ICE Is Gearing Up to Build “Mega” Jails

Immigration and Customs Enforcement is planning to spend tens of billions of dollars on mega-prisons where the agency can disappear thousands of people.

In a memo shared with New Hampshire Governor Kelly Ayotte, ICE outlined its $38.3 billion plan to launch a “new detention center model” that would expand the agency’s detention capacity by 92,600 beds by the end of FY26.

“This effort aims to meet the growing demand for bedspace and streamline the detention and removal process, focusing on non-traditional facilities built specifically to support ICE’s needs,” the memo said. “This model includes the acquisition and renovation of eight large-scale detention centers and 16 processing sites, as well as the acquisition of 10 existing ‘turnkey’ facilities where ICE ERO already operates.”

The large-scale processing centers, also called “mega-centers,” would house between 7,000 and 10,000 detainees for “periods averaging less than 60 days,” and serve as the site of international removals. Other processing facilities would house between 1,000 and 1,500 detainees for between three to seven days.

Currently, the country’s largest immigration detention facility is Camp East Montana, a 5,000-bed short-term tent facility built at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas. Within the first 50 days of operation, the facility had already racked up 60 federal code violations. The facility had failed to provide detainees with regular access to working toilets and showers, substantive meals, or legal assistance, and failed to take mandatory and proper health screenings.

Now, Donald Trump wants to build eight more Camp East Montanas—and make them even bigger.

The number of immigrants in U.S. detention has already reached record high levels, surpassing 73,000 detainees in January as a result of the government targeting children, families, immigrants without criminal records, and lawful asylum seekers. The Trump administration has said it aims to detain 100,000 people at any given time.

More prisons wouldn’t solve the problem of disappearing detainees, address the horrific conditions and lack of health care access at many of these facilities, or ease the steadily climbing number of detainee deaths—it would only provide ICE more cover to move immigrants from state to state in order to skirt legal challenges. An attorney in Minnesota would have to act quickly to stop the deportation of their client from Texas or Florida or someplace else—if they could even figure out where their client got sent.

The memo was sent to Ayotte as part of ongoing talks to open one of these mega prisons in Merrimack, New Hampshire—sparking concerns from state and local leaders.

ICU nurse Alex Pretti was shot and killed by a swarm of ICE agents in Minneapolis moments after he assisted a couple of women. One of them, according to new reports, was also a health care professional—who was denied the chance to help Pretti in his final moments.

In an exclusive interview with The Intercept, the emergency medical technician—whose credentials were reviewed by the outlet but who remained unidentified due to fear of retaliation by the government—claimed she tried to perform CPR on Pretti but was thwarted by a masked ICE agent who restrained her.

“I could tell the second that I laid eyes on him that he was horrifically injured,” the EMT said. “I immediately said, ‘I’m an EMT! He has a brain injury! He has a serious brain injury! I need to help him right now.’”

Moments before Pretti’s death, video captured from onlookers at multiple angles depicted the 37-year-old filming ICE activity before intervening between another protester and an agent who had violently shoved her to the ground. The two protesters were then sprayed with a chemical irritant, and Pretti was ripped away from the other demonstrator while she continued to slip on a mound of snow.

At least seven officers were on top of Pretti, wrestling him to the ground, when one of them, standing above the situation and seemingly supporting the other agents, grabbed his gun and shot Pretti. Video footage captured the sound of 10 gunshots ringing out.

Footage of the seconds that followed capture the EMT’s voice on audio, ringing out that Pretti was suffering “decorticate posturing,” a phenomenon in which the hands and legs curl into the body as a result of brain trauma.

“I was literally begging the agent who was holding me back to let me do CPR,” she recalled. “Because I knew that if he wasn’t pulseless at that point already, he was going to become pulseless very, very soon.”

Then Pretti died. His death was later ruled a homicide by the Hennepin County medical examiner.

The government is constitutionally required to keep people safe once they are in custody. The legal principle is tied to due process, outlined in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Parameters established by the Department of Justice also stipulate that officers are not allowed to ignore serious medical conditions or risk of harm, such as assault, that could jeopardize an individual’s life. Unfortunately, in Pretti’s case, agents appeared to ignore both of those tenets.

“The responsibility of the government is to make sure that the person in their custody is cared for and alive,” Xavier de Janon, the director of mass defense at the National Lawyers Guild, told The Intercept. “If government agencies fail to keep someone alive and there is proof that it’s their fault, they could be liable for their actions.”

President Donald Trump doesn’t seem the slightest bit bothered by the buffoonery that closed the airspace over El Paso, Texas, earlier this week. 

