Project Salt Box

ICE's New Maryland Detention Center Would Need 209,000 Gallons of Water a Day. Nobody Knows Where It Will Come From. ICE has filed no permits, made no water request and disclosed no plan for sustaining 1,500 detainees in a building allocated 800 gallons a day.

Yep! Water is going to universally be a problem at these camps.

open.substack.com/pub/projects...

At Largest ICE Detention Camp, Staff Bet on Detainee Suicides, AP Reports Camp East Montana has received several 911 calls in the span of five months about immigrants trying to harm themselves.

While they’re in that warehouse (or others like it), these people will be subject to violence from guards, overcrowding, lack of water, infectious disease, and lack of access to health care. Just to name a few.

How do we know? Just look at Camp East Montana.

www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

So here is the "Worst of the Worst" reality.

Based on the 14% violent crime stat, the US will spend…

• $145.2 Million to detain violent criminals.

• $892.2 Million to detain non-violent/innocent people.

We will spend nearly $1 billion on one warehouse to hold people who aren't a threat.

When you combine the $215.4M startup cost with the $750,000 daily operating rate, the 3-year bill for Williamsport hits $1,037,400,000.

That’s $1 billion dollars for a single site to run for the rest of Trump’s presidency.

At $500 per bed for 1,500 people, the Williamsport warehouse has a daily operating burn of $750,000. That is over $5.2 million every single week just for the facility to exist. For context, that daily spend is more than the entire annual budget of many small Maryland towns.

Acting Director Lyons calls this “Amazon Prime, but with human beings.”

In Williamsport, that means converting 825,000 sq. ft. of industrial space (built with only 4 toilets) into a "Processing Center" for 1,500 people.

The goal is a 3-to-7-day turnaround before being whisked to “mega centers.”

The federal government bought the warehouse for $102.4 million in January 2026. Yesterday, DHS doubled down, awarding a $113 million contract to a firm out of Gettysburg to convert it.

Before a single person is detained, taxpayers are in for $215.4 million.

"Doomed to Failure” Veteran officials know the plan is unworkable. Political leadership doesn't care. And the budget has soared past $55 billion.

Based on what we’ve learned in our investigation, we know that a single warehouse will likely operate at the cost of $200-$500 per bed, per day. Given what we know about Dilley and Camp East Montana, we’ll use the $500* figure.

* Note: all figures in pre-Iran War dollars.

A "Humanitarian Response" Firm With No Federal Contract History Is Staffing Planned Immigration Detention Center in Maryland Anovaeon LLC, which has never won a federal contract, is recruiting for a 1,500-bed facility outside Hagerstown amid unresolved infrastructure concerns.

By way of example, we’ll use the Williamsport, Md. ICE warehouse as it has the most contract data available.

1. open.substack.com/pub/projects...

2. open.substack.com/pub/projects...

Less than 14% of those arrested by ICE in Trump's 1st year back in office had violent criminal records, document shows The official DHS statistics, which had not been previously reported, provide the most detailed look yet into who ICE has arrested during the Trump administration's crackdown.

ICE says these new detention warehouses are for the “worst of the worst.”

We also know only less than 14% of people ICE detained last year are violent criminals.

Because $$$ seems to be the data point that gets average Americans to care, let’s talk about the economics of concentration camps.

Oh yeah — and the company was just marked “dissolved” in Puerto Rico after getting a work extension from the government less than a month earlier.

This reminds me very much of SK2 in Puerto Rico, or Anovaeon in Texas.

www.usaspending.gov/award/CONT_A...

I wonder if this $2.2 million contract was part of it…

“THIS AWARD PROCURES UPFIT, GRAPHIC WRAP DESIGN AND APPLICATION FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT VEHICLES, ON BEHALF OF OFFICE OF ASSET AND FACILITIES MANAGEMENT.”

As work moves ahead to convert the Williamsport, Md. facility into a concentration camp, the local media’s top billing is a missive on Gov. Moore’s statement that the Maryland flag is a “contradiction.”

No mention of GardaWorld in local Arizona news, for that matter.

Bar graph depicting obligations of federal funding to KVG LLC for detention warehouse projects.

KVG LLC, who is handling the Hagerstown conversion, was awarded $113 million — but the contract has a max potential ceiling of $641.8 million.

That doesn’t mean ICE will suddenly stop retrofitting warehouses. They have the resources and budget to keep pushing this prerogative — which we are told is a WH mandate.

As the cost of oil increases due to the Iran War, the cost of materials to convert these warehouses into concentration camps will only increase in turn in the form of fuel surcharges and more expensive materials.

Baltimore City Council President Zeke Cohen: "Today we are introducing a bill to block private detention facilities in Baltimore."

"There is nothing just about packing people into private prisons or detention centers... or flying people to a gulag in El Salvador."

He also signed an EO letting city-employeed lawyers provide pro bono immigration counseling and legal services to Baltimore residents.

"Baltimore is and will always be a welcoming city. We are stronger because of our immigrant residents."

Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott: "We cannot let the war in Iran distract us from the war on American democracy... we do not want this here."

Last week he signed a city EO that forbids ICE from entering city bldgs w/o a judicial warrant, and city property can't be used for ICE staging.

Worth noting that San Van Hollen, Sen Alsobrooks, and Rep Mfume all said that a surge is coming to Baltimore, they have seen the signs to confirm it, and the people of Baltimore need to be ready.

Rep Glenn Ivey: the facilities in the Fallon Building look "like slave quarters" he toured during a visit to Selma earlier this month.

Maryland Rep. Mfume just now: "What we need is a team united against the ridiculous."

This follows Senator Alsobrooks' earlier revelation that 255 people are being held in rooms designed for 50 at Baltimore's Fallon Building.

DHS Contracts Visualizer Looker Studio turns your data into informative dashboards and reports that are easy to read, easy to share, and fully customizable.

Head over to tinyurl.com/ICEWarehouseTracker to learn more!

So the fact that the founder of this brand-new company which just got the first contract for the Hagerstown warehouse is someone who was apparently deep in the weeds of the Endeavors migrant contracts in 2021 (which FYI drew huge attention from Senate/House GOP) is... well, notable. And concerning.

Here's the first-ever Linkedin message from this company, which seems to be a small company run by two millennials with some background in migrant shelters.

Four months ago they suggest they won a contract to run a "mass care site" in Lexington, KY, but this is their first-ever federal contract.

DHS Contracts Visualizer Looker Studio turns your data into informative dashboards and reports that are easy to read, easy to share, and fully customizable.

View the updated tracker at tinyurl.com/ICEWarehouse...

In the coming days, we will have updated information on the contractors providing conversion services, staffing, and the amounts obligated for each.

A map of the United States depicting multi-colored circles, which represent various sites targeted for concentration camp development by the U.S. government.

To stay on top of the warehouse conversions underway, we have added a new color-code to the map. Facilities marked in 🟠 are UNDER CONVERSION from a shipping warehouse to a concentration camp.

ICE's New Maryland Detention Center Would Need 209,000 Gallons of Water a Day. Nobody Knows Where It Will Come From. ICE has filed no permits, made no water request and disclosed no plan for sustaining 1,500 detainees in a building allocated 800 gallons a day.

Neither does Hagerstown!

A table of awards showing payments over $100 thousand each to five executives at KVG LLC.

Here are the executive compensation details for the folks at KVG LLC.