Concentration Camps... Again
ICE's detention centers are concentration camps. They are brutally cruel environments. But we have a chance to "resist the beginnings" and choose to stop designing cages for people.
Never again (Nie Wieder) - A call initiated by liberated prisoners from Buchenwald concentration camp in April 1945, originally focused on an anti-fascist struggle but later expanded to the Holocaust overall.
We now know what we should have known then - not only was that evacuation wrong but Japanese-Americans were and are loyal Americans... I call upon the American people to affirm with me the unhyphenated American promise... that this kind of error shall never be made again. - President Gerald Ford, signing a proclamation formally terminating Executive Order 9066 on February 19, 1976.
Never ended up being far too short a time, as the U.S. continues a trend of breaking its unhyphenated American promise while increasingly flirting with fascism and authoritarian oligarchy under the Trump regime. But Americans are speaking out in greater numbers against these broken promises and actively resisting, including those in the AEC Industry (but we need much, much more of this).
In January 2026 architects and designers across the U.S., following the lead of several Minnesota firms, participated in a national strike in protest of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention practices. This came on the heels of ICE’s and the Custom Border Patrol’s (CBP) increasingly cruel and disturbing actions in these centers as well as on American streets.
There’s the 1,037 credible reports of abuse in ICE facilities occurring between January 20, 2025, and January 12, 2026, as documented by Senator Jon Ossoff’s investigation, 33 deaths in ICE facilities over the course of 2025, and 11 deaths so far in 2026 (as of March 9th). A large percentage of these deaths were likely preventable considering a June 2024 report by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and others stating that 95% of deaths in ICE custody between January 1, 2017, and December 31, 2021, were preventable or possibly preventable with adequate medical care. Among those suffering so far in 2026 have included a nine-year-old boy with severe autism, detained with his mom for over 80 days at a center in Texas, who was denied therapy, begged to go back home, cried every night, and eventually began hitting himself.
We’ve also seen the spread of disease in these facilities. A February 2026 measles outbreak in Camp East Montana in El Paso, one of the nation’s largest detention facilities, forced the quarantine and isolation of many of the people being housed there. According to experts (including the author with expertise in the minimization of airborne infection risk within the built environment) this was a foreseeable outcome, noting that crowded conditions plus a highly contagious disease plus limited ventilation plus no systemic vaccination safeguards (and a lack of other infection risk minimization protocols) make outbreaks practically inevitable.
For a regime bent on establishing some form of authoritarian rule, with roots in fascism, bigotry, white supremacy, and white Christian nationalism, the cruelty provided by the nature and operations of these physical environments is the point. So, let’s look at just how cruel these environments actually are, focusing on the negative mental and physical health impacts endured by detainees.
But let’s be honest. These facilities are, in actuality, concentration camps (an assertion justified later in the article). And the local officials approving their construction, renovation, and operation within their communities, as well as the real estate and AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) professionals contributing to their existence, represent a moral failing with disturbing historical precedents. Their actions echo the bureaucratic justifications that helped facilitate the construction and operation of concentration camps in early Nazi Germany as well as the U.S.’s Japanese-American internment camps during World War II.
The Cruelty of the Physical Environment and its Operations
Senator Ossoff’s investigation mentioned above revealed systemic housing abuses across ICE detention facilities. These included documented reports of people sleeping on concrete floors in overcrowded cells, exposure to extreme temperatures, and denial of adequate food, water, bedding, clothing, and medical attention. A KFF briefing reports severe overcrowding, a lack of ventilation, and poor sanitation conditions (including limited access to showers, toilets, and hygiene products).
Water has been reported as dirty and foul-tasting. An ACLU News and Commentary piece references raw sewage bubbling up from shower drains at the California City detention center, with people detained there referring to it as a torture chamber. Other facilities have reports of human waste sitting in the open, regular occurrences of sewage backups, and common failures of plumbing infrastructure, all contributing to some people fasting to avoid defecating. And the smells from all of this - exacerbated by the lack of ventilation, the overcrowding, the lack of adequate hygiene and sanitation - have been described as overwhelming.