CNN’s DJ Judd asked Trump if he was “pleased” with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s handling of a humiliating incident, in which the Federal Aviation Administration briefly closed the airspace near the southern U.S. border because the military used a high-powered laser to shoot down what ultimately turned out to be a party balloon. 

“You mean the way it happened?” Trump pressed, and then splayed out his hands in a wide shrug. 

“People learn,” the president sighed. “People learn.” 

On Tuesday, FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford closed El Paso’s airspace “for special security reasons” without telling the White House, the Department of Defense, or the Department of Homeland Security—causing chaos in the surrounding area.

Duffy, along with White House and Pentagon officials, claimed Wednesday that drones dispatched by a Mexican cartel had breached U.S. airspace. The same day, two officials briefed by the Trump administration said the airport had been shut down over security concerns related to DOD’s use of counter-drone technology. 

As it turned out, the Pentagon had sought to expedite testing for an anti-drone laser at Fort Bliss, which is next to El Paso International Airport—and reportedly ended up targeting a rogue balloon instead of an unmanned aircraft. After initially saying that airspace would be closed for 10 days, the agency reversed the decision and reopened the next day.  

“The FAA and DOW acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion. The threat has been neutralized, and there is no danger to commercial travel in the region,” Duffy wrote on X Wednesday. “The restrictions have been lifted and normal flights are resuming.”

Duffy has yet to acknowledge that this statement was not actually true. But Trump’s laissez-faire attitude seemed to say it all: He messed up. 

What could Duffy possibly have learned from this incident? I guess he learned not to do it again—if he even knows what he did. 

Ghislaine Maxwell is in another legal bind.

The longtime girlfriend and sex-trafficking associate of Jeffrey Epstein was revealed Friday to have lied on her naturalization documents, potentially compromising her U.S. citizenship.

The documents were uncovered in the Justice Department’s latest Epstein files document dump and first reported by Migrant Insider. They show that Maxwell ticked “no” on paperwork that required her to admit if she had ever committed a crime or if she had ever procured anyone for prostitution.

The N-400 application that Maxwell submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York asked:

• “Have you EVER committed a crime or offense for which you were NOT arrested?”
  
• “Have you EVER been a prostitute, or procured anyone for prostitution?”

For both queries, Maxwell indicated on the form that she had not. In truth, the covert criminal had recruited and trafficked underage girls to Epstein’s operation as early as 1994.

But despite her wide-ranging crimes, Maxwell’s application was approved, and she became a U.S. citizen on November 27, 2002.

Legal experts argue that could bode poorly for Maxwell, as false statements can delegitimize a naturalized citizenship, even if the offense is discovered decades later. The catch could also extend Maxwell’s prison sentence by up to 25 years under 18 U.S. Code § 1425.

“Lying on an N-400 form is a serious federal offense,” an unidentified immigration law expert told Migrant Insider. “Material misrepresentations—especially about criminal conduct—can be grounds for revocation of citizenship and potential criminal prosecution for immigration fraud.”

Maxwell was sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in jail for playing an active role in Epstein’s crimes. Her attorneys have pressed the White House for a pardon for several months now, though the White House has not indicated it will grant one.

But a July interview between Maxwell and the DOJ still proved incredibly fruitful for the convict, sparking concerns that she had been offered a quid pro quo in exchange for a revised “Epstein list.” At the time, the Trump administration was floundering to redirect public fury over the files.

Shortly after she spoke with Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, Maxwell—one of the worst sex criminals of the century—received an extremely cushy transfer, shipping her from a Florida prison to a low-security prison camp in Texas where she has been granted many privileges not typically afforded to inmates.

Her time behind bars has since included meal service in her cell, unlimited toilet paper, puppy access, and access to private visitations in a chaplain’s office outside standard visiting hours. Her requests to be separated from other inmates have also been granted, with tables and cellmates reportedly being relocated at her whim.

On January 14, two ICE officers were involved in a confrontation with two Venezuelan immigrants in Minneapolis that ended with one of the agents shooting one of the men in the leg. The officers claimed that the immigrants were assaulting them with a broom and a shovel, justifying their use of force. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem called it an “attempted murder of federal law enforcement,” and the men were charged with assault.

Today, that case has been dismissed and those officers are under investigation for lying under oath—according to acting ICE Director Todd Lyons.

“A joint review by ICE and the Department of Justice (DOJ) of video evidence has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements,” Lyons said in a statement Friday. “Both officers have been immediately placed on administrative leave pending the completion of a thorough internal investigation.… The U.S. Attorney’s Office is actively investigating these false statements.”

Federal prosecutors dropped the charges against the Venezuelan men one day earlier. “The charges against them were based on lies by an ICE agent who recklessly shot into their home through a closed door,” said attorney Brian D. Clark, the men’s lawyer. “They are so happy justice is being served.”

