Michael Wriston, Founder and Editor of Project Salt Box (PSB) Has Appeared on Numerous Occasions on Cable Evening News This Year. PSB is a non-profit that Monitors and Reports on the Activity of ICE Nationwide.
This Newly Revised Paperback is a Very Disturbing Account of :how the Border Patrol Became the Most Dangerous Police Force in the United States” by a College Professor, Reece Jones. It Can Be Ordered at Sherman’s Books, 49 Exchange Street, Portland.
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted a solicitation on Thursday for a construction program worth up to $10 billion, a move to build and expand detention space on land the agency owns rather than lease it according to an indepth and detailed report from Project Salt Box (PSB) released on July 17,2026. What follows is an excerpt from that document.
The soliciation begins with eight projects: new “Secure Housing Units” — entire wings of individual cells — at eight of the agency’s Service Processing Centers. Two of those centers closed years ago. A third on St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands, has never existed.
Each unit is described as a single-story building of 26 cells, two of them wheelchair-accessible, with day rooms, showers, search and storage rooms, a control room and separate exercise yards for men and women. The fencing must block men held in the units from seeing into the women’s yard. The eight units come to 208 cells, priced at $24 million to $42 mllion apiece, roughly $247 million combined. The $10 billion contract ceiling covers far more than that — the solicitation names 14 more locations where work could later be ordered, from Honolulu to Guantanamo ‘Bay.
Only one of the eight, at the Port Isabel Service Processing Center near Los Fresnos, TX, is a funded job. The other seven are what the solicitation calls “scenarios” — priced in full, with a caveat that the government is not committing to build them.
An eighth funded project, at an ICE training site on the Army’s Fort Benning in Georgia, appears in the schedule for bidders’ site visits but not on the list of jobs up for bid.
Over the past year, ICE tried several ways to add detention space quickly. It leaned on a Navy construction program WEXMAC TITUS, and dropped it after senators pressed the Pentagon to end the arrangement. It bought eleven warehouses for just over $1 billion to convert, and most are now for sale. A federal contractor with direct knowledge of the matter told PSB in June that the agency was pivoting to new facilities on land it controls. The solicitation posted Thursday calls for construction at government-owned sites and directs the winning company to help ICE find the next parcels to buy.
ICE has not chosen a builder. The posting is a request for bids, with proposald due August 14, the agency expects to pick winners by September 15. The construction dates are blank. The contracts take effect September 30, but that is a paperwork date and the start and completion dates for each project are left to be filled in later, job by job The only firm number is an outer limit: 730 calendar days, two years, from the start of design to a finished building.
How many people the units would hold is unstated. Each is drawn as 26 cells – 21 for men. three for women, one accessible cell on each side — but the documents never say whether a cell holds one detainee or two, so the bed count is unfixed. Who would guard or run the units is also absent, this is a contract to construct buildings, not to staff them.
Several of the sites go unexplained. The soliciation lists 14 places where work could be ordered but describes what would be built at only the right housing units. Three of the 14 — Huntsville, TX, Honolulu and Fort Benning, GA. an Army post — have no ICE detention faciity today and the document says nothing about what it would put there.
While there are no ICE -owned detention centers in these areas, the agency does regularly hold immigration detainees at US Marshall Service and local law enforcement jails located near the named regions. It is not clear if the construction contract would cover expansion at these sites. ICE did not respond to a request for comment.
The contract also puts the builder to work finding the government’s next detention sites. The work statement includes tasks that have nothing to do with pouring concrete: the winning firm is to draw up “site options,” scout proprties and hand ICE a package on each one — price, zoning, who holds the easements, whether the land suits the intended use — “for Goverment to make decision on sites to be acquired,”
“…………………….. Proposals are due August 14, 30 days after posting. Site visits a tPort Isabel and Fort Benning are set for July 29 and 31. ICE andicipates awards by September 25 and an effective date of September 30, the last day of the fiscal year, with no phase-in period………………………………………………………………..”
This publication, PSB, is committed to transparency and accountability regarding the Department of Homeland Security’s expanding footprint. We welcome information, documents and data from sources with firsthand knowlede of agenc contracts and capabilities. To better protect your identity, do not contact us from a work-issued device or network. We seek iformation of public intterest, but we do not want and cannot acceptt, classified information.
This blog has reprinted numerous pieces about the work of PSB. For more information, please visit posts herein dated July 14 and 11, 2026.