Reports also exist of solitary confinement occurring in isolated small rooms with no exterior windows. Though a lack of daylight and view access is common throughout many of these facilities, with detainees living under a perpetual twilight of fluorescent lights. The environments are also consistently noisy, caused in part by staff and loud televisions playing all day as well as the overcrowded conditions and detainees themselves, often children, who sometimes cry out in anguish. On top of all of this are the instances of physical abuse and assaults that occur at the hands of the guards and other detainees. Many occurrences similar to what I’ve laid out above (and more) can also be found in a DHS Inspector General’s Report dating back to 2019.
These are obviously conditions that, in addition to basic human decency, also varyingly violate a plethora of building codes (examples here and here), standards (examples here, including ICE’s own detention standards), CDC and WHO guidelines and recommendations (examples here, here, and here) as well as the state laws and city codes / ordinances, including zoning ordinances (examples here, here, and here). The conditions have been so dire that federal judges have issued a variety of rulings, ranging from ordering facility and operational improvements be made to stopping the barring of members of Congress from making unannounced visits to ICE detention facilities.
What the Research Says
The harm to physical and mental health is certainly made explicit by listening to those harmed by these conditions, but there’s also a significant amount of supportive research.
Circadian System Disruptions: Limited to no daylight access combined with electric lights on 24/7 can result in severe disruption to our circadian system. As I’ve written previously, this system…
refers to an approximate 24-hour cycle of physiological activity that our bodies go through every day. Circadian photoentrainment is the process of using light to “entrain” our bodies to a specifically-timed cycle, where light synchronizes our biology with the external world. And our eyes are the windows this exterior light signal passes through to reach our clock.
Being day-active animals, our circadian clock is evolutionarily designed to promote wakefulness during the day and sleep at night in response to the day-night cycle. Disruptions to our circadian rhythms and sleep, as have been reported occurring in ICE facilities, can result in a variety of increased short and long-term health risks, including mood impacts, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, infertility, depression, dementia, cancer and premature death. And some detainees are reporting having to endure such conditions for as long as 10 months.
Thermal Stress: We know that exposure to extreme temperatures causes physiological stress to the body, the degree dependent largely on how extreme the temperature is as well as time of exposure. Heat becomes medically dangerous when the Wet-Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT) reaches 82.4°F (equivalent to 100°F on a dry day), though physiological stress will occur at temperatures lower than this. And according to an analysis by the Washington Post, the hottest 10 percent of ICE facilities experience an average of 93 days of unhealthy temperatures each year. Health risks include the following:
Physical Health Risks: Exposure leads to dehydration, heat exhaustion, and potentially fatal heat stroke. Chronic exposure is linked to organ damage, particularly to the kidneys, liver, and cardiovascular system.
Exacerbating Factors: Detainees are often unable to self-cool due to sealed windows, lack of air conditioning, or limited access to ice and water. Overcrowding further exacerbates indoor heat.
Mental Health and Suicide: Extreme heat is associated with a 30% increase in daily suicide-watch incidents in carceral settings (and a 22.8% increase in suicide deaths after a single extreme heat day). It also correlates with increased agitation, irritability, cognitive impairment, and risks of severe violent incidents.
Extreme cold conditions, often described in legal cases as cells with ice forming on walls or broken heating, lead to immediate and long-term ailments. Detainees and guards have both described some of these facilities as iceboxes. Health risks include the following:
Reported Illnesses: These often consist of chronic “flu-like” symptoms, frostbite, and trench foot.
Chronic Pain: Reports frequently consist of joint swelling and persistent musculoskeletal pain following prolonged exposure.
Systemic Effects: Severe cold can trigger hypothermia, which impairs brain function and decision-making, and increases the risk of stroke and cardiovascular events.
Acoustic Trauma: The accumulated evidence suggests that the acoustic conditions in ICE detention - high-volume, unpredictable, constant low-level, and lack of privacy - are not merely uncomfortable but act as a mechanism for producing negative short and long-term mental and physical health impacts, including chronic sleep deprivation, increased anxiety, and the exacerbation of pre-existing trauma. More details consist of:
Sleep Deprivation and Circadian Disruption: The constant presence of noise, unpredictably at high levels at times, exacerbated by the overcrowded conditions and lack of privacy, also disrupts sleep and our circadian system, increasing risks for heart disease, diabetes, and mental health issues as discussed above.
Chronic Stress and Mental Health Decline: Constant, low level noise exposure triggers the sympathetic nervous system, leading to heightened stress, annoyance, anxiety, and depression.
