ICE expands detention with shipping container courts
Immigration agency's rapid scale-up of makeshift facilities draws comparisons to historical atrocities.
What to know
- ICE is rapidly deploying shipping container facilities to expand detention capacity, circumventing traditional construction and zoning processes.
- Private contractor GEO Group has been identified as originating the document detailing the expansion plan, raising questions about corporate influence over immigration enforcement.
- Online conversation reflects deep concern about detention conditions and historical comparisons to mass incarceration systems.
The dispute Whether the shipping container expansion is an inevitable outcome of enforcement-focused immigration policy or evidence of a deliberate ideological commitment to mass detention and cruelty. · positions read across 61 posts and comments
This represents a dangerous escalation toward concentration camp infrastructure and historical atrocity.
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“Shipping containers or was that train stations with cargo trains ...”
wasserl.bsky.social · Bluesky ↗
The real problem is the immigration enforcement system itself; reducing detentions would eliminate the need for expanded facilities.
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“If they would only arrest and deport actual criminals, they wouldn't need any of this, because there aren't that many, and most are already in jail or prison.”
andreastudiescovid.bsky.social · Bluesky ↗
This expansion demonstrates the administration's commitment to mass detention and cruelty as policy.
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“I wonder when people are going to finally accept that this administration wants concentration camps and the associated cruelty.”
drramblings.bsky.social · Bluesky ↗
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick Immigration policy analystGEO Group Inc. Private detention contractorICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) U.S. immigration enforcement agency
How it unfolded 2 developments, newest first · click a bar or a number to jump postscomments
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GEO Group identified as document originator for ICE detention plan
Metadata analysis by Project Salt Box reveals that an ICE work statement for detention expansion originated from a GEO Group account, implicating the private prison contractor in the shipping container facility planning.
“The draft work statement ICE posted to sam.gov appears to have originated from a GEO Group account. A review of the file's metadata performed by Project Salt Box shows that the Word document used to produce the PDF lists its company as "GEO Group Inc.,"”
— expertsanta.bsky.social -
R
Think of the chain link cells Lockjaw walks by before he sets out for the town, built inside a tent. Basically, that’s what we’re talking.
2 more of the top 3 · 50 posts in this stretch
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Here is the Bibby Resolutiion, a container ship, docked in the East River in 1995 to avoid zoning issues, and functioning as a prison." photo: Ed Bailey/Associated Press
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Not sure if you know about this official inquiry across the water But, yeah, conditions can deteriorate in a matter of hours if things aren’t done genuinely putting people first. Starts with ability to sleep, lack of medical care, gets worse, can get much worse
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Immigration policy analyst flags ICE's shipping container detention expansion
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, an immigration policy expert, posts on Bluesky characterizing ICE's rapid deployment of shipping container facilities as a significant escalation in detention infrastructure.
“We're at the "shipping container courts" stage of ICE's mass expansion of the enforcement system.”
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick -
We’re at the “shipping container courts” stage of ICE’s mass expansion of the enforcement system.
2 more of the top 3 · 11 posts in this stretch
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If you really think about it, shipping containers are the box cars of the twenty first century.
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I don't know if they're whistling in the dark, know the end is coming and are trying to cram as many people through as they can before then, or think either they'll stay in power or the program will be allowed to continue. None of it is good.
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What people are saying 18 voices from 1 site · best of 61 · verbatim
- Could zoning laws be used to challenge or block the shipping container facility deployments?
- What specific conditions exist inside these container facilities and what oversight mechanisms are in place?
- Sep 26
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Ovens will be supplied & delivered by Topf & Söhne. On the same industrial scale, by & for the same industrial effiency. Btw, Adolf admired Ford for this exact reason. (just not the only reason, Henry also being a staunch fascist)
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If they would only arrest and deport actual criminals, they wouldn't need any of this, because there aren't that many, and most are already in jail or prison.
- Sep 25
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M
harpers.org/archive/2024/07/the-gods-of-logic-benjamin-labatut-ai/ ok.
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Next up - putting the shipping containers on trains to send them to ICE concentra... err, excuse me... "detention centers" where the contents can be... "dispensed with"... away from public view.
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So maybe stop kidnapping people and the workload and space requirements might decrease.
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Shipping containers - the size of railroad cars. They are deliberately recreating the Third Reich, one step at a time.
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"In April 2023, the Barbados Maritime Ship Registry revealed the Government of the United Kingdom intended to use the Bibby Stockholm to house asylum seekers." en.
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This shows Geo Group involved. "The draft work statement ICE posted to sam.gov appears to have originated from a GEO Group account. A review of the file's metadata performed by Project Salt Box shows that the Word document used to produce the PDF lists its company as “GEO Group Inc.,”
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the private prison operator that is one of ICE's largest detention contractors. The author’s name, which this publication has withheld, matches the name of a GEO Group Contract Compliance Manager in Boca Raton, Fla." This is from the Salt box article.
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Now that you mentioned it, I won't be able to stop thinking about it.
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Still another step closer to the "hey look it's a mass grave" stage
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Ugh. I wonder when people are going to finally accept that this administration wants concentration camps and the associated cruelty.
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I feel like we are at the “we are running out of time to be nazis” stage of the game.
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There is not a hell hot enough for these “people”
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The same way the Nazis behaved near the end.
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Shipping containers or was that train stations with cargo trains ...
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There aren’t railroad cars they could use?
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They will have them up and running in about a week's time. Things move quickly when you are ICE.