A general claim that the public should know is not sufficient; a pending construction start, an imminent facility opening, or an active legal proceeding are.

Appealing

If an agency withholds records in whole or in part, denies your fee waiver, or fails to respond within the 20 business day statutory deadline, you have the right to appeal. Federal appeals go to the agency’s FOIA Appeals Officer. Your letter should identify the request by its tracking number, describe what was withheld or what deadline was missed, and explain why you believe the response was wrong. You do not need a lawyer to write one.

If an administrative appeal is denied, you may file suit in federal district court. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press and the National Freedom of Information Coalition offer free guidance on that process.

At the state level, appeal mechanisms vary. Some states have an open government ombudsman who can intervene; others require suit in state court. Your state attorney general’s office can direct you to the applicable process.

How to submit a request through the SecureRelease portal

ICE and CBP process FOIA requests through the federal SecureRelease portal, accessible through foia.gov. The portal walks you through six steps.

Step 1: Agency and component. Select “Department of Homeland Security” from the agency dropdown, then select “U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement” from the component dropdown. The portal will display ICE’s contact information and any active processing notices — check these before proceeding, as they may flag delays. As of February 2026, ICE has noted delays across most FOIA offices.

Step 2: Contact information. The portal will ask what type of requester you are. Select “All Other” unless you are filing on behalf of a news organization or educational institution — your requester category affects what fees may apply. Fill in your name, mailing address, email, and phone number. This information is collected separately from your request, so you do not need to include it in the request text itself.

Step 3: Request details. Select “FOIA Request” as the request type. The portal then presents a single open text field labeled “Request Description.” This is where you paste your request language. The portal instructs you to be as specific as possible — name the document types, the parties involved, the location, and the date range. If you have submitted related requests previously, note the prior request ID here as well.

Step 4: Additional information. The portal will ask for a “Request Designation.” Select “Other (I am not requesting records about a person).” The remaining fields on this screen — alien number, date of birth, SEVIS number — are for people requesting records about themselves or a specific individual. Leave them blank.

Step 5: Fees. Check the “Request Fee Waiver” box. A text field will appear asking you to justify your fee waiver request — paste your fee waiver language here. The portal also asks for the maximum amount you are willing to pay in fees if the waiver is denied. Entering $25 is a reasonable starting point; you can adjust this based on your situation.

Step 6: Expedited processing. If you are requesting expedited processing, check the box and paste your justification in the text field that appears. If you are not requesting expedited processing, leave this step blank. Complete the reCAPTCHA and click “Submit Request.”

Resident advantages

The case for crowdsourcing records requests is fundamentally geographic. Fire marshal inspection reports, county building permit applications, zoning variance records, local emergency management correspondence, utility connection permits, and tax assessment filings exist only within state and local systems. A federal FOIA request to ICE cannot reach a city’s internal correspondence about a facility, a county assessor’s chain of title, or a local planning department’s site review. Those records require a state or local request, and a local resident is often better positioned to know they exist and to identify the right agency.

In five states — Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Tennessee, and Virginia — that advantage is also a legal one. Those states limit public records requests to their own residents by statute, meaning a news organization headquartered elsewhere may have no standing to file at all. Kentucky imposes a similar residency requirement, with narrow exceptions for registered out-of-state business entities and certain news media organizations. New Jersey and New Hampshire have statutory language that could be read the same way, though neither state currently enforces it as a bar to out-of-state requesters. In any of these states, a local resident filing on their own behalf has access that an outside organization cannot replicate.

Cost is another variable worth understanding before you file. For instance, California’s Public Records Act does not include a statutory fee waiver — if an agency declines to reduce costs at its own discretion, you have limited recourse.

The practical workaround is showing up in person: viewing records at a California agency’s office is free, and you may be permitted to photograph or scan pages with your own device at no charge. Agencies may only bill the direct cost of duplication for copies they produce themselves, and cannot charge for staff time spent searching or reviewing records. A local resident who can walk into an office has a meaningful cost advantage over a remote requester ordering copies by mail.

Elected officials and local agency heads answer to constituents, not to outside organizations. A records request from someone who lives in a jurisdiction lands differently than one from a national outlet headquartered elsewhere — particularly in smaller counties and municipalities where officials are directly accessible. A national organization also has limited capacity to file simultaneously across dozens of jurisdictions. Residents who live near a facility, know which local agencies received correspondence, and can appear at a county office are doing something no national organization can replicate at scale.

Share what you find

Project Salt Box is an all-volunteer investigative nonprofit covering federal immigration detention contracting and homeland security spending. We want to hear from readers who have obtained records through public information requests or have knowledge of federal contracting in their communities.

If you obtain records and would like to share them, or have a tip related to ICE detention expansion, you can reach us at projectsaltbox@pm.me.

We do not identify sources without their permission.

A starting-point records request

Most federal and state agencies now accept records requests through online portals, which collect your contact information separately. The following is the text you will need to paste or type into the request field. Replace the bracketed sections with your own information.

I am requesting copies of the following records under the Freedom of Information Act, 5 U.S.C. § 552:

[Describe the records you want. Be as specific as you can: name the document type, the agency or company involved, the location or address if relevant, and the date range.]

Example: “All contracts and lease agreements between Immigration and Customs Enforcement and [company name] related to the property located at [address], from [start date] to the present.”

I am requesting a fee waiver under 5 U.S.C. § 552(a)(4)(A)(iii). I am seeking these records to understand how public funds are being spent and intend to share what I find with the public. I have no commercial interest in these records. If my fee waiver request is denied and fees are expected to exceed $25, please notify me before processing so I can decide how to proceed.

If any portion of this request is denied, please identify the specific exemption claimed and provide information on how to appeal that decision.

A few notes on using this template

The description of the records is the only part that requires real thought. Everything else is standard language that agencies expect to see. If your description is too broad, the agency will either reject the request outright or return an estimate for a search that costs more than you want to pay — which is why narrowing your request before you file matters.

The $25 threshold in the fee notification line is a reasonable ceiling for most requests, but you can raise or lower it based on your situation.

For state and local requests, replace the statutory citation (5 U.S.C. § 552) with the name of your state’s public records law. MuckRock’s state-by-state guides can tell you what it’s called and how to cite it. The structure — describe what you want, ask for a fee waiver, ask for an explanation of anything withheld — works in virtually every state system.

Resources

Finding and submitting requests

• FOIA.gov — The federal government’s central records request portal. Submit requests to most federal agencies, track status, and receive productions in one place.

• ICE FOIA Portal — ICE’s dedicated submission portal for immigration enforcement records.

• CBP SecureRelease Portal — Customs and Border Protection’s separate submission system.

• MuckRock — A nonprofit platform for filing, tracking, and sharing public records requests. Includes a searchable archive of records obtained by other requesters and state-by-state guides to local public records laws.

Reading rooms and existing disclosures

• DHS FOIA Library — Previously released DHS records available for immediate download.

• ICE FOIA Library — ICE’s public reading room, updated regularly with new productions.

State public records laws

• Reporters Committee Open Government Guide — State-by-state legal reference on public records laws, written by attorneys in each jurisdiction. The most authoritative resource if you hit a specific legal obstacle.

• Right on Transparency — State Residency Requirements — A summary of which states restrict records requests to their own residents, with statutory citations.

• Ballotpedia — Who Can Make Public Records Requests by State — A plain-language summary of requester eligibility rules in all 50 states.

Legal help and appeals

• Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press — Free legal resources and attorney referrals for journalists and members of the public facing FOIA disputes.

• National Freedom of Information Coalition — A network of state-level press freedom and open government organizations. A good starting point if your dispute involves a state or local agency.

Note: This guide is for informational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. Public records laws vary by jurisdiction and are subject to change. If you have questions about your rights under a specific state or federal records law, consult an attorney or contact one of the legal resources listed above.

Yesterday, ICE announced its plans to reopen a detention facility that has been closed since 2010. The Prairie Correctional Facility - soon to be called the Prairie Detention Facility - is owned by private prison company CoreCivic. At capacity, the facility will hold 1,600 male and female detainees, with an initial 150 detainees the first week and 250 additional every week thereafter.

Citing their need for an “increase [in] bed capacity to meet the administration’s interior enforcement and border decompression goals” ICE plans to award the comprehensive detention services contract to CoreCivic, given the company owns, and has historically operated, the facility.

Comprehensive Detention Services

Prairie Pws 6 2 2026

1.33MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The Prairie facility has been closed for over 15 years, and the contract requires CoreCivic to plan, manage, and complete all renovations necessary to ensure it meets the most current National Detention Standards. Once the facility is approved for operation, CoreCivic will be responsible for every aspect of running it, including security/guards, housing, meals, and transportation.

Medical care is also built into the contract at a significant level. CoreCivic will have to provide 24/7 on-site health care including intake screening, comprehensive health assessments, sick call, mental health services, dental care, prescription medications, and emergency response coordination. The facility must also support disability accommodations and suicide prevention procedures.