Cardiovascular and Physical Impacts: Chronic noise exposure triggers stress responses, increasing blood pressure and sympathetic nervous system activation, which in turn elevates the risk of heart disease and stroke.
Auditory Fatigue and Damage: High-intensity noise can lead to auditory fatigue or temporary shifts in the ability to hear. Prolonged exposure can result in permanent hearing loss, tinnitus (ringing), or hyperacusis (sensitivity to normal sounds).
Poor Air Quality and a Lack of Ventilation / Filtration: Research regarding the health impacts of poor air quality, odors, and inadequate ventilation in detention facilities - including ICE detention centers - documents significant physical and mental health issues arising from overcrowded, poorly ventilated, and sometimes chemically polluted environments. Studies show these conditions facilitate the spread of communicable diseases, cause chronic respiratory issues, and exacerbate mental health trauma. More details consist of:
Airborne Chemical and Odor Exposure: Some facilities are located near industrial sites (e.g., fracking and Superfund sites). This, and the use of industrial chemical disinfectants, can expose detainees to various VOCs (volatile organic compounds), hydrogen sulfide, and other chemicals (via the air, water, and soil). However, chronic exposure to the smells of raw sewage, intense body odors, and spoiled food can also be harmful. Symptoms reported are wide ranging, and include headaches, nausea, dizziness, vomiting, throat irritation, loss of appetite, and the exacerbation of asthma. Chemical exposure can also contribute to neurological problems, developmental damage, and various diseases, including different types of cancer.
Mold and Particulate Matter Exposure: Different combinations of poor ventilation and filtration, high humidity, water leaks, drafty building envelopes, and inadequate maintenance / custodial practices can contribute to varying occurrences of mold (and other biological contaminants) as well as particulate matter (including dust). Such exposures can contribute to respiratory distress, the triggering of asthma events, headaches (including migraines), skin and eye irritations, and lethargy, as well as increase the risk for various cancers, cardiovascular diseases, and neurological and psychiatric disorders. Particulate matter exposure is exacerbated by one’s proximity to the sources of such pollution, such as industrial farming activities or wildfires.
Airborne Disease Exposure: The World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on detention facilities stress infectious disease resilience through adequate ventilation as essential. Low ventilation and poor filtration, exacerbated by overcrowded conditions, poor systemic vaccination safeguards (along with a lack of other infection risk minimization protocols), facilitate the rapid spread of airborne infections, including measles, tuberculosis, COVID-19, influenza, mumps, and chickenpox. In such environments, precisely what we see in these ICE facilities, outbreaks are practically inevitable, impacting not just the detainees, but also staff and the surrounding communities.
Poor Sanitation: Research documenting poor sanitation in ICE detention facilities - specifically focusing on water / food quality, hygiene, and waste management - indicates significant health impacts. Some of these include:
Food-Borne and Water-Related Illnesses: Detainees have reported being forced to drink or use contaminated water and served food contaminated with maggots or mold. This, combined with poor hygiene in communal eating and living areas (including raw sewage pooling in cells from broken toilets), as well as limited access to soap or functional showers, exacerbated by chronic stress, has contributed to high rates of gastrointestinal issues, including abdominal pain, outbreaks of vomiting and diarrhea, and severe constipation and hemorrhoids.
Skin Diseases and General Hygiene Deficits: Physical health deterioration is often visible through skin conditions directly resulting from unhygienic living environments. Frequent occurrences of scabies, as well as bacterial and fungal infections, which reflect overcrowding and poor hygiene have been reported. Detainees have also reported being deprived of showers for extended periods and lacking access to basic sanitary products like menstrual pads, leading to severe discomfort and secondary medical complications.
Infectious Disease Transmission: Unsanitary conditions - specifically a lack of soap, hand sanitizer, and clean water - combined with overcrowding conditions create ideal conditions for the rapid spread of various communicable diseases (which can also extend to staff and the surrounding communities as mentioned above). Documented outbreaks of influenza, chickenpox, and mumps have been directly linked to environmental crowding and poor health conditions in many of these facilities. Previous research identified 486 cases of Hepatitis A between 2019 - 2023 across 20 facilities, with outbreaks often attributed to poor infection control and hygiene standards.
