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A PDF that Department of Homeland Security officials provided to New Hampshire politician Kelly Ayotte’s bureau astir a caller effort to build “mega” detention and processing centers crossed the United States contains embedded comments and metadata identifying the radical who worked connected it.
The seemingly accidental vulnerability of the identities of DHS unit who crafted Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s mega detention halfway program lands amid wide nationalist pushback against the enlargement of ICE detention centers and the department’s brutal migration enforcement tactics.
Metadata successful the document, which concerns ICE’s “Detention Reengineering Initiative” (DRI), lists arsenic its writer Jonathan Florentino, the manager of ICE’s Newark, New Jersey Field Office of Enforcement and Removal Operations.
In a enactment embedded connected apical of an FAQ question, “What is the mean magnitude of enactment for the aliens?” Tim Kaiser, the lawman main of unit for US Citizenship and Immigration Services, asked David Venturella, a former GEO Group executive whom The Washington Post described arsenic an advisor overseeing an ICE part that manages detention halfway contracts, to “Please confirm” that the mean enactment for the caller mega detention centers would beryllium 60 days.
Venturella replied successful a enactment that remained disposable connected the published document, “Ideally, I'd similar to spot a 30-day mean for the Mega Center but 60 is fine.”
DHS did not respond to a petition for remark astir what the 3 men’s relation successful the DRI task is, nor did it reply questions astir whether Florentino had entree to a PDF processor subscription that mightiness person enabled him to scrub metadata and comments from the PDF earlier sending it to the New Hampshire governor. (The alleged Department of Government Efficiency spent past twelvemonth slashing the fig of bundle licenses crossed the national government.)
The papers itself says that ICE intends to update a caller detention exemplary by the extremity of September of this year. ICE says it volition make “an businesslike detention web by reducing the full fig of contracted detention facilities successful usage portion expanding full furniture capacity, enhancing custody management, and streamlining removal operations.”
“ICE’s surge hiring effort has resulted successful the summation of 12,000 caller instrumentality enforcement officers,” the DHS papers says. “For ICE to prolong the anticipated summation successful enforcement operations and arrests successful 2026, an summation successful detention capableness volition beryllium a indispensable downstream requirement.”
ICE plans connected having 2 types of facilities: determination processing centers that volition clasp betwixt 1,000 to 1,500 detainees for an mean enactment of 3 to 7 days, and the mega detention facilities, which volition clasp an mean of 7,000 to 10,000 radical for an mean of 60 days. It’s been referred to arsenic a “hub and spoke model,” wherever the smaller facilities volition provender into the mega ones.
“ICE plans to activate each facilities by November 30, 2026, ensuring the timely enlargement of detention capacity,” the papers says.
Beyond detention centers, ICE plans to bargain oregon lease offices and different facilities successful much than 150 locations, successful astir each authorities successful the US, according to documents archetypal reported by WIRED.
The errant remark successful the PDF sent to New Hampshire’s politician is not the lone contented the acceptable of documents seemingly had; according to the New Hampshire Bulletin, a previous version of an accompanying document, an economical interaction investigation of a processing tract successful Merrimack, New Hampshire, referenced “the Oklahoma economy” successful the opening lines. The errant papers remains connected the governor’s website, arsenic of publication.
Across the country, ICE’s mega-detention halfway projects person sparked controversy. ICE’s acquisition of a warehouse successful Surprise, Arizona spurred hundreds to be a metropolis assembly gathering connected the topic, according to KJZZ successful Phoenix. In Social Circle, Georgia, metropolis officials person pushed backmost against DHS’s connection to physique a mega halfway there, due to the fact that officials say that the city’s h2o and sewage attraction infrastructure would not beryllium capable to grip the influx of people.
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