This is absolutely egregious. Two men were accosted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and one took a bullet to the leg. Then the federal government called them murderers and hit them with heavy charges, all for ICE’s own head to admit that his agents appear to have been lying under oath—a crime that this administration doesn’t seem to take very seriously.

This shooting happened one week after Renee Good was killed, and just over a week before Alex Pretti was killed. The Trump administration lied to us about both of those events, as well. Only time will tell just how many more of these ICE shootings were offensive rather than defensive.

After kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, threatening to cut off aid to Colombia, and calling for U.S. troops in Mexico all within the last few months, President Trump’s message to people concerned with further escalation is simply, “Don’t worry about it.”

“Are you considering land strikes on Mexico, Columbia, and Venezuela?” a reporter asked Trump outside the White House as he departed for Joint Base Andrews in North Carolina on Friday afternoon.

“What about it?” Trump said, unable to hear over the aircraft noise.

“Land strikes, are you planning them?” the reporter repeated.

“Don’t worry about it.”

Virtually every action Trump has taken in the region—from the “drug boat” bombings in the Caribbean Sea to the midnight abduction of Maduro—would suggest that land strikes on Mexico, Colombia, and Venezuela are very much something to worry about.

The Department of Homeland Security’s new tool to check voters’ citizenship is mistakenly identifying people as noncitizens, according to a report Friday from ProPublica and The Texas Tribune. 

In the past year, President Donald Trump has ordered the expansion of the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements, or SAVE, pooling classified and sensitive information on voters from across the federal government into one database in order to better determine citizenship on voter rolls. 

But rollout of the revamped SAVE database came much too quickly: Not all of the new data had been added yet, resulting in persistent mistakes. Not only were numerous voters being falsely declared noncitizens, but they were then being referred to the Department of Homeland Security for possible criminal investigations. 

In March, Trump demanded DHS give states free access to SAVE, and partner with the Department of Government Efficiency to comb through voter rolls.  U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, or USCIS, got Americans’ Social Security numbers from DOGE—some of whose employees were accused of misusing that information in an attempt to overturn election results. 

The biggest addition to the federal SAVE database was troves of confidential information from the Social Security Administration. David Jennings, the associate chief of the USCIS, bragged on a call that it had only taken two weeks to get the tool up and running. “I think that’s remarkable. Kind of proud of it,” he said. 

In Missouri, Brianna Lennon, an official responsible for running elections in Boone County, was shocked when the federal database for verifying citizenship told her that 74 people on the county’s voter rolls weren’t actually citizens. A closer look at the documentation for those 74 people revealed that the computer had made a mistake: More than half of those people were citizens. 

Lennon was among dozens of county clerks who raised alarms about inaccurate data. “It really does not help my confidence,” she told ProPublica, “that the information we are trying to use to make really important decisions, like the determination of voter eligibility, is so inaccurate.”

Mistakes also quickly popped up in Texas, another red state that was eager to implement Trump’s crackdown on noncitizen voting.  At least 87 voters across 29 counties were affected by these errors, ProPublica reported.

The issue of noncitizen voting remains small to nonexistent. In 2016, noncitizen votes accounted for just 0.0001 percent of the votes cast, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. One might notice that Trump’s complaints about noncitizen voting evaporated after his victory last November. However, Trump seems to have revived his obsession ahead of the midterm elections. 

Thus far, SAVE’s findings—faulty though they may be—still have not supported the Trump administration’s outrageous claims about noncitizen voting. Of about 35 million registered voters across seven states, only about 4,200 people, or 0.01 percent of registered voters, have been identified as noncitizens. 

So far, 27 states have agreed to use SAVE, but others have hesitated over concerns about inaccuracies as well as voter privacy and the potential utilization by DHS for Trump’s sweeping deportation scheme. 

Schools across the country are canceling their annual picture day after the ex-owner of one of the nation’s largest school photography companies was revealed to be one of Jeffrey Epstein’s associates.

Protests and district-wide investigations were opened due to unsubstantiated rumors that Leon Black, the ex-CEO of a private equity firm that owns the tech company Lifetouch, had access to school pictures taken by the company, reported HuffPost.

“At this time, no evidence has been presented indicating misconduct involving Lifetouch’s operations within our schools or any compromise of student information. Nevertheless, we believe it is appropriate to review the matter carefully and transparently,” Clifton Public Schools, a school district in New Jersey, wrote in a letter to parents on Wednesday.

Across the country in Arizona, school officials were issuing similar notices.

“While we do not have any information indicating a direct impact on our school or our students, our highest responsibility is always the safety, security, and trust of our families,” the Prescott Valley Charter School said in an announcement to parents.