Solitary Confinement: Research indicates that solitary confinement (the practice of isolating people in small cells without meaningful human contact for 22 hours or more per day) creates a toxic combination of physical and social isolation, sensory deprivation, and forced idleness, leading to lasting damage. Among the harm done includes:
Severe Psychological Damage: Documentation shows that solitary confinement leads to extreme psychological distress, including hallucinations, panic attacks, severe anxiety, depression, and cognitive dysfunction (confusion and memory loss). It’s often considered a form of torture itself, leading to PTSD, self-harm, and heightened suicide risks. Many detained immigrants are also survivors of previous torture and/or other trauma, so for them this can be retraumatizing.
Worsening of Preexisting Physical Conditions: Detainees with pre-existing conditions (like diabetes) have reported the denial of medication and appropriate care while in isolation, resulting in further physical deterioration. Imagine what those with epilepsy must endure. Other documented physical impacts include lasting brain damage, hallucinations, and heart palpitations.
Cruelty Campaign Trends: A 2025 Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) report found that between April 2024 and May 2025, over 10,500 people were placed in solitary, with vulnerable detainees having medical and mental health conditions kept in isolation for an average of 38 consecutive days in early 2025. This far exceeds the 15-day limit that the UN defines as torture - remember that cruelty is often the point here.
I should also note that the adverse effects of solitary confinement are magnified by the substandard physical environments in ICE facilities, which are often described as terrible and disgusting. The 24/7 lighting, lack of daylight access, loud noises, extreme temperatures, poor air quality, lack of adequate ventilation and filtration, and poor sanitation discussed above all serve to make solitary confinement more tortuous.
These are not minor discomforts or even just substandard building conditions - these are inhumane physical environments and operational policies that have been weaponized to produce physiological and psychological harm, often with lifelong consequences. For many detainees, this is torture.
Vulnerable Populations: Children, Pregnant Women, and Others
But one only begins to fully grasp the cruelty of these facilities when considering the impacts of systematic medical neglect, environmental stressors, and prolonged confinement on our most vulnerable populations. We consistently see that detention acts as a catalyst for worsening health, with outcomes such as depression, PTSD, and chronic illness exacerbation becoming significantly more prevalent the longer an individual is held.
Children: Studies indicate that NO period of immigration detention is safe for children, as it causes irreversible harm to their physical, mental, and social development. Yet, as of January 2026, more than 900 children were held beyond the 20-day U.S. legal limit (notably longer than the U.N.’s limit for being designated as torture), with 270 detained for more than twice that long. The nine-year old autistic boy mentioned above exemplifies the trauma many children are experiencing: detained at the Dilley Center in south Texas for over 80 days with no therapy, no school, and a constant sensory assault - 24/7 electric lighting, loud and constant noises, guard patrols, unfamiliar and contaminated food. He began having meltdowns consisting of hitting himself, pulling at his clothes, and screaming until he would lay exhausted on the floor. Other impacts consist of:
Mental Health Harm: A meta-analysis found a 42.2% prevalence of major depressive disorder (MDD) and a 32.0% prevalence of PTSD for detained children. They often experience anxiety, night terrors, regressive behaviors, emotional problems, self-harm, and suicidal ideation.
Physical and Developmental Harm: Documented issues include weight loss, sleep disturbances, abdominal pain, and developmental delays or regressions, such as language delay.
Long-term Harm: Severe enforcement experiences during childhood are significantly associated with ongoing mental and physical health issues into young adulthood. The prolonged detention of any child, particularly an autistic child, is the antithesis of good treatment and risks irreparable harm.
Above is an audio of children just separated from their parents, taken from inside a U.S. Customs and Border Protection facility, obtained by ProPublica.
Women: Women in ICE custody face unique reproductive and mental health challenges, often exacerbated by trauma and gender-based violence experienced prior to detention. Some of these include:
Maternal Health Risks: Reports include pregnant women being held in solitary confinement, sleeping on floors in overcrowded cells, being transported in shackles at the ankles, hands, and waist, and even miscarrying in shackles. In fiscal years 2017 and 2018 alone, 28 women reported miscarriages while in ICE custody. In October 2025, an investigation by the ACLU of Georgia and other advocacy groups revealed medically neglectful and abusive cases. One woman miscarried after an invasive procedure was performed without her consent. She was returned to detention for two more months, still experiencing bleeding, fevers, and abdominal pain with sick call requests going unanswered.