Oversight Under Tight Control

The contract gives ICE near‑total control over who can see inside the facility, including members of Congress and their staff. A dedicated access section makes clear that ICE, not CoreCivic or local officials, decides who may enter secure areas, when tours occur, and what visitors are allowed to observe.

Even when congressional offices or committees request information, they cannot go directly to the contractor - the PWS requires CoreCivic to route all data, records, and responses through ICE, which then decides what to share and when. While this may be standard language in detention contracts, it comes as members of Congress are actively fighting DHS in court just to exercise their statutory right to conduct unannounced inspections of ICE facilities. In the last year alone, lawmakers have been denied entry to multiple detention centers and have sued the Trump administration over new policies that impose advance‑notice requirements and effectively block real‑time oversight of conditions on the ground.

An Unclear Timeline

CoreCivic has a maximum 90‑day “transition‑in” period after award to complete renovations, with detainee intake beginning on day 91 and ramping up by 150 people the first week and 250 more each week thereafter until the facility hits 1,600 beds. The same section requires a detailed mobilization plan and a government‑approved operations schedule, but it does not say when ICE actually intends to award the contract or when that 90‑day clock will start.

The only public marker is the June 19, 2026 response date on ICE’s sole‑source justification notice on SAM.gov. That document explains why ICE plans to give the deal directly to CoreCivic, but it does not include an anticipated award date, construction schedule, or projected opening for detainee intake. Meanwhile, the PWS’ Deliverables section gives ICE up to 30 business days to accept or comment on draft plans, and another 15 business days for CoreCivic to revise, meaning key milestones could sit in back‑and‑forth for weeks without any public indication of when Prairie will actually begin detaining people.

Reopening Prairie Fits into Broader Strategy

ICE’s move to reopen Prairie fits into a broader strategy to rapidly expand detention capacity by leaning on private prison infrastructure that already exists. The agency has faced mounting local opposition to its plan to convert warehouses into large detention hubs, particularly in urban areas where zoning fights, environmental review, and organizing by immigrant rights groups can slow or kill projects.

Reopening shuttered prisons like Prairie offers ICE a faster, often quieter path to increasing detention bedspace. The facility already has a carceral footprint, is located in a rural community familiar with prison operations, and can be brought online through a single, sole‑source contract with a company that has run it before.

ICE and CoreCivic did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Bottom Line Up Front

Spending Increases following April dip: After a quieter April, DHS detention and enforcement contracting activity picked back up in May, with both total obligations and the size of individual awards trending higher. The rebound was driven largely by large border wall contracts and sizable modifications to existing ICE agreements.

Work Resumes at Surprise, Az. Warehouse: The stop work order on the GardaWorld contract was rescinded on May 6 and since then, the company has ramped up its recruitment efforts, claiming they are “currently building a pipeline…with an expected start date of later this year.”

ICE Continues use of Navy Contract: A May task order issued to Acquisition Logistics LLC is the first on WEXMAC TITUS since Secretary Markwayne Mullin’s transition in. The award indicates that DHS intends to keep relying on this Defense Department contract structure, despite ongoing criticism from transparency advocates and members of Congress.

USCIS Reaches new Year‑to‑Date Spending Peak: USCIS posted its highest monthly obligations so far this year in May, more than doubling its April spending from about $55 million to roughly $230 million - a 317% increase.

May’s Biggest Contracts

Since we started this report back in January, the largest contracts each month have been related to border wall construction, and May was no exception. Southwest Valley Constructors received the month’s largest award - a $1.7 billion award funding more border wall construction in the Big Bend sector of Texas. This is the second-largest border wall contract in CBP history (the largest was issued to Fisher Sand & Gravel back in January). Fisher Sand & Gravel and Sundt Construction also secured wall construction awards, each valued in the hundreds of millions.

The majority of the over $450 million in funds obligated by ICE was spent in modifications to existing contracts, not on new ones. For example, CSI Aviation, the company who runs ICE deportation flights, was awarded an additional $119 million. The GEO Group and CoreCivic also received continued funding through their existing detention and transportation contracts, collectively netting over $104 million.

One new ICE contract of note was the $25 million award to Bi2 Technologies for 1,570 iris scanners. As we reported earlier this month, these scanners are in addition to the 200 ICE bought in September of last year, and are part of a sweeping expansion of biometric and data-analysis tools across federal law enforcement. The agency also awarded yet another task order on the Navy’s WEXMAC TITUS contract, this time to Acquisition Logistics LLC for detention and ground transportation services in the Los Angeles, Ca. area of responsibility.

Over at USCIS, the agency had its highest spending month to date this year. Half of that spend went to one company - Amentum Services. The agency spent $116 million funding another year of the company’s contract to support operations collecting applicant biometric and biographical data.

Analysis and Trends

Warehouse Work Continues, Despite Lawsuits: Contracting activity in May shows that work has restarted at the Surprise, Arizona warehouse, even as lawsuits from the state attorney general and local opponents move forward in federal court. DHS’s decision to resume construction there tracks with reporting that, while the department has paused purchases of new warehouse sites, it appears to be concentrating its efforts in states and localities where it expects less sustained resistance.

ICE Spending Increased Over 200% from April: April was the slowest month of ICE contracting so far this year in both total obligations and the size of individual awards, reflecting a brief transition period as Secretary Markwayne Mullin reviewed inherited contracts and warehouse plans. The more than 200 percent jump in ICE spending from April to May suggests that this pause is over and that the agency has returned to an aggressive pace of obligations, leaning heavily on existing detention, transportation, and surveillance vendors to ramp up operations.

Continued Investment in Biometric Data Collection: May’s contracts show that DHS is deepening its reliance on biometric systems across multiple components. ICE’s $25 million award to BI2 Technologies for 1,570 additional iris scanners points to a rapid build‑out of biometric screening as standard infrastructure in detention and enforcement operations. At the same time, USCIS devoted roughly half of its May spending to Amentum Services to keep collecting applicants’ biometric and biographical data for another year, signaling that large‑scale identity collection remains a priority across DHS.

About this Report

All procurement data used in this report is from usaspending.gov and SAM.gov. If there are specific procurements, companies, regions, or topics you would like us to cover in future monthly reports, please reach out to us and let us know.

The environmental assessment that Immigration and Customs Enforcement opened this week for its plan to convert the Williamsport, Md., warehouse into a detention facility describes interior modifications designed to accommodate up to 1,500 people and the installation of a 750,000-gallon on-site domestic water storage tank, with a booster-pump system the notice says is intended to limit the facility’s impact on the local distribution system. Comments are due July 1.

26 0601 Crsco Nepa Ice Scopting Hagerstown Md

335KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

That 1,500 figure is the same capacity ICE distanced itself from in court throughout the spring. In filings opposing Maryland’s lawsuit, the agency told the U.S. District Court that initial plans called for 542 detainees and that it had done the environmental and technical work appropriate to a facility of that size — a number it has now repeated across four federal cases.

In April, Rep. April McClain Delaney, whose district includes the area, said the agency was reconsidering the scope of the 1,500-bed plan; the assessment posted today seems to backtrack that reconsideration. The June 1 assessment matches the original capacity that appeared in internal agency documents leaked late last year and in the state’s complaint.

ICE has described the site publicly as a short-term processing facility. The notice lists up to six secure recreation yards, two cafeterias, a kitchen, three multi-purpose rooms, a health services room and laundry facilities, with staff amenities that may include training rooms and even an indoor firing range.

The warehouse as currently configured has four toilets, two water fountains and a municipal allocation of roughly 800 gallons a day. A facility for 1,500 people would require about 209,000 gallons a day, using the per-capita figure drawn from ICE’s own planning documents. A 750,000-gallon tank would let the facility store water on site rather than draw it in real time from Hagerstown, the sole water supplier for Williamsport, which would otherwise have to approve a large increase in the allocation through a process requiring a formal application, an engineering review and full upfront payment for the work.

The notice also describes a three-phase sewer and water plan that may include expanding the off-site lift station and procuring additional capacity from Washington County, steps that run against a state order barring any increase in sewage flow tied to the property, issued because a pumping station serving the site is operating at more than 99 percent of its allocated capacity.

Apart from the tank, ICE’s notice catalogs the extent of the ground disturbance the project would require: trenching and mechanical excavation for the waterline and sanitary sewer, fiber-optic and telecommunication cabling, new freestanding light poles, a new generator, piers for recreational-area awnings and basketball hoops, perimeter security fencing and a prefabricated guard shack.

The new assessment exists because Judge Brendan A. Hurson granted Maryland a preliminary injunction on April 15, barring any retrofitting of the warehouse and limiting work to maintenance and security measures until the review is complete, after finding that the agency had likely failed to assess the project’s environmental consequences as federal law requires.

The only environmental review ICE conducted before buying the warehouse was completed and approved in a single day, the day before the purchase closed. A government lawyer told the court the review now underway could take years.

DHS bought the 825,620-square-foot warehouse on Jan. 16 for $102.4 million in cash. Federal spending records show a renovation contract awarded to KVG LLC of Gettysburg, Pa., worth $113 million, with options that could raise it to $642 million over three years and bring total federal spending on the site to at least $215 million.

