These concentration camps are being built for us. We can stop them.

DHS seems to be taking bids for a global network of offshore detention camps that serve a "remigration" agenda. We must force Congress to intervene.

“History is full of moments in which hindsight provides the only clear view. This is not one of them.”

— Andrea Pitzer, One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps

On July 8, the Department of Homeland Security posted a draft Statement of Work seeking private contractors to maintain and operate a fleet of aircraft to support mass deportations. Beyond aviation logistics, the document outlines plans for a global network of foreign detention facilities.

The government anticipates launching the work on July 28, 2027. While contractor proposals are due July 22 of this year, this is just a bureaucratic milestone on a long corporate timeline—giving Congress a wide window to step in and shut down the funding if we force them to act.

Investigative journalist Charles R. Davis broke the story at The Redoubt. He also interviewed Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night, who provided historical context on how foreign detention networks have historically been deployed to bypass domestic legal protections.

The solicitation outlines a fleet operations plan alongside solutions for establishing “International Staging Areas” in foreign host nations, which could include facilities equipped with up to 1,000 beds. While the document creates significant ambiguity regarding the legal responsibility and eventual fate of detainees once they are transferred into a host country’s care and custody, it does not explicitly include a clause on what happens if project funding expires.

Charles R. Davis has broken down the document in detail.

What’s bizarre is watching something like this happen in real time. Concentration camps generally get identified only after they exist, once the paperwork is old news, often after the people inside have already disappeared. This one is still a bid deadline on a federal website, out in the open, because the contracting process that produced it must still follow its own rules. That’s what’s left of the democratic process colliding head-on with a fascist-curious regime that wants concentration camps and isn’t especially bothered who knows it. There’s no war here, no emergency, no security rationale. It’s cruelty as export. That’s the point.

It isn’t only happening here, either. In June, the European Parliament approved its own Return Regulation, allowing member states to build offshore “return hubs” outside EU borders, with detention extended to two years.

Global displacement has nearly doubled in a decade, and it’s going to keep climbing as the planet continues to heat rapidly and disjointedly. And rather than dealing with the source of the problem aggressively, with the seriousness it demands, the goal is to normalize using a method of civilian detainment that has led to history’s greatest tragedies.

None of this is unprecedented in its cruelty, only in its transparency. The U.S. has already paid to warehouse deportees at Bukele’s CECOT in South Sudan and in Eswatini, more than 19,000 people through third-country detention under this administration alone. The new solicitation scales the practice and gives it a supply chain.

The through line for these wasteful, useless horrors runs straight back to Moscow. Trump spent a decade excusing, even valorizing, Putin’s atrocities in Syria and Ukraine, and this year’s National Security Strategy turned that excuse-making into doctrine, warning of Europe’s “civilizational erasure” in language the Kremlin praised as consistent with its own vision. Two weeks ago, Stephen Miller stood before officials from 67 countries and called the political left “enemies of civilization”, comparing it to a disease the world must eliminate. Miller is making an enemy of “equality,” the first promise this country’s founding document ever made. Camps are the very real infrastructure that this ideological buffoonery produces on the ground.

The far right has a name for the goal: remigration, the belief that whole populations belong somewhere else. Trump has used the term himself, on his own platform. Charles Davis has spent months tracking the American officials cheering the idea alongside European fascists, including a former Border Patrol chief who flew to Portugal in May to celebrate it. Democracy Now covered the summit; watch the segment here:

You may think the camps are for someone else. DHS has already floated “100 million deportations” as a real number. Only 47 million people living in America were born somewhere else. Hitting 100 million means coming for citizens too, native-born and naturalized alike.

Here’s what makes this camp story like the ICE human warehouses that have generally been abandoned by DHS but unlike most camps we know about from history: this one isn’t built yet. It’s a bid deadline on a contracting website. Once the facilities exist overseas, the courts that intervened to stop domestic deportations (like in the case of Abrego Garcia) lose their reach, the reporters who track tail numbers lose the trail, and the leverage we have disappears. Right now, before any of that happens, this is still just a filing with a due date and a Congress that could ask about it.

So ask them to. Call your representatives’ and senators’ offices. Ask for the staffer who handles immigration, not the general line. Tell them specifically: DHS posted a solicitation on SAM.gov this month for offshore detention facilities holding up to 1,000 people each, and you want your member of Congress to intervene immediately, demand oversight, and block the funding before this contract goes any further. If you live near an existing ICE or DHS facility, make the same call to your local officials and show up at the protests that are surely happening around you.

So, while we can, act out of decency. And act out of respect for how rare it is to see an atrocity like this coming when it can and must be stopped.

Take action

Find your representative: house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

Find your senators: senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm

Sample script:

“Hi, my name is [Your Name] and I’m a constituent living in [Your City/Zip Code]. I’m calling to speak with the staffer who handles immigration or DHS oversight.

(Once connected to the right staffer, or if leaving a voicemail:)

I am calling to ask [Representative/Senator Name] to immediately intervene and block funding for a new DHS procurement request on SAM.gov. The solicitation outlines a fleet operations plan for mass deportation alongside solutions for establishing a network of offshore, 1,000-bed international staging areas.

Contractor proposals are due on July 22, meaning Congress has a critical window right now to step in before these contracts are finalized for the 2027 launch. Notably, the document creates significant ambiguity regarding legal responsibility and completely lacks a clause detailing what happens if project funding expires.

I want the member to demand immediate oversight hearings and publicly pledge to defund this global camp network before taxpayer money is awarded. Can I count on [Representative/Senator Name] to take action on this?”

You call the U.S. Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and ask to be connected to your representative’s or senators’ office.

Read the solicitation itself: the Statement of Work on SAM.gov

Read the reporting: Charles Davis at The Redoubt and Andrea Pitzer at Degenerate Art. On the EU’s parallel push: ActionAid on the Return Regulation.