Project Salt Box

As a volunteer investigative team, we never ask for money. But we back people doing the work on the ground. We report on the detention and enforcement system. Asylee Women Enterprise supports the PEOPLE living under it. They need a permanent home in Baltimore. If you can give, please do.

“Talk of looking for threats is doubly ominous in an administration running a mass deportation campaign fundamentally based on a lie — that there are 100 million people (roughly one-third of the country) who should be deported…”

Not only is this toolkit from @interruptcrim.bsky.social valuable purely for the content they've curated, I'm also just a huge fan of the design. Accessible, visually engaging, easy to navigate. Good stuff.

This should be an open and shut violation of the Fourth Amendment, but the Patriot Act blew that door wide open and we haven’t had a congress with the integrity to shut it since.

In case you prefer reading longer articles, rather than Bluesky threads.

ICE yesterday formally awarded Acentra $163,125,147.01 to operate its medical claims processing system until Oct. 24, 2030.

Fantastic questioning from this reporter.

“Ricardo Gonzalez’s detainment comes as an investigation by ProPublica found that more than 500 citizens have been caught up in the administration’s immigration operations.”

Because this has some traction, here's our reporting from February on the warehouse putsch.

If you work for Wakeman and Cushfield, or any firm thinking of buying one of the ICE warehouses and want to speak anonymously about what you know, my signal is mwriston.410.

Deplorable.

Replace "Boeing 737s" with "empty warehouses" and you've got the same play that DHS under Noem pulled. And a source on background told us in February the sales were meant to help well-connected Trump affiliates offload industrial properties that were liabilities on their books.

The purchase of several aircraft by the DHS during the final days of former Secretary Kristi Noem’s tenure is tied to an “ongoing criminal law enforcement investigation,” the department’s Privacy Office told The Washington Sun.

"People will make millions of dollars by turning others in." The President of the United States, everyone.

NEW: Customs and Border Protection hired a contractor for up to $9.2 million to review evidence in lawsuits against the agency, saying its own lawyers can’t keep up. The cases challenge how CBP is carrying out the Secure America Act, a roughly $70 billion enforcement funding law.

Deeply and truly humbled that two of our articles on the Trump administration's use of private prison contractors and surveillance tools are included in @aclu.org's report on the many ways mass deportation is breaking our democracy. This is a must-read catalog of American fascism's growing reach.

"I WANT THIS WAR END."

Last fall, DHS began handing out skip-tracing contracts to companies willing to help ICE find more people to snatch away to camps. Skip tracers rely heavily on the commercial data aggregators that hoard information about all of us. (LexisNexis claims well over 80B records from over 10k sources!)

🚨New by me: ICE agents shot a man in New York City while he was in his car with his 5-year-old child in the back seat last week. I'm from New York City. My grandfather was an immigrant in NYC. ICE is siphoning taxpayer dollars that should be helping families. www.thequeenzone.com/ice-is-sipho...

Is an ICE field office coming to an Austin suburb? A DHS letter to the historic preservation commission in Round Rock, Texas, says ICE plans fencing, gates, and card readers around the parking lot of a privately owned office building.

Do you live in Round Rock, Texas? Heard any rumors about ICE setting up shop in town? We'd love to hear from you. projectsaltbox@proton.me or via Signal at mwriston.410

ICE is increasingly saying that federal ownership of detention centers is the logical answer to state oversight. Today, a judge dismissed Maryland’s suit for records on ICE’s Baltimore holding rooms because the state law it used does not cover the federal government.

“ICE signed seven contracts with a combined ceiling of around $8 billion for construction at 13 government-owned sites nationwide, including several outside of the continental United States.” Remember — the violence the state is enacting on our communities is to engorge their own pockets! 🔗

One to watch: A proposed Cook County ordinance amendment would close the loophole allowing sensitive data to make it into ICE's hands via brokers like LexisNexis, potentially becoming a model for communities across the country. Cook County residents, please reach out to your commissioners ⬇️

A draft work statement shows USCIS wants contractors to analyze intelligence on people and businesses, rank criminal leads, and help build a system for confidential informant management, as the agency hires armed special agents.

Ah, MVM. They've received hundreds of millions of dollars to "conduct safety and wellness checks of an estimated 100,000 unaccompanied alien children (UAC) across the US."

congrats to all the BetOnline users who made money on this

Hey Californians: If you work for or with the state's Employment Development Department, I'd love to chat about the SAFE system. Can grant anonymity and take that very seriously. I can be reached on Signal at mwriston.410 or by encrypted email at projectsaltbox@pm.me

COLORADO — GEO Group will keep running the Aurora immigration detention center through Dec. 15 under a short extension of a contract that was set to expire this month. This comes as a an ICE solicitation for "turnkey detention facilities" is nearing a final award.