In the notice opening the review, which asks the public to identify the project’s potential environmental effects, DHS writes that it “is not aware of any potential for significant environmental impacts.”

Subscribe now

The fire department responsible for both sides of the street says no one has asked it how that would work.

In a written response on June 1, the fire marshal of the Surprise Fire-Medical Department, Steven D. Faraclas, said his department had never been given a plan for how the detention center would handle a chemical accident across the street. Neither the Department of Homeland Security, nor Immigration and Customs Enforcement, nor the private contractor hired to run the facility had contacted the department about emergency planning or the chemical site next door. Asked whether any of them had been in touch, Faraclas wrote: “Not at this time.”

The chemical facility, run by the Rinchem Company, has operated at 13255 W. Sweetwater Avenue since early 2024, according to state hazardous-materials filings reviewed by Project Salt Box. The filings identify Surprise Fire-Medical as the responding fire department and list dozens of hazardous substances on site, including chlorine, ammonia, fluorine and large amounts of hydrogen chloride — a gas that becomes a choking, corrosive cloud when it is released.

In recently-posted job advertisements for the Surprise site, GardaWorld Federal Services — the company ICE contracted to fit-out and operate the facility — warns that “employees may be exposed to extreme cold or hot weather conditions, fumes, or airborne particles, toxic or caustic chemicals, and loud noise.”

Companies that store hazardous chemicals in large quantities must tell regulators how far a dangerous release could spread. In Rinchem’s filing, the company modeled what regulators call an “alternative release scenario”: a realistic accident, not the worst possible case, in which a broken seam or manifold at its outdoor container yard releases 20,000 pounds of hydrogen chloride gas over 10 minutes. The Environmental Protection Agency’s risk model shows a toxic cloud from such a breach could travel as far as 2.7 miles, across an area where 73,642 people live. The detention center across the street, the surrounding neighborhoods and several schools all fall within that distance.

Northwest Valley Indivisible, a nonpartisan civic group in Arizona’s Eighth Congressional District, raised the issue with Surprise officials on May 29, submitting a public safety briefing based on Rinchem’s EPA filings and offsite consequence data.

The group asked the city to press DHS, ICE and GardaWorld for answers on evacuation, shelter-in-place planning, emergency coordination and chemical-detection systems before the facility opens.

Lynne Gehling of Northwest Valley Indivisible, who provided Project Salt Box with Rinchem records obtained through state hazardous-materials filings and an EPA Risk Management Plan reading-room review, said the unanswered questions pointed to a basic failure of due diligence.

“Did a single person at DHS or ICE look across the street and see one of the largest hazardous chemical warehouse in the Valley before they spent $70 million to lock people up with no way out?” Gehling said. “Did anyone do any due diligence on this location at all? We keep asking. They keep not answering. Surprise residents deserve better.”

In its letter, the group asked officials to demand answers on “how 542 non-evacuable detainees will be protected in a toxic release event,” whether the county emergency planning committee and Surprise Fire-Medical Department had reviewed Rinchem’s risk plan against the detention center’s operations, and “what chemical detection and HVAC isolation systems will be in place before opening.” The group called them “public safety questions with straightforward regulatory answers — or they should be.”

The city of Surprise could not be reached for comment in time for publication.

The questions may extend beyond the 542-detainee figure cited by Northwest Valley Indivisible. ICE’s Detention Reengineering Initiative describes regional processing centers like Surprise as short-term staging sites that can hold 1,000 to 1,500 detainees for three to seven days before transfer or removal, according to records released by New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s office.

The Arizona attorney general raised a more expansive version of the same concern in its lawsuit against DHS, arguing that the Surprise warehouse was built for industrial distribution, not human detention, and that placing a captive population across from a hazardous-materials warehouse could strain the city’s ability to protect public health and provide emergency services during an accident.

ICE has made at least one site-specific environmental notice public. In February, the agency issued a floodplain notice saying the 24.46-acre property sits in a moderate flood-hazard zone and that ICE had reviewed alternatives before deciding to acquire, renovate and occupy the warehouse as a “temporary detainee dormitory.” The notice said the site was largely paved, already served by roads, utilities and drainage infrastructure, and would require only “minor adjustments” for operations. It did not mention Rinchem, the chemical storage facility across the street, or the evacuation of a detained population during a chemical release.

As of publication, ICE had not filed its response to the state’s complaint. In other warehouse cases, DHS responses have included records of environmental consideration that Project Salt Box previously reported were completed on compressed timelines and relied on categorical exclusions rather than fuller environmental assessments, including at the proposed detention site in Roxbury, N.J.

That narrow record leaves unanswered the broader public-safety question raised by the warehouse’s location — namely, how would emergency officials protect hundreds, if not thousands, of locked detainees during a chemical release, industrial fire, hazardous-materials crash, smoke event or other fast-moving emergency.

Two major chemical emergencies struck the West in the same week. In Longview, Wash., a tank containing roughly 900,000 gallons of “white liquor,” a caustic chemical mixture used in paper production, imploded at a Nippon Dynawave Packaging facility on May 26, killing 11 workers, USA Today reported. Days earlier in Garden Grove, Calif., about 50,000 residents were evacuated after a tank holding 6,500 gallons of methyl methacrylate became unstable at a GKN Aerospace facility, according to ABC7 Los Angeles.

When the evacuation order came in Garden Grove, residents could, for the most part, get in their cars and leave. People held in a locked detention center would depend on a plan — and on staff, contractors and emergency responders — to evacuate, shelter in place or move them out of danger.

A general emergency plan already exists for the Rinchem facility, Faraclas said, and his department has reviewed it. But that plan covers the chemical company alone. The detention center, he said, “would prepare its own general emergency or evacuation plan” — a separate document, not yet written, that the operator would produce on its own.

Asked what it would take to protect people who cannot evacuate themselves if an accident occurred, Faraclas said his department would coordinate with the facility’s managers at the time. “No such conversation has taken place at this time,” he wrote. He said the department is responsible for emergency planning in the area and that the work is “ongoing.”

A chemical release could also draw a federal response through Regional Response Team 9, a multiagency coordination group co-chaired by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Coast Guard that supports preparedness and response to oil and hazardous-substance spills on land in Arizona, California and Nevada. But the local agency with immediate responsibility for the corridor, Surprise Fire-Medical, said no such conversation has taken place.

Asked about the gap the fire marshal described, a DHS spokesperson did not address the specific questions. The spokesperson said the agency was reviewing its policies and pointed to the homeland security secretary’s pledge to “work with community leaders” and “be good partners.”

The spokesperson then attacked critics of the project. “Let’s be honest about this. This isn’t about the environment,” the spokesperson said. “It’s about trying to stop President Trump from making America safe again.” Critics, the spokesperson added, were “feigning concern” because they wanted immigrants in the country illegally “to stay forever and vote here.”

On the question of environmental review, the spokesperson said ICE had “carefully evaluated” the site before buying it to limit harm to “protected species, sensitive natural resources, and valued cultural resources.” The statement did not mention Rinchem, the schools within the modeled hazard zone, Surprise Fire-Medical or the detained population that would be unable to leave on its own.

GardaWorld referred all questions to DHS. Rinchem did not respond to an emailed list of questions from Project Salt Box.

The federal government bought the 418,000-square-foot warehouse on Jan. 23 for $70 million in cash, according to county property records, and later awarded GardaWorld a contract worth $313 million to convert and operate it — a deal that could exceed $700 million if extended through 2029, Project Salt Box previously reported. The Surprise warehouse is one of 11 that ICE has bought around the country as it builds a new network of detention sites, purchases Project Salt Box has tracked since January.

The Surprise project is part of a nationwide warehouse detention expansion that has drawn legal challenges in Maryland, New Jersey, Michigan, Arizona and Social Circle, Ga. State and local officials have argued that DHS moved ahead without completing the environmental review required under federal law. In Maryland, a federal judge halted one warehouse conversion in April; at a hearing, the judge asked whether the government’s review could pass “the laugh test.” DHS has said in court that it conducted the review the law required. Work on the Surprise contract was stopped under federal orders the same month.

Unlike the city of Romulus, Mich., which joined the Michigan attorney general in suing the Trump administration over a proposed detention site there, the city of Surprise has not joined its state’s lawsuit. When the purchase became public in late January, the city said it had not been told about the sale or the building’s intended use. It has since negotiated a $300,000 annual payment from DHS and a promise to cover the cost of police, fire and medical response — an arrangement whose details, as of late spring, had not been settled.

The only agency with the authority to respond to a chemical emergency on West Sweetwater Avenue is the Surprise Fire-Medical Department. It has not been asked to plan for the people who would soon be held across the street from the chemicals.

“Our department would work in conjunction with their facility managers if such an accident were to occur,” Faraclas wrote. “No such conversation has taken place at this time.”

The Department of Homeland Security has begun identifying several of the eleven warehouses it bought this year to detain immigrants for possible sale, NBC News reported Friday, and is weighing the same for the deportation planes it acquired over the period, among them a Boeing 737 Max 8. No final decisions have been made.