Severe Complications: Inadequate care has been linked to life-threatening complications; for example, one detained pregnant woman developed eclampsia, a condition characterized by seizures and dangerously high blood pressure. Another woman, a graduate student legally in the U.S., was detained for over 20 weeks during a high-risk pregnancy. When she asked about her prenatal vitamins, a nurse told her You won’t die if you don’t take them. Only released after legal advocates intervened, she later developed eclampsia, endured a difficult delivery, and continues to struggle with postpartum depression linked to her detention trauma.
Psychological Distress: Women are more likely than men to develop psychiatric disorders and higher levels of depression while detained, in part due to their experiences of sexual harassment and assault at higher levels while detained. Acute emotional crises are frequently observed in women separated from their children, with impacts extending well beyond detainment (though men are impacted as well).
Other Individuals: Those with preexisting mental health challenges or a history of trauma are among the most vulnerable to the harms experienced in detention facilities. In addition, LGBTQ+ individuals often experience targeted harassment, the elderly may experience accelerated aging, and neurodivergent individuals are often impacted more by different elements of the surrounding environment than the general population. More specifics include:
Detainees with Mental Health Challenges or Past Trauma: Individuals with various mental health challenges are disproportionately placed in solitary confinement, which often worsens their condition. Approximately 57% of recently detained immigrants with diagnosed with different types of mental illnesses reported difficulty accessing medical services while in custody. Note that the suicide rate in 2020 among individuals in ICE facilities increased substantially compared to the previous decade.
LGBTQ+ Detainees: Studies indicate that LGBTQ+ individuals (especially transgender women) experience higher rates of harassment and violence than non-LGBTQ+ detainees. In FY 2017, LGBTQ+ detainees were 97 times more likely to be victims of sexual abuse than non-LGBTQ+ detainees. Some reported being targeted by other detainees while officers failed to intervene or even facilitated the abuse. The cruelty is the point.
Elderly, Disabled, and Neurodivergent Detainees: Older adults in carceral settings face accelerated aging, where they experience greater geriatric morbidity (such as mobility and hearing impairment) at a much younger age than community-dwelling peers. They are also more likely to report multiple chronic health conditions, such as hypertension and diabetes, which may be inadequately managed, all of which makes them more vulnerable to dying while detained. And neurodivergent individuals like the nine year old boy mentioned above typically receive no accommodations for their conditions, cruelly subjecting them to a constant sensory assault.
Above, listen to a Minneapolis resident and U.S. citizen, who is disabled and has autism as well as a traumatic brain injury, describe being rounded up by ICE, booked into a detention facility, and experiencing the facility’s conditions. Source: PBS Newshour YouTube channel
Warehouse Conversions
Thanks to Congress more than tripling ICE’s annual budget via the Big Beautiful Bill (including $45 billion for expanding its detention system), the Trump regime has increased efforts already in progress to expand its detention system at an unprecedented pace. Such fast tracking is being accomplished with the help of a) no-bid contracts, b) skirting environmental reviews, c) claiming federal immunity from state and local codes and zoning restrictions, d) the unacceptably vague nature of the Performance-Based National Detention Standards (PBNDS) to begin with (particularly related to health metrics), e) an ineffective inspection process, and d) reduced transparency and oversight in general. Detention infrastructure expansion has included reactivating previously closed prison facilities (many of which were closed due to serious problems), expanding existing facilities, building new facilities, erecting tent cities (one of which sits on the site of a former Japanese internment camp), and converting warehouses into detention centers.
And converting warehouses to house people instead of goods comes with it’s own unique brand of cruelty and dehumanization. These structures, originally designed as logistical hubs for storing, sorting, and distributing goods, are being repurposed to hold up to 10,000 people per facility. While adaptive reuse is certainly something many of us in the industry push for, this particular kind of reuse comes with significant challenges requiring time and money to address - and the Trump regime doesn’t seem that interested in doing its due diligence here.
