DHS Is Funneling $10 Billion Through the Navy to Build Detention Centers Faster

The Trump administration just found a creative way to spend $10 billion on detention centers while sidestepping those pesky federal procurement rules that slow things down. They’re funneling the money through the Navy to build what CNN calls a sprawling network of migrant detention facilities across the country.

Construction on some of these facilities could start as soon as next month. That’s how fast they’re moving on this.

Here’s how it works. According to CNN, DHS has been bouncing between different contracting mechanisms because normal federal competition rules keep slowing them down. So they decided to use the Navy’s Supply Systems Command as the contracting arm. The program is called WEXMAC 2.1, which stands for Worldwide Expeditionary Multiple Award Contract - Territorial Integrity of the United States. Before July, this contracting vehicle was used primarily for military operations abroad. Now it’s being repurposed for domestic immigration enforcement.

The goal is to double ICE’s detention capacity from 41,000 beds to 82,000. White House border czar Tom Homan wants it done fast. ICE already secured $45 billion from Congress in July to build new detention facilities. This $10 billion is the cap on what DHS can order through the Navy contract.

According to the contracting documents, these facilities will need to include courtrooms and administrative space for ICE staff. They’ll require ready access to emergency services and airport transfers. The contracts also specify that contractors will have no right of refusal and must take all ICE referrals.

The military angle is key here. Using Defense Support of Civil Authorities allows the administration to leverage military assets and personnel for domestic law enforcement missions. The Navy is apparently good at quick-turnaround construction projects since they’ve done similar work overseas. That’s what one defense analyst told CNN, anyway.

We already have a preview of what happens when you prioritize speed over standards. The Fort Bliss facility in Texas opened in August and within 50 days had racked up 60 violations of federal detention standards. ICE’s own inspectors found the facility failed to properly monitor medical conditions, lacked basic safety procedures, and for weeks didn’t give detainees a way to contact lawyers or file complaints.

People were moved into the Fort Bliss facility while it was still an active construction site. Dust swirling, excavators running, contractors rushing to finish work. One detainee was held there for 24 days despite the contract stating facilities are meant to hold people for periods of approximately two weeks or less. The whole setup was thrown together in less than two months on what had been an empty patch of desert.

According to TRAC data, as of early September nearly 58,770 people were in ICE detention. About 71% of them have no criminal conviction. From January through August, ICE ran roughly 1,280 removal flights and over 4,430 shuffle flights between detention facilities, according to Human Rights First.

Fort Bliss is supposed to be the prototype for this new breed of large-scale holding facilities. It could eventually hold 5,000 people. The administration plans about 10 of these soft-sided tent camps on military bases.

What’s particularly telling is that ICE has been blocking oversight. Members of Congress have been denied access to visit these facilities. Representative Veronica Escobar says the Fort Bliss camp wasn’t ready when it was declared fully operational on August 17th - and people had been held there since August 1st.

The Trump administration signed a $1.2 billion contract just for the Fort Bliss tent camp. By the American Immigration Council’s math, ICE’s detention budget is now 62% larger than the entire federal prison system. In the fiscal year that ended in September, 24 people died in ICE custody - double the year before.

The pattern here is pretty straightforward. When you prioritize speed and scale over safety and oversight, people get hurt. When you funnel billions through contracting mechanisms designed for military operations abroad and apply them to domestic immigration enforcement, you’re essentially treating migrants like enemy combatants. When you deny congressional oversight and block inspections, you’re hiding something.

The Fort Bliss violations weren’t discovered by outside watchdogs. They were found by ICE’s own detention oversight unit. If that’s what their own inspectors are finding at the first facility they built, imagine what’s going to happen as they rush to open dozens more.

Correction, September 28th, 2026: This essay first called these secret detention centers - the plan hadn’t been reported before, but the Navy’s solicitation was posted on a federal contracting site. It said 13 people had died in ICE custody since October, already more than the year before - that was true in June, but by the time this ran, 24 people had died in the fiscal year that ended in September, double the year before. It said 71% of people in ICE detention have no criminal record - TRAC’s figure is for no criminal conviction. And it said Representative Veronica Escobar was told Fort Bliss wasn’t operational yet when she tried to visit - what she’s said is that the camp wasn’t ready when it was declared fully operational on August 17th, more than two weeks after people started being held there.

Update, September 28th, 2026: A few lines now say who says so - CNN, the American Immigration Council and Human Rights First - and that the $10 billion and the $1.2 billion are contract totals, not new money already spent, and that about 10 tent camps are planned on military bases. Apostrophes and quote marks lost in an old publishing glitch are back, each quote checked against its source.