The buildings were purchased under former Secretary Kristi Noem as part of a plan to detain as many as 100,000 immigrants at one time, a push backed by a $45 billion congressional appropriation in 2025. Department officials now say they no longer need that capacity, according to NBC.

That position is in stark contrast with statements from elsewhere in the administration’s immigration apparatus. Earlier this year, the border czar, Tom Homan, said mass deportations were still coming. “You haven't seen shit yet,” he said.

DHS paid just over $1 billion for the eleven properties. A review of state tax and land records and commercial sales data shows the government paid above the most recent valuation at every one of the sites and above recent market comparables at most of them.

In Socorro, Texas, ICE paid $123 million for a property last valued at about $11 million. In Flowery Branch, Ga., it paid $68 million for a site previously valued at $400,000. The city of Social Circle, Ga., has sued, alleging the agency paid more than five times the property's assessed value. The last warehouse ICE bought before then-Secretary Noem’s firing was in Salt Lake City, Utah, which was purchased for $145.4 million — a markup of 49 percent above its last appraised value, according to tax assessor records.

Many of the buildings had sat empty for years before the government bought them. In Williamsport, Md., the agency awarded a $113 million retrofit contract within weeks of the January purchase, and in Surprise, Ariz., it committed more than $300 million to the same work. A DHS memo set a deadline of November 30, 2026, to open the new facilities nationwide.

The road to offloading any one of these facilities might not be an easy one.

The first obstacle to a potential sale lies in court. Local and state governments in five states have sued to block the conversions, arguing that the buildings are industrial shells unfit to hold people and that DHS bought them without the environmental review federal law requires. Until those cases are resolved — or the parties settle — some of the sites cannot change hands

The litigation has already produced one concrete result. In April, a federal judge in Maryland froze work on the 825,000-square-foot warehouse near Williamsport, finding that DHS had not taken the “hard look” at environmental consequences that the National Environmental Policy Act requires. New Jersey’s complaint over a building bought for about $129 million, roughly twice its assessed value, called it “a logistics center fit for Amazon Prime packages, not people,” with four toilets for a planned 1,500 detainees.

Even cleared for sale, the buildings are unlikely to recover what they cost. The markups that the government paid in rushing to buy the warehouses set the floor for any loss, and a private buyer has little reason to pay what the government did for warehouses that had sat empty for years before ICE acquired them. The DHS inspector general is already auditing whether the purchases met the need for detention space cost-effectively.

The agency that would handle a sale is short-staffed for it. The General Services Administration’s Public Buildings Service lost about a third of its staff over the past year, and the private brokers it hired to speed disposals had not closed a single sale as of this spring, the Government Accountability Office found.

A sale also has to clear a prior claim to the buildings themselves. Under Title V of the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, once federal property is declared surplus, organizations that serve homeless people can acquire it at no cost before it can be sold. The GSA’s accelerated-disposal program acknowledges that those screenings come first.

Whether that claim applies would depend on a finding by the Department of Housing and Urban Development that a property is suitable for housing people. That is unlikely to apply to the warehouses.

The same features the states are litigating, among them the lack of plumbing for large numbers of occupants, are the features that would weigh against such a finding. A building found unsuitable for the homeless moves toward sale rather than transfer.

The change in plans followed a change in leadership. The purchases were made under Noem, and the review of whether to reverse them began after Markwayne Mullin took over the department in March. Trump had said he wanted a “softer touch” on enforcement after the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens during operations in Minneapolis in January.

Asked about the possible sales, a DHS spokesperson told NBC that the department is “assessing all our resources, including aircraft, to maximize efficiency” and described Mullin as focused on “being the best possible steward of taxpayer dollars.” The spokesperson said the secretary wanted to work with the communities that had opposed the facilities. DHS did not respond to Project Salt Box’s emailed request for comment in time for publication

Eric Taylor, the Social Circle city manager, told NBC he was glad to hear the agency might drop the warehouse his town had sued to stop, but wanted the change from DHS in writing. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” he said.

Subscribe now

The map is one page of a White House site that casts unauthorized immigrants as extraterrestrials who “walk among us”. The page opens with a scrolling crawl about a secret the government supposedly kept for sixty years and an invasion carried out under cover of darkness, then gives way to the map and a link to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement tip line.

A White House official described it to Fox News Digital as a first-of-its-kind effort to draw attention to the previous administration’s border record. Every other city opens the same panel — a total, a date range, the charges, the countries of origin, a gang indicator.

The map offers no way to see the records behind those numbers. There is no file to download and no breakdown within a city; the data can be read only one place at a time, and every figure arrives pre-totaled. The charges and the gang line are listed beside the Baltimore total of 2,202 with no count for how many of those arrests fall under either.

The most complete public accounting of ICE arrests does not come from the agency, whose published enforcement statistics are aggregate and lag by a quarter. The individual-level records are obtained through Freedom of Information Act litigation by the Deportation Data Project, a research effort run out of the UCLA Center for Immigration Law and Policy, whose most recent release covers ICE actions through early March 2026.

A review of those records for the Baltimore area of responsibility, which covers the entire state of Maryland, counts 6,343 arrests recorded after Jan. 20, 2025 and running through early March 2026.

The records assign each arrest to one of the three criminality categories ICE itself uses. In 1,648 cases the person had a prior criminal conviction. In 834 the person had charges pending but no conviction. The remaining 3,861 (just over 60 percent of the total) were classified as immigration violators with neither a conviction nor a pending charge. In all, 4,695 of the 6,343 — close to 75 percent —had no criminal conviction of any kind.

The same tilt appears in the figures ICE publishes about its own detention system, which it releases under a reporting requirement Congress attached to its appropriations.

In the national data the agency posted in April, 17,589 of the 60,311 people then in custody — fewer than three in ten — had a criminal conviction. Another 18,731 had charges pending, and the largest group, 23,991, or about 40 percent, were classified as immigration violators with neither a conviction nor a charge against them.

FY26 Immigration Detention Statistics

243KB ∙ XLSX file

Download

Current as of 4/9/2026 Source: https://www.ice.gov/doclib/detention/FY26_detentionStats_04092026.xlsx

Download

A Cato Institute review of ICE data reached a similar conclusion for arrests, finding that nearly three in four people booked into custody since October had no conviction and that 5 percent had a violent one. People with pending charges may never be convicted; the charges are often minor, and a person deported before trial will not see the case resolved.

The gang affiliation line is a single green check, presented as a “yes.” The map attaches no count to it, no definition of what qualifies, and no record a reader can inspect; nothing shows how the determination was made, on what evidence, or to how many of the 2,202 it applies.

Asked whether the check indicates that everyone counted in Baltimore was arrested on a gang-related charge, ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

A review of the national statistics provided by ICE show only 12 mentions of the word “gang” out of 395,367 records since Jan. 20, 2025.

The available national figures that can be checked are small. An American Immigration Council analysis of last year’s removals from ICE detention put suspected gang members at about 2 percent and known or suspected terrorists at 0.4 percent.

The charge list reads the same way. It reproduces ICE’s full catalog of offense categories, arson through weapons offenses, beside the total, without recording how many arrests fall under any single category or how many under none. So does the country-of-origin list, which names every nationality that appears at least once — the United States, the United Kingdom and Spain among them — without a figure for how many arrests came from any one country.

The distance between a list of charges and a count of convictions follows from a definition the administration adopted at its outset. Asked at her first briefing of the term how many of the people ICE had arrested had criminal records, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that anyone who entered the country unlawfully already met the standard, a position that treats unlawful presence itself as the crime. “If they broke our nation’s laws, yes, they are a criminal,” she said, and returned to the point a moment later: they are all criminals as far as this administration goes.

Price Modern LLC, a Baltimore office furniture dealer, received $95.7 million in federal contract obligations across fiscal years 2025 and 2026, according to Project Salt Box’s review of federal spending records. Nearly half of that total, $48.9 million, came from records tied to ICE office expansion under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the reconciliation measure that funded the administration’s immigration enforcement buildout.

Almost all of those expansion-related obligations went to two firms based in or near Baltimore, and almost all of that went to one in particular. Price Modern accounted for the great majority of the ICE office fit-out obligations reviewed by Project Salt Box.

MOI, Inc., another Baltimore-based commercial interiors firm, accounted for $287,570 in the same subset.

Vendors in Richmond, Va.; Alexandria, Va.; Clearwater, Fla.; Florence, Ariz.; and Zion, Ill., together accounted for about $296,200, or roughly 0.6 percent of the total reviewed.

Baltimore furniture vendors accounted for the other 99.4 percent.

The expansion-related records covered office furniture, workspace design, furniture installation, storage and workplace support services across 56 listed performance locations in 27 states and Puerto Rico. In federal contracting, an obligation is money the government has committed to spend; the records reviewed by Project Salt Box include new awards and later modifications to them. The $48.9 million figure refers to the ICE expansion-related subset, not all federal work the companies performed during the two fiscal years.

The two largest Price Modern awards in that subset were orders under a broader government purchasing agreement, totaling about $40.2 million. Both award descriptions tied the furniture purchases to Enforcement and Removal Operations officers hired under the reconciliation bill.