Such challenges include, but aren’t limited to, significant HVAC system and building controls upgrades, plumbing system upgrades / renovations / redesign (likely requiring slab demolition and repouring), fire protection redesign, interior space build outs / modifications, potential envelope modifications, and, in some jurisdictions, environmental or floodplain permitting. And this assumes the local community can handle the increased utility and sanitation demands such a facility brings with it, which isn’t always the case. Here’s an overview of what such adaptive reuse consists of for one warehouse facility in New Jersey.
These challenges exist because codes and standards require such adaptive reuse efforts take human health, safety, and general wellbeing into account (as well as environmental impacts). For example, the International Building Code Change of Occupancy Requirements - Chapter 10 requires that any change in building occupancy - such as converting a warehouse (Group S) to institutional detention use (Group I-3) - must ensure safety and health of occupants through upgraded ventilation, life safety systems, accessibility, and sanitation. Yet the Trump regime’s efforts to skirt such requirements - to literally warehouse people, package them, and figuratively, if not literally, stack them like cordwood - will result in additional versions of the inhumane conditions laid out above, allowing them to be cruel to significantly more people per facility now.
But again, the cruelty is the point.
The Cruelty of Bureaucratic and Capitalistic Complicity
The Moral Failure of Leavenworth’s City Council
While many state and community leaders have resisted the Trump regime’s efforts to place these detention centers in their communities, the Leavenworth, KS city commission recently voted (4-1) to approve CoreCivic’s special use permit to re-open its 1,000 bed, privately run, for-profit prison for ICE detainees. This decision came despite the recent history leading to its closure. Note that a federal district judge previously described the facility (open from 1991 to January 2022) as an absolute hell hole.
A September 2021 letter from the ACLU and a group of public defenders noted: CoreCivic Leavenworth is dangerously understaffed, poorly managed and incapable of safely housing its detainee population. Stabbings, suicides and even homicide have occurred with alarming frequency in the last year with weapons, drugs and other contraband now a common occurrence. They pointed out that food, medical care, and showers were limited, and that contact with legal counsel and family members had been denied.
A 2017 audit of this facility and its operations by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of the Inspector General, found multiple issues affecting safety and security, including understaffing, triple bunking, and a lack of sufficient oversight of CoreCivic by the U.S. Marshalls Service (USMS). The facility closed in January 2022 when its contract expired without renewal following President Biden’s executive order preventing federal agencies from contracting with private prison operators. Since then it has remained unused, but maintained by CoreCivic.
Despite this documented history of violence, neglect, abuse, and poor management of this specific facility, despite the outcry from community members, and despite the knowledge of the harms ICE is inflicting on detainees directly and through contractors, Leavenworth officials nevertheless approved CoreCivic’s return. Max McCoy’s recent Kansas Reflector opinion piece title perfectly captured the moment: ICE just added Leavenworth to its chain of detention islands. Blame a failure of moral leadership. So did one of Dan Margolies ‘s recent Notes from KC pieces: Leavenworth City Commission Capitulates to Greed.
In justifying her decision, Commissioner Holly Pittman used the following bureaucratic language, devoid of the human impacts: It is a land use decision governed by law and by the constraints of our political authority. After reviewing all the legal framework, the zoning standards and the court rulings, I believe denying this permit would expose our taxpayers to a significant financial risk, and I will not gamble the financial stability of this city.
And Commissioner Joe Wilson stated: This has been an agonizing process. Everybody wants to make this morality over fiduciary responsibility, but I think there is a real risk to the future of the city, based on how the vote turns out that has to be considered, that could have long-term ramifications for our children, for our tax base, for our law enforcement and our firefighters and the services that we can provide.
I’ve been a local elected official. Governing isn’t easy - I recognize the difficulties and nuances often involved in governing decisions, and I have some sympathy for these officials. But in the end such moral considerations must, ABSOLUTELY MUST, outweigh community fiscal concerns - and it shouldn’t have been this hard of a decision given the number of community members willing to back them up.
Such justifications, as given by these commissioners, in my opinion exemplify what political theorist Hannah Arendt, reporting on the war crimes trial of Adolph Eichmann, termed the banality of evil: bureaucrats making administrative decisions (often narrowly focused and broadly thoughtless) that enable atrocities while appealing to the importance of regulations, procedural correctness, fiduciary responsibilities, local issues, etc. While not intending to, they are acting as (willfully ignorant) cogs in the gears of evil.
