ICE expansion won’t happen in the dark

On Tuesday, Wired Published details Planned expansion of ICE In more than 150 office spaces across the United States, including 54 select addresses. If you haven’t read it yet, you should, not least because there’s probably one not far behind you.

ICE has designs in every major American city. It plans to not only occupy existing government space, but to share hallways and elevator bays with medical offices and small businesses. It will be down the street from daycares and within walking distance of churches and treatment centers. Enforcement officers and attorneys will have cubicles a short drive away from the giant warehouses that have been tapped to hold thousands of people who will be detained by ICE.

Rental crazes like this usually happen out in the open; This may include multiple bids, renovations of select spaces, and all the red tape and bureaucracy that makes government work slow but accountable. Not so here. The General Services Administration, which manages federal government property, has been asked to go beyond standard operating procedures in favor of speed and discretion. Internal documents reviewed by WIRED make clear that these locations, and the manner in which they were acquired or planned, were intended to be secret from the beginning.

They shouldn’t be. That’s why we published it.

ICE has more than $75 billion at its disposal, along with at least 22,000 officers and agents. Its occupation of Minneapolis is not an anomaly; It’s planned. Communities deserve to know they could be next. People have a right to know who their neighbors are, especially when they reach the level of an invading power.

What we have reported so far only fills part of the puzzle. It shows what ICE has planned as of January, not beyond. More than 100 addresses remain unidentified, some in states with high concentrations such as New York and New Jersey. The exact nature of the work being done in some of these offices remains unclear, as is how long ICE plans to stay there.

The need to resolve these questions is urgent as ICE continues to spread. At the same time, the Justice Department has become increasingly aggressive in its dealings with journalists, repeatedly claiming that revealing any specific information about ICE agents or their activities amounts to “libel.” In Minnesota and beyond, ICE and CBP agents treated monitors as enemies. arrest And it is said harassment them with increasing frequency. The Justice Department was quick to describe any potential interference with ICE activity as a crime.

The Trump administration is moving quickly by design, counting on the inability of courts, lawmakers, and journalists to keep up. WIRED will continue to report this story until we get answers.

Knowing where ICE goes next does not mean stopping the agency’s campaign of cruelty and violence. But it gives communities time to prepare for a major wave of immigration enforcement on their streets. It gives lawmakers insight at the local and national levels into the unchecked scope of ICE. It indicates to the administration that it cannot act with impunity, or at least in complete secrecy.

So, please go and take a look at where ICE is setting up shop near you. And know that there is a lot of this story to tell.

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