The largest listed place of performance was Baltimore, where Price Modern had $42.5 million in obligations across 92 award actions and 79 unique awards in the expansion-related subset.

Other listed locations included Elkridge, Md.; Brunswick, Ga.; Milwaukee; Dallas; East Boston; Washington, D.C.; Baton Rouge; New Orleans; Mesa, Ariz.; San Diego; Wilmington, Del.; and Huntsville, Ala. The listed place of performance does not necessarily mean all work occurred in that city, because office furniture contracts can include procurement, design, delivery, storage, installation and project support for offices in other locations.

Price Modern’s ICE work

Price Modern’s ICE work first appeared in Project Salt Box’s review of federal procurement records last fall, when DHS began posting awards tied to furniture and office fit-outs for the agency. The company’s role later drew scrutiny in Baltimore, where residents called the firm to object after it signed a $25.8 million deal in February to supply furniture to ICE offices around the country.

In reporting earlier this year, the Baltimore Sun described Price Modern as a more than century-old dealer in the city’s Remington neighborhood and reported comments from its president, Brent Matthews, who said the company employs 200 people, has done business with the federal government for 40 years, and draws about half its annual revenue from federal contracts.

“Across seven presidential administrations, we have had no role in policy or political decisions,” Matthews told The Sun. “We understand and respect that team members and others may hold differing views. Our responsibility is to do our work professionally by providing furniture and design services to our clients.”

The newspaper also reported that Price Modern has held a Homeland Security blanket purchase agreement for 14 years, has worked with nine DHS agencies and 96 federal agencies overall, and that ICE contracts account for more than half the value of its federal contracts since 2008.

Federal spending records reviewed by Project Salt Box show DHS is Price Modern’s largest federal customer, accounting for roughly 86 percent of the company’s listed federal obligations since 2008. That work has been driven largely by ICE, which accounts for approximately $45 million in furniture contracts over the period, or about 76 percent of the company’s listed federal obligations. The next largest agencies in the records were the Department of Transportation, at $4.27 million; the Defense Department, at $1.19 million; and the Executive Office of the President, at $1.03 million.

Within the FY2025 and FY2026 reconciliation-linked records, Price Modern appeared in obligations tied to 54 performance locations, covering office furniture, workspace design, furniture installation, storage and workplace support services. Several listed locations showed $0 obligations in the transaction-level data; those entries generally reflect award actions that did not add new funding at the time, such as administrative updates, corrections or changes to an existing award, and remain in the records as part of the award history.

Price Modern did not respond to an emailed request for comment.

MOI’s ICE contracts

MOI, Inc. has received three ICE-related contracts since 2024, two of them recent. The earliest, awarded under the Biden administration, obligated $796,768 for furniture services for Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement and Removal Operations. The two more recent awards, obligated in fiscal year 2026, procured furniture, associated services and design work for ICE’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor — the agency’s in-house legal division, which handles immigration court proceedings and enforcement litigation — and together totaled $278,768.

MOI is a worker-owned commercial interiors company with roots in Baltimore dating to 1983, when it was founded as Maryland Office Interiors. DHS accounts for 64 percent of MOI’s listed federal obligations, according to a review of federal spending records; the Secret Service is its largest DHS sub-agency customer, followed by Customs and Border Protection.

Office infrastructure and ICE expansion

The office fit-out records are one part of a logistics expansion Project Salt Box has tracked across ICE’s real estate and workplace needs since 2025. In recent months, ICE has appeared in federal records tied to traditional office leases, law-enforcement office space and a nationwide co-working space solicitation, including a search for 65,000 square feet in San Antonio, plans in Newburgh, N.Y., disclosed through a deleted filename, and as many as 90 flexible office locations sought through a single solicitation.

In April, the Associated Press reported that ICE added 12,000 new officers and special agents earlier this year.

Price Modern’s federal work in FY2025 and FY2026 extended beyond the reconciliation-linked ICE office records. But within the expansion subset, two Baltimore-area firms supplied nearly all the obligations tied to ICE office furniture, design, installation, storage and workplace support, with Price Modern accounting for almost the entire total.

ICE has finalized the no-bid iris-scanning contract that Project Salt Box reported on this month, awarding Bi2 Technologies $25.1 million on May 22, according to a contract award posted to SAM.gov. The figure is more than five times what ICE spent on its first contract with the Massachusetts company eight months ago.

The award describes the purchase as covering iris biometric recognition technology and access to a biometric information system "to allow ICE agents to quickly authenticate the identity of subjects during field operations."

It gives ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations division continuous access to Bi2's database of more than five million booking records.

The procurement did not require the system to clear FedRAMP, the government’s security review for cloud systems handling sensitive data, before deployment. It described no independent audit, congressional notification or outside review of how the system would be used.

The May 22 award is roughly five times the $4.6 million DHS paid Bi2 in September 2025, and nearly eight times the device count — 1,570 units compared to 200.

Under the contract terms, those devices are due at ICE locations by late June.

Over the past week, GardaWorld Federal Services has ramped up its recruiting efforts for the operation of the warehouse detention center in Surprise, Az. The company has published job postings for medical staff, security guards, transportation personnel, and operational support. This recruitment push marks a sharp increase in activity after a slow start on the contract awarded in early March, and it comes even as Arizona’s lawsuit against DHS alleging NEPA, APA, and INA violations remains unresolved.

A day before the state announced its lawsuit, ICE issued a stop‑work order on the GardaWorld contract. Two weeks later, the agency lifted that order, and soon after, the company began recruiting in earnest.

Most of the job descriptions now state that “we are currently building a pipeline for this role, with an expected start date of later this year,” signaling that both ICE and GardaWorld expect the project to move forward despite ongoing litigation.

Staffing Plan for a Long-Term Detention Center

The job descriptions shed light into ICE’s longer‑term plans for the site, suggesting it is being built out as a long‑term detention facility, even though official documents portray it as a short‑term processing center.

GardaWorld is hiring internal custody officers to provide “direct supervision of the resident population,” patrol housing units, conduct searches for contraband, and manage intake and release. Separate perimeter security positions focus on guarding the outer grounds, controlling vehicle and pedestrian access, and searching cars and people at entry points, indicating a fenced, controlled campus with layered security. Inside, a dedicated control‑room operator will run the CCTV system, alarms, access‑control panels, and sally ports, maintaining constant surveillance over the movement of residents and staff.

Armed transport officers will move residents in restraints to courts, hospitals, airports, and other detention facilities, tying Surprise directly into the broader detention pipeline. A full medical team—licensed nurses, medical assistants, medical records staff, pharmacy technicians, and a healthcare quality lead—will run intake screenings, chronic‑care clinics, medication distribution, and infection‑control programs in line with correctional healthcare standards. Even the maintenance, janitorial, and laundry roles are described in terms of servicing “resident housing units,” kitchens, medical spaces, and common areas around the clock, indicating that this is a detention facility where people will live, work, and receive medical care, not a processing center that happens to have some beds.

Early Warning Signs of Hazardous Conditions

The position descriptions also hint at what the facility will be like for the people inside it. Every single job posting repeats the warning that “employees may be exposed to extreme cold or hot weather conditions, fumes, or airborne particles, toxic or caustic chemicals, and loud noise.” This underscores a central concern raised by critics of ICE’s warehouse detention plan: these structures were built to store goods, not people.

In its initial complaint, the state of Arizona asserted the warehouse “was constructed as an industrial distribution facility for up to four commercial tenants, not a space to house hundreds of human beings” and that it “almost certainly does not have the appropriate water and wastewater infrastructure to safely (and humanely) house hundreds of people.” The Plaintiffs go on to say that the site “sits directly across the street from a chemical storage facility containing thousands of gallons of hazardous materials.”

The complaint, combined with the warnings issued in the job descriptions, paint a picture of a facility whose design, location, and working conditions are fundamentally misaligned with the basic health and safety needs of the people ICE plans to detain there.

GardaWorld did not respond to a request for comment.

Update: May 20, 2026, 2:30 p.m. ET

This story has been corrected to reflect that the City of Social Circle — not the state of Georgia — filed a suit against ICE this month.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning to hire a contractor to keep mothballed warehouse facilities in working order, according to a federal procurement notice posted last week — even as the agency’s broader effort to convert warehouses into detention centers has stalled in court.

Forecast Record Acquisition Planning Forecast System

147KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The notice, filed May 8 in a federal database where the Department of Homeland Security signals upcoming contracts to potential vendors, anticipates a contract worth $10 million to $20 million for what ICE calls “Temporary Operations and Maintenance — Caretaker Status & Post Closing Services.” The contractor would handle essential repairs and keep security, electrical and fire-detection systems running at warehouses with office space at unspecified locations.

A review of other forecasts posted to the same database shows a typical window of 60 to 90 days between a forecast and the release of a formal solicitation. In this case, ICE indicated it planned to release a solicitation within seven days of the forecast’s posting.

ICE said the contractor’s work would preserve the facilities in serviceable condition pending reactivation. Throughout the forecast, the agency refers to the properties as “warehouses” and explicitly contemplates returning them to use.

Which warehouses, however, the notice does not say. ICE maintains an inventory of warehouse properties that support a range of agency functions, from logistics and equipment storage to office operations, and the forecast does not identify the facilities by location, type, or use.

Whether the proposed caretaker work applies to the warehouses ICE has purchased for its planned detention expansion, to other decommissioned ICE properties, or to some combination is not clear from the document.

A formal solicitation was to be released around May 15, according to the notice; as of publication, none had appeared in the federal contracting system.

The contracting structure ICE described in its forecast — an existing umbrella contract (an "indefinite delivery vehicle," in government parlance) with pre-approved vendors, under which the government pays for hours worked as needs arise — suggests the work may be assigned to a contractor the government has already hired for similar jobs, rather than put out to open bid. Such an arrangement would not necessarily generate a public solicitation, and might surface only on government contracting portals visible to pre-approved vendors. A contracting representative listed on the forecast did not respond to a request for clarification.

ICE’s broader warehouse program, meanwhile, has stalled amid legal and political opposition. Eleven sites the agency has purchased — in Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas and Utah — cost a combined $1.074 billion. Four of those eight states and one city are now suing the agency: New Jersey, Michigan, Arizona, Maryland and the city of Social Circle, Ga. None of the facilities are currently operational.

As an alternative, ICE is in discussions to purchase approximately 10 turnkey detention facilities from private operators, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Eight of the facilities under consideration include five operated by GEO Group: the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Wash., the Mesa Verde ICE Processing Center in Bakersfield, Calif., the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe, Texas, the Central Louisiana Processing Center in Jena, La., and the Aurora ICE Processing Center in Aurora, Colo. Two are operated by CoreCivic: the California City Detention Center in California City, Calif., and the Otay Mesa Detention Center in San Diego. The eighth is the Winn Processing Center in Winnfield, La., operated by LaSalle Corrections.

If awarded as scheduled, the caretaker contract would run through May 25, 2027.

Subscribe now

The Washington County Attorney's Office in Maryland told Project Salt Box on Monday that a redacted non-disclosure agreement executed in December 2025 between the Board of County Commissioners and a private Maryland company has no connection to federal immigration enforcement or the warehouse property near Williamsport that the Department of Homeland Security purchased earlier this year.

NDA Executed 12/9/25 Redacted

1.26MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The letter, signed by County Attorney Zachary Kieffer and issued in response to a Maryland Public Information Act request filed by Project Salt Box, states that the NDA “is not related to ICE, DHS, or any department of the Federal Government” and instead involves a private business seeking to keep its commercial activities in Washington County confidential from competitors.

Kieffer further stated that the agreement does not pertain to the property interchangeably referenced by its addresses as 16220 Wright Road and 10900 Hopewell Road in Williamsport — the site at the center of the detention facility controversy.

The letter also explains the basis for the redactions. Under Section 4-335 of the Public Information Act, records custodians are required to deny inspection of public records containing trade secrets or confidential commercial and financial information. Kieffer wrote that he had received confirmation from the NDA counterparty’s counsel that all records shared with the county were provided with the expectation they would not be disclosed, given their confidential and proprietary nature.

The identity of the company, Kieffer wrote, is itself protected under that provision, because disclosure at the outset of proposals and negotiations would cause commercial consequences from actual or potential competitors.

Official Board of County Commissioners records offer additional context for the agreement’s origins. Minutes from the Dec. 9, 2025, closed session — the same date the NDA was executed — show that a private project team and a land use attorney attended the meeting alongside county commissioners, county administration, and legal staff. The records do not identify the company the project team represented.

The NDA, which was signed by then-Board of County Commissioners President John Barr on behalf of the county, defines confidential information broadly to include discussions involving “facility network strategy,” “location strategy,” and “economic development incentives,” as well as “the existence and progress” of any such plans. The agreement carried a two-year term from its December 2025 execution date.

ICE denied any role in the agreement. In an April 28 email response to a press inquiry, an agency spokesperson said: “FALSE. ICE did NOT ask Washington County to sign an NDA.”

County Administrator Michelle Gordon, at a Board of County Commissioners meeting May 12, stated that any claims or social media posts suggesting otherwise are false and that no county officials were approached with or signed an NDA with federal immigration authorities.

The documented timeline of the warehouse acquisition does not support a pre-purchase coordination theory. DHS formally notified Washington County of its intent to purchase and convert the warehouse on Jan. 12, 2026, according to emails released through a Maryland Public Information Act request and reviewed by Project Salt Box. State land records show purchase documents were executed four days later, on Jan. 16. The property’s owner, Fundrise, told investors it was not actively marketing the warehouse for sale when it received the unsolicited federal offer.

When ICE officials engaged county leadership directly, the meeting was documented and later released through the county’s public records portal. Notes from a March 16 briefing — attended by senior ICE advisor Dave Venturella, Assistant Director Matt Elliston, Gordon, and county commissioners — show the parties discussing a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes model, infrastructure costs approaching $380 million, and operational logistics, including plans to transfer detainees to a facility in Pennsylvania.

The denials are consistent with how ICE has conducted warehouse acquisitions elsewhere. Project Salt Box contacted officials in all 11 localities where ICE purchased warehouse properties as part of its detention reengineering initiative; none reported signing a non-disclosure agreement with the agency. A review of publicly available records from those jurisdictions likewise turned up no non-disclosure agreements.

Court filings from Social Circle, Ga. — where the city sued DHS and ICE in May 2026 over a planned 10,000-bed detention facility — describe a sequence of events in which local officials were given no advance notice of the federal purchase whatsoever.

According to the complaint, Social Circle first learned of the plan through a Washington Post report on Dec. 24, 2025, and had not been contacted by federal officials at any point before or immediately after the sale closed.

The only NDA referenced in the Social Circle litigation is one the property’s private seller, PNK LLC, cited when declining to answer questions from the Walton County Development Authority.

A motion hearing in Michigan’s federal lawsuit against a proposed immigration detention center in Romulus was canceled last Friday and rescheduled as a virtual proceeding for Wednesday, court records show — a development that did not stop a coalition of advocacy organizations from gathering Monday outside the Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse in Detroit to press state and local officials to use regulatory and infrastructure authority to halt the project.

The coalition’s rally, organized by the Coalition to Shut the Camps alongside more than thirty partner organizations, came as State of Michigan, et al. v. DHS entered its third month in the Eastern District of Michigan.

The lawsuit, filed March 24 by Attorney General Dana Nessel and the City of Romulus, challenges the Department of Homeland Security’s $34.7 million acquisition of a 249,000-square-foot warehouse at 7525 Cogswell Street, contending that DHS purchased the site without conducting required environmental reviews or notifying state and local authorities in advance.

Federal environmental law generally requires agencies to assess the impact of a major action — purchasing a site, converting it, operating it — before they act, a step the state alleges DHS skipped entirely.

Instead, after buying the warehouse in February, the agency reached back into its own regulatory rulebook and stitched together three narrow internal exemptions covering routine property acquisition, minor facility upgrades, and limited operational changes, then declared that their combination absolved it of any review requirement. Nessel's reply brief calls this maneuver “Frankenstein's Exclusion.”

Federal courts have generally looked unfavorably on that approach. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has held that stacking exemptions in this way would “swallow the protections of NEPA,” and a federal district court in Maryland, ruling on granting a preliminary injunction on a nearly identical DHS warehouse detention case, held that an agency cannot invoke an exemption after the fact — or during litigation — to paper over a review it never conducted.

DHS produced its environmental analysis on March 24, the same day Michigan filed suit. The agency had completed its acquisition seven weeks earlier.

In an April 21 sworn declaration filed as part of DHS’s defense of the lawsuit, Andrew J. DeGregorio, an Environmental Protection Specialist with ICE’s Office of Asset and Facilities Management, testified that the agency’s renovation plan called for housing up to 500 to 1,000 detainees at the site, with scalability to accommodate 2,000 — four times the 500-person figure the agency has repeated publicly. The declaration also confirms that any increase in utilities infrastructure, including water supply and wastewater capacity, would require coordination with local authorities.

“DHS cannot operate this facility by itself,” said Melody Simmons of the Coalition to Shut the Camps. “They put it in writing in their own court filings.”

The declaration further confirms that the categorical exclusion DHS used to exempt the warehouse purchase itself from environmental review is, in the agency’s own words, “a non-documented CATEX” — meaning no written analysis was required or produced to support it.

The central legal justification DHS offered for bypassing environmental review on a $34.7 million acquisition is one for which the agency kept no records.

Coalition speakers on Monday called on Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans, the Great Lakes Water Authority Board, the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, and the City of Romulus to withhold the permits, water service, sewer connections, and infrastructure approvals the facility requires to open.

Organizers cited actions in Pennsylvania, where the governor directed his Department of Environmental Protection to block water and sewer service to ICE warehouse facilities, and Maryland, where the governor signed legislation and joined the state attorney general in obtaining a federal injunction halting construction, as examples of states that have used executive authority the coalition argues Whitmer has not.