Concerns were also raised in California and Texas.

Lifetouch is not mentioned in the Epstein files, but Black, a Wall Street titan and famed art collector, most definitely is.

Black co-founded and led Apollo Global Management until 2021. Apollo acquired Lifetouch in 2019 when it purchased the photo business’s parent company, Shutterfly. The deal officially closed in September of that year, a month after Epstein died in prison.

Black was ousted from Apollo after an internal review found the billionaire financier had significant ties to Epstein, including more than $150 million in payments for financial advice between 2012 and 2017.

Two years later, an unidentified Jane Doe sued Black for allegedly raping her when she was just 16 years old in Epstein’s Manhattan townhouse. The graphic lawsuit detailed that the victim had autism and a rare form of Down syndrome that has left her “developmentally … at about 12 years old.” It was the third such lawsuit accusing Black of rape.

Lifetouch denied that Black ever had access to their photos in a statement, insisting that the company is “committed to protecting the privacy and personal information of every student we serve.”

“Lifetouch is not named in the Epstein files. The documents contain no allegations that Lifetouch itself was involved in, or that student photos were used in, any illicit activities,” the company wrote.

This story has been updated.

The ripple effect of the most recent release of the Epstein files has traveled across the water, causing high-profile resignations and even criminal charges everywhere, except where they’re needed most: the White House. 

Dubai Ports World CEO Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, whom Jeffrey Epstein thanked in an email for a “torture video,” resigned from his post on Friday. The company announced his replacement in a statement that made no mention of Epstein. 

Former Obama White House counsel and Goldman Sachs chief legal officer Kathryn Ruemmler also had an extensive, close personal relationship with Epstein. The high-ranking Democratic lawyer spent significant time with Epstein well after his 2008  conviction, tagging along on “lunches and dinners with celebrities, apartment hunting, and personal beauty appointments,” according to documents reviewed by CNN. On Thursday, she resigned from Goldman Sachs. 

And that same day, even Thorbjorn Jagland—the former prime minister of Norway—faced consequences for his alleged financial ties to Epstein. He had his diplomatic immunity revoked and has been charged with “gross corruption” in Norway.

These are perhaps the most direct and tangible consequences for having a relationship with the infamous sexual predator, aside from the now former Prince Andrew, who was essentially booted from the British royal family for his extensive allegations of sexual abuse alongside Epstein. And yet multiple people within the current Trump administration are in the files—and remain unaffected. 

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who lived next door to Epstein in New York, went on the conservative Pod Force One podcast last year and told an elaborate story about how he swore to never meet with Epstein again after a strange interaction in 2005. But the files revealed that Lutnick was lying blatantly, and that he took his entire family to Epstein’s island seven years after he said he cut off ties. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Dr. Mehmet Oz invited Epstein over for a Valentine’s party in 2016—eight years after Epstein was registered as a sex offender. Both men have received the full support of the Trump administration, even as calls for their resignations have increased, along with actual results around the world. That’s nothing to say of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, Deputy Defense Secretary Stephen Feinberg, Elon Musk, and many more with ties to the disgraced sex offender.

If the former prime minister of a major European country, an international CEO, and the general counsel of Goldman Sachs can all get sacked over their clear connections to Epstein, why can’t Lutnick, Oz, or any other government official who was involved with Epstein after his sex offender registry do the same? 

The Department of Homeland Security wants to beef with Cardi B? Are you sure?

At the opening night of her “Little Miss Drama Tour” in Palm Desert, California, Wednesday, Cardi B joked that she would defend her Mexican and Guatemalan fans against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, according to TMZ.

“Bitch, if ICE comes in here, we gon’ jump they asses,” Cardi B said, as the crowd cheered.

“I’ve got some bear mace in the back! They ain’t taking my fans, bitch,” she continued. The rapper then launched into one of her most popular songs, “I Like It,” featuring J. Balvin and Bad Bunny, whose recent Super Bowl halftime show offered a political lightning rod for MAGA.

On Thursday, the DHS social media team took time out of its busy schedule of posting neo-Nazi memes and anti-American propaganda to hit back at Cardi B.

“As long as she doesn’t drug and rob our agents, we’ll consider that an improvement over her past behavior,” the DHS official account posted, referring to the rapper’s past statements about her encounters with some customers while she was working as an adult entertainer.

Cardi B was unsurprisingly quick with a clapback. “If we talking about drugs let’s talk about Epstein and friends drugging underage girls to rape them,” she wrote on X Thursday. “Why yall don’t wanna talk about the Epstein files?”

Cardi B’s outspoken criticism of Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown comes as the rapper’s longtime nemesis Nicki Minaj has gone full MAGA.