The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil. - Hannah Arendt
Historical Parallels: Nazi Germany and Japanese Internment
The initial concentration camps of Nazi Germany in 1933 weren’t centrally planned or administered, this was done via a mix of local, regional, and central authorities. Local officials in this early stage actively enabled the concentration camp system through routine administrative actions and legal justifications: they provided sites and infrastructure (from readapting hotels and sports stadiums to warehouses and ships) for camps, coordinated with local police and paramilitaries to run them, and invoked emergency laws like the Reichstag Fire Decree and protective custody to legitimize extrajudicial imprisonment. This bureaucratic facilitation – couched in the language of legal authority, public safety, and political necessity – was crucial in the eventual transformation of ad-hoc detention sites into a nationwide network of centrally controlled concentration camps.
There are a few key parallels here with what’s going on in the U.S. ICE is making use of local county jails, private prisons, military bases, converted warehouses, and even hospitals to house detainees before eventually releasing them, deporting them, or feeding them into larger detention centers (if they’re not sent to these centers to begin with). These county jails, prisons, and tent camps are part of our vast carceral state as author and journalist Andrea Pitzer has pointed out, and where… there is not an existing concentration camp network already in place, the natural thing is to take advantage of where you already have the appropriate facilities. And doing this - bureaucratically facilitating it - allows the concentration camp system to take on the local culture and specifics, helping to normalize it, to embed it. The way you get to a more totalitarian style state is once you harden it so that it exists everywhere, all the time, then anybody is susceptible to it - this is basically what happened in Nazi Germany - facilitated by local, compliant, authorities.
Local authorities became indispensable partners in the Nazi regime’s machinery of repression, demonstrating how ordinary bureaucratic decisions – about who could be detained where, and under what pretext – helped enable the rise of the concentration camp system. This was the beginning of the operation of the concentration camps outside the laws of the German state, facilitated by the blessing of local, cooperative officials. And the efforts of local authorities were a form of bureaucratic normalization - per Christopher Browning’s seminal work Ordinary Men - where officials were just making administrative decisions, citing legal frameworks, and following procedures. Atrocities of increasing severity were committed through the normal machinations of bureaucracy (divorced from morality and sometimes coerced by higher authorities) - until the end result was genocide.
Similarly (and in addition to the U.S.’s internment of Native Americans), the U.S. government’s internment of over 120,000 individuals of Japanese ancestry during World War II - two-thirds of whom were native-born American citizens - was facilitated in part through a system of bureaucratic compliance. Executive Order 9066 (1942), signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, authorized the military to designate exclusion zones and remove individuals deemed threats to national security. The executive order also explicitly authorized the assistance of state and local agencies in carrying out the internment.
For the most part, local and state authorities, such as California Attorney General Earl Warren, supported and enforced these measures, citing legal obligations and wartime necessity. They were empowered to facilitate the internment through routine administrative actions under the War Relocation Authority (WRA), a civilian agency. The process of internment was deliberately framed as an ordinary administrative relocation - Japanese Americans were called evacuees and were ordered to report to Civilian Control Centers with what belongings they could carry.
Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, was one of several U.S. Army facilities used during WWII to detain Japanese, German, and Italian nationals. In 2025 the site was repurposed as the largest ICE detention center in U.S. history (as of August 2025), drawing condemnation from Japanese American advocacy groups. Organizations such as the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and the Japanese American National Museum (JANM) criticized the move, with JACL calling it a disgrace to the memory and legacy of the more than 125,000 Japanese and Japanese Americans unjustly imprisoned during World War II. These groups drew direct parallels between the historical internment and contemporary immigration detention, warning against repeating past injustices under similar justifications of national security.
Let’s Face it, ICE Detention Centers are Concentration Camps
It’s not hyperbole to label these centers concentration camps (or deranged and lazy as former DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claimed). Journalist Andrea Pitzer, author of One Long Night: A Global History of Concentration Camps (2017), defines concentration camp systems as:
systems… designed to incarcerate civilians on the bases of race, political affiliation, ethnicity, religion or some aspect of who they are, rather than what they’ve allegedly done. Much of its workings occur outside whatever is the existing legal system in that country. In the United States, this has manifested in the form of detention without trial, abuse and even killings that have run afoul of the law, and the suppression of documentation and