“The federal lawsuit is a vital tool, advancing novel legal theories that buy this community time,” Simmons said. “It is not, by itself, sufficient to stop a determined federal agency from building a warehouse concentration camp in Romulus.”

On May 11, the ACLU of Michigan, the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, and the Detroit Justice Center filed to join the case, expanding the legal coalition beyond the state and the city. Wednesday’s virtual hearing will be the first at which all three organizations appear as parties.

Ale Rojas of No Detention Centers in Michigan used Monday’s rally to connect the Romulus fight to conditions at an existing Michigan facility. Hundreds of people held at the GEO Group’s North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin recently undertook a multi-unit hunger strike, Rojas said, to protest inadequate medical care, insufficient food, and prolonged isolation — actions detainees took at risk to their own health despite threats of transfer to other facilities.

“They hoped we would listen to the message they sent — we are in pain, suffering, being killed, underfed, untreated, isolated, and our humanity is being ignored,” Rojas said. “Please do not look away.”

Subscribe now

Keep track of the latest developments in the warehouse lawsuits in one convenient place at our Warehouse Litigation Tracker.

The description field reads: “Broker services for lease project number 4TX0983 and 5TX0805, Agency: U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement, Location: San Antonio, Texas.”

Federal procurement records show the firm has handled numerous federal leasing and property transactions for agencies including ICE, the FBI, ATF, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Department of Defense.

On April 1, 2026, GSA posted a request for lease proposals — or RLP — identified as 4TX0983 to SAM.gov, seeking at least 53,129 square feet of contiguous office space within Loop 1604, the outer ring road surrounding most of San Antonio proper. Because Loop 1604 encircles much of the city, the solicitation effectively allowed offers from nearly anywhere within the broader San Antonio metro area.

That primary solicitation also incorporated a second office requirement identified as 5TX0805. Under the primary RLP’s “Unique Requirements” section, “the building offered must accommodate the space requirements included in Pre-solicitation Notice #5TX0805, for 12,695” square feet “and associated parking.”

In practical terms, any building selected for the larger 4TX0983 lease would also have to house the smaller companion requirement.

In total, the two procurements sought roughly 65,824 square feet of office space.

GSA typically withholds tenant agency names from security-sensitive lease solicitations. The corresponding Request for Lease Proposals refers only to a Level II security facility for an unspecified federal client.

While the lease solicitations themselves described only generic office requirements, the associated project identifiers — 4TX0983 and 5TX0805 — matched those listed in the earlier broker delivery order to Public Properties LLC naming ICE as the requesting agency.

Final offers from landlords were due April 30, 2026. The solicitation was marked inactive on SAM.gov on May 15. As of publication, GSA has not publicly disclosed which offeror was selected or whether a lease has been awarded.

The office lease procurement unfolded alongside a separate ICE property acquisition in San Antonio. On Feb. 3, 2026, roughly three months after GSA signed the broker delivery order and two months before the lease solicitation became public, ICE paid $66.1 million for a 640,000-square-foot warehouse at 542 SE Loop 410.

Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told local officials in a letter that the agency intends to convert the warehouse into a detention facility holding between 500 and 1,500 people by Sept. 30, 2026.

The requirements for both office leases also sketched out the kind of environment ICE expected to occupy. Outside downtown, the proposed buildings had to sit within modern office, research, technology, or business parks with a “campus-like atmosphere” and “professional and prestigious” surroundings. Restaurants, banks, retail shops and other employee amenities had to exist within two drivable miles of the property.

The lease solicitations do not explicitly reference the warehouse acquisition, and the records alone do not establish an operational connection between the two projects. But both efforts advanced through the federal system within months of each other as ICE moves forward with a broader national detention expansion initiative expected to activate new infrastructure by late 2026.

The San Antonio procurements also suggest ICE continues expanding the operational footprint supporting its mass deportation blitz — which includes the conversion of warehouses into detention space — even as the program faces mounting legal challenges and a federal watchdog investigation. The Washington Post reported this week that the agency is still moving forward with new warehouse detention contracts across the country.

Subscribe now

Federal immigration authorities included a detainee labor program in contracts for two warehouse detention facilities in December 2025 — a month before the government had completed purchasing either property.

The task orders — executed procurement records covering sites in Williamsport, Md., and Surprise, Ariz. — were issued on December 22, 2025, under the U.S. Navy’s WEXMAC TITUS contracting vehicle. Both were made effective March 6, 2026. Among the operational line items in each: an “Alien Volunteer Work Program,” reimbursable at a per-detainee, per-day rate, governed by contract terms that Immigration and Customs Enforcement redacted from the public records request that produced these documents.

The Maryland warehouse, a roughly 825,000-square-foot facility near Williamsport, Md., was purchased by the federal government in January 2026 for approximately $102.4 million. In Arizona, the purchase of a 418,000-square-foot warehouse followed a similar timeline, selling days later for $70 million.

Task Order to KVG LLC for Williamsport, MD Detention Warehouse

372KB ∙ PDF file

Download

70cdcr26fr0000035

Download

Task Order to GardaWorld for Surprise, AZ Detention Warehouse

1.3MB ∙ PDF file

Download

70cdcr26fr0000043

Download

The Work Program

The Volunteer Work Program is a standard feature of established detention facilities, where detained immigrants may perform jobs — kitchen work, laundry, sanitation, facility maintenance — in exchange for wages that amount to as little as a dollar a day. Under ICE’s own detention standards, last codified in 2011, participation is voluntary except for basic housekeeping duties, and detainees must be paid at least one dollar per day — a rate far below the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour that applies to most workers in the United States.

It is not a feature typically associated with intake and transfer processing. That’s the function ICE has repeatedly described as the primary purpose of these sites.

Merrimack, NH, Detention Reengineering Initiative

348KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

ICE’s internal planning documents for the Detention Reengineering Initiative, a previously reported program to overhaul and expand the agency’s detention network, describe regional processing centers as staging locations where detainees stay an average of three to seven days before being transferred or removed. That overview, dated February 13, 2026, was shared publicly by New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte after ICE sought to convert a warehouse in Merrimack, N.H., into a similar facility. The purchase was ultimately abandoned. Nowhere does it describe processing sites as places where detained immigrants would hold jobs.

Yet both task orders include the work program, billed per detainee per day, capped at an undisclosed amount, with governing terms in Section 27.9 of each contract’s Performance Work Statement. Those sections were withheld and the rate itself was redacted.

Identical language appears in both documents, which were awarded to different companies in different states: KVG LLC in Maryland and GardaWorld Federal Services LLC in Arizona. The identical language points to a standardized ICE contracting template under WEXMAC and not language specific to either facility or operator.

The DRI describes processing sites as staging locations. It does not describe them as places where detained immigrants would hold jobs.

What the Task Orders Add

Before these task orders became public, what was known about ICE’s warehouse plans rested on two sources: internal agency documents reported by The Washington Post on December 24, 2025, which indicated ICE planned for up to 1,500 detainees at each facility, and the agency’s own representations across four separate federal lawsuits, where it has consistently put the planned capacity at 542.

These procurement records add a third layer. Unlike a leaked planning document or a court filing, a task order is an executed contract specifying what a vendor is being paid to deliver, in what sequence, and over what period. The blueprint that emerges maps onto neither the 542-bed processing center ICE described in court nor the short-term staging mission the agency has offered publicly.

Under the base period of each order, the first 60 days are reserved for contractor transition and facility retrofitting. A six-week ramp-up follows, during which beds come online in incremental stages. The remaining roughly eight and a half months are structured around full-capacity detention operations — guards, transportation, per-detainee billing, and the work program running in parallel. Should the government exercise its options, each contract envisions two additional 12-month periods of uninterrupted operations. Fully exercised, both would extend well past the two-year mark.

The mileage structure of the Arizona contract contain details not included in the Maryland document. Transportation line items in the GardaWorld records distinguish between “Processing Sites,” estimated at 5,000 miles per year — consistent with short local transfer runs — and “Megacenters,” estimated at 100,000 miles per year, a figure that implies a regional hub moving large numbers of people across significant distances. The DRI overview confirms the underlying model previously described generically by ICE. Processing centers shuttle detainees into large-scale facilities capable of housing 7,000 to 10,000 people for 60 days at a time, or more.

Both task orders describe their sites as “processing and detention facilities.” Guard services at each are capped at 20,000 hours per year, roughly 55 hours a day, enough to sustain continuous around-the-clock coverage. Invoice requirements for detention services mandate detainee names, identification information, bed-day rates, and check-in and check-out dates. Among line items listed under other direct charges: “volunteer detainee wages.”

Both documents also bar the contractor and any subcontractors from making public disclosures about the agreement without ICE’s prior review and approval.

The Williamsport facility remains blocked. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction halting conversion work there pending a full environmental review — a process an ICE attorney said in a recent hearing could take years. This week, ICE reached a settlement with challengers in New Jersey, agreeing to pause operations at a similar warehouse site under the same condition.

GardaWorld, meanwhile, is hiring. The company posted a listing on LinkedIn on Tuesday for an unarmed security guard at the Surprise facility, describing the role as securing the perimeter of an “immigration processing and custodial facility.” The posting noted the company was “building a pipeline” for the position, with an anticipated start date of later this year.

A federal lawsuit challenging the Surprise conversion remains pending in the District of Arizona, filed against a facility whose operator is already recruiting staff and under a contract that was ready before the government even owned the building.

Subscribe now

Co-working spaces are shared commercial offices — operated by companies like WeWork or IWG — that rent desks and private offices to individuals and organizations on flexible, short-term terms rather than traditional multi-year leases. Tenants typically share common areas, Wi-Fi, and amenities with other businesses and may occupy the same floor as unrelated private-sector companies.

As Project Salt Box previously reported, ICE published a request for information in March seeking flexible office space for more than 300 personnel in nearly 100 cities across 42 states and Puerto Rico. That market research has since become a live solicitation — number 70CMSW26Q00000009 — issued through ICE’s Office of Asset and Facilities Management.

2.1.1-70CMSW26Q00000009

541KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

ICE is seeking space for 330 full-time employees across 90 locations, from Houston, where 22 workers would be placed, to more than a dozen cities where a single desk would suffice. Vendors who win the contract would have 15 business days from award to stand up all locations simultaneously. The period of performance runs from June 1, 2026 through May 31, 2027, with leases covering a desk or private office, Wi-Fi, and printing access, and the ability to scale headcount up or down at any location after award.

But a question-and-answer document appended to the solicitation cuts against the most obvious explanation for the expansion. Asked whether the spaces are intended for uniformed officers, administrative staff, or a combination, the government’s answer was unambiguous: “This requirement is not intended for law enforcement officers.”

2.4.1-Amendment 1 Office Space Q&A

138KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Use the map below to see each requested location and the number of employees ICE has slated for it, according to documents attached to the submission.

Geographically, the solicitation is broad. Locations include predictable urban enforcement hubs — New York, Miami, Houston — alongside smaller cities with no immediately apparent connection to immigration operations, among them Savage, Mont., Concho, Ariz., and Bryan, Texas.

Two listed locations, Crawford, R.I., and Maynes, Wis., do not correspond to any recognized municipalities.

Vendors have some flexibility on location. An alternative facility may be substituted for any listed city, provided it falls within 45 driving miles. Specific facility names and addresses are required at the time of quote submission, but those details are not made public through the solicitation itself.

Bids are being solicited under North American Industry Classification System — or NAICS — code 531120, which covers operators of nonresidential buildings, with an applicable size standard of $34 million in average annual receipts. Companies that did not respond to the original March request for information remain eligible to bid. Any changes to the location list or headcount after award would be handled through negotiated contract modifications. The solicitation does not include a contract ceiling or cost estimate. A pricing template attached to the documents breaks out costs by city and headcount, but no figures have been disclosed.

ICE has not said publicly who the 330 personnel are. This is, by the government’s own account, without precedent. Asked about past performance on similar workspace contracts, the contracting office stated that no previous comparable contracts have been awarded.

Subscribe now

2NY0894 R100 Newburgh, NY

895KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The procurement process began in April 2024, more than a year before the current administration took office, with estimated occupancy by spring 2027.

The General Services Administration solicitation, number 2NY0894, seeks between 35,049 and 36,801 square feet in an area bounded by Route 52 to the north, Route 207 to the south, Interstate 87 to the east and Route 747 to the west. It calls for 24-hour access, emergency power, 67 secured parking spaces and a sally port for government vehicles including “detainee buses and vans.” Level III security standards — typically associated with elevated law enforcement presence — apply.

GSA does not identify tenant agencies by name in sensitive law enforcement leases. The link to ICE emerged from the portal’s own file history. When an amendment was posted on October 24, 2025, a document briefly appeared under the name “2NY0894 ICE Newburgh - RLP Amendment No 1 10232025 (1) (1) (1).pdf” before being replaced with a generically titled file. The underlying solicitation remained public.

Federal office leases typically include a standard allowance — in this case $61.32 per square foot — to cover the cost of fitting out interior space with basics like walls, flooring and lighting. That now-deleted file, archived by Project Salt Box, contained an amendment disclosing that the actual buildout is expected to run an additional $282.58 per square foot above that allowance — bringing the total anticipated interior construction cost to roughly $343 per square foot, or roughly $12 million across the minimum solicited space.

2NY0894 ICE Newburgh - RLP Amendment No 1 10232025 (1) (1) (1).pdf

129KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The Newburgh solicitation comes as federal plans for detention infrastructure in the Hudson Valley have drawn fierce opposition. Earlier this year, ICE backed away from a proposal to convert a former Pep Boys distribution warehouse at 29 Elizabeth Drive in Chester, N.Y. into a detention facility capable of housing up to 1,500 detainees, after more than 30,000 people signed a petition against the plan and elected officials on both sides of the aisle came out in opposition. ICE told State Assemblymember Brian Maher it would not proceed with the Chester location “at this time.”

ICE has maintained an Office of the Principal Legal Advisor at 15 Governor Drive since 2015, occupying roughly 9,074 square feet of rental office space according to GSA records. The proposed facility would be nearly four times that size, purpose-built for enforcement operations rather than legal administration.

Subscribe now

Federal immigration officials and the State of New Jersey reached a temporary agreement Tuesday that pauses major conversion work at a proposed ICE detention warehouse in Roxbury while the government completes additional environmental review, avoiding a scheduled federal court hearing over the project.

State of New Jersey and Township of Roxbury v. U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement, et al., Case No. 26-02884

192KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The agreement, filed jointly in federal court, stays consideration of New Jersey’s request for a preliminary injunction until Immigration and Customs Enforcement completes a final Environmental Assessment, or EA, examining the proposed conversion of a vacant industrial warehouse into an immigration detention facility.

Under the stipulation, ICE agreed not to proceed with detention conversion work while the review is underway, aside from limited security and maintenance activity. Permitted work includes temporary fencing, security cameras and lighting, alarm systems, plumbing and fire safety testing, custodial services, lawn maintenance and repairs necessary to keep the building secure and weatherproof. The agreement also prohibits ground disturbance and restricts work within a conservation easement area without state approval.

JOINT STIPULATION TO STAY ADJUDICATION OF PLAINTIFFS’ MOTION FOR PRELIMINARY INJUNCTION

177KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

The case concerns a warehouse at 1879 Route 46 in Morris County that the federal government purchased earlier this year as part of a broader effort to rapidly expand immigration detention capacity through large warehouse acquisitions around the country. New Jersey and the Township of Roxbury sued ICE and the Department of Homeland Security in March, arguing that the federal government moved forward with plans for the detention center without first conducting legally required environmental review under the National Environmental Policy Act, or NEPA, and without required consultation with state and local entities.

The dispute is one of the most politically unusual fights over ICE’s warehouse detention strategy. Roxbury’s Republican local leadership publicly opposed the project despite broadly supporting the Trump administration’s immigration policies, arguing that the detention facility was incompatible with the township’s infrastructure, environmental protections and long-term development plans.

Town officials and state lawyers had increasingly pressed the court in recent weeks over what they described as shifting and contradictory government accounts of how quickly ICE intended to begin renovation work at the property. In filings last week, New Jersey argued that DHS officials had alternately described the project as limited maintenance activity and as active interior preparation work involving demolition and infrastructure changes.

The agreement filed Tuesday effectively adopts many of the limits plaintiffs had sought before the scheduled injunction hearing.

David Broderick, a volunteer with Project NINJA, a New Jersey-based advocacy group opposing the detention project, said the agreement amounted to a recognition by DHS that additional environmental review would be required before substantive conversion work could proceed.

“They have belatedly agreed to follow the requirements of NEPA and not perform any substantive work to convert the warehouse unless and until they perform the required Environmental Assessment,” Mr. Broderick said in a statement.

He added that local groups intended to closely monitor activity at the site for compliance with the agreement.

The filing also formalizes a position the federal government had already previewed in earlier court papers. In an April declaration submitted in opposition to New Jersey’s injunction request, ICE official Andrew J. DeGregorio stated that the agency intended to conduct “further NEPA analysis” before proceeding with construction activities related to detention operations, including preparation of an Environmental Assessment.

The stipulation does not resolve the underlying lawsuit. Instead, it temporarily pauses the dispute while the environmental review proceeds.

Once ICE issues a final Environmental Assessment and a formal agency decision relying on it, the parties must submit a joint status report proposing the next phase of litigation. The agreement also preserves New Jersey’s ability to renew its request for a preliminary injunction after the environmental review is completed.

The agreement arrives weeks after a federal judge in Maryland granted a preliminary injunction halting conversion work at a planned ICE detention warehouse in Williamsport, finding that the federal government likely failed to comply with NEPA before moving forward with the project. That ruling has become a central reference point in similar warehouse challenges now pending in New Jersey, Michigan and Arizona.

The case in Roxbury is likely to resume once ICE completes the environmental review process, which could determine whether the agency can proceed with converting the warehouse into a detention facility without undertaking a broader environmental impact study.