Thereâs something fishy about the new detention centers being built that doesnât smell right. The numbers just donât add up, which leads me to suspect they arenât just about deportation. Theyâre about building out the infrastructure of repression. They signal what the state can do and whom it can act upon.
Trump has promised to deport millions. To make that seem plausible, heâs ordering new facilities, converting military bases, and expanding enforcement budgets. But the numbers defy the narrative. With roughly 11 million undocumented residents in the U.S., even deporting a million people a yearâa pace no administration has achievedâwould take over a decade, assuming no new arrivals and no legal setbacks. This isnât policy. Itâs theater.
But that theater leaves a real infrastructure behind.
Facilities built for mass deportation wonât disappear if the plan falters. Theyâll remain: beds, fences, biometric systems, mobile courts, transport fleets. These arenât temporary fixes. Theyâre material investments in a model of governance built on threat classification and population control. Once in place, the system doesnât sit idle. It seeks new uses.
And immigration law offers the perfect entry point. Unlike criminal law, it allows detention without trial, removal without a public hearing, and surveillance without probable cause. It operates in a legal gray zone, nominally administrative and functionally punitive, where due process is thinner and discretion broader. That flexibility makes it a powerful toolânot just for immigration enforcement, but for political containment.
Recent purges of immigration judges under the Trump administration make this shift unmistakable. Dozens have been dismissed, forced into early retirement, or replaced with political loyalists. Some were let go without cause, including judges who had ruled independently or resisted pressure to accelerate deportations. The courts themselves are being hollowed outâless a venue for legal review than a formality. When adjudication is subordinated to executive preference, detention becomes not the outcome of law but its substitute.
This isnât new. The U.S. has repeatedly used immigration law to police ideology and loyalty. Labor organizers, anarchists, and Japanese Americans were all detained or deported not for crimes, but for who they were and what they represented. The machinery doesnât need to change. It only needs to be turned inward.
Other countries offer a warning. In Turkey, Hungary, and India, detention infrastructure built for terrorists or border control now targets journalists, NGOs, and political opponents. The logic is consistent: first define an external threat, then redefine the internal enemy. The architecture stays the same. The categories shift.
Meanwhile, a growing share of that architecture is privately run. Corporations like CoreCivic, GEO Group, and Palantir arenât just contractors. Theyâre stakeholders in a detention economy that profits from expanded enforcement. Surveillance platforms, transport services, biometric databases, and mobile courts operate through public-private partnerships designed for scale and discretion. In this political economy, authoritarianism isnât just a threat to democracy. Itâs a business model.
The economic reality only sharpens the contradiction. The U.S. needs between one and two million new workers annually to replace retirees and meet labor demand. Yet legal immigration pathways cover barely half that. Instead of expanding them, the state pours money into walls and cells. The same system that depends on migrant labor criminalizes the people who provide it. Thatâs not economic planning. Itâs narrative control.
The danger lies not only in whatâs being built, but in what it normalizes. Detention centers, mobile tribunals, and enforcement zones donât just mark the border. They blur the line between legal procedure and executive power. They prepare the state to act not according to law, but according to loyalty.
This isnât a warning about a distant future. Itâs a description of whatâs already underway. The infrastructure is operational. The legal framework is pliable. The political incentive to expand it grows with every manufactured crisis.
Daily life may feel untouched. Stores stay open. Screens glow. But the architecture of fear works quietly, adjusting the space in which people move, speak, and imagine whatâs possible. Its first targets are vulnerable. Its ultimate targets are anyone who resists.
Every new site, every court bypass, every data-sharing contract is more than a tool of immigration enforcement. Itâs a test of capacity, and of consent. Once the system is in place, all it takes is a redefinition of who counts as a threat.
We must not accept this as necessary or normal, itâs not.
"Make America Great Again"...but not if it actually involves leading the world in valuable scientific developments that benefit humanity...
We have completely abdicated our role in the world as leaders of anything other than bullying and greed. Technologies that the US developed to provide clean energy to the world, we have given over the Chinese to lead. Don't want to support higher education in the US? No problem, other countries will be more than willing to take up the reins. Come to Canada, come to Denmark, come to China etc. It's mind blowing how long it took to build up our country and how easy it is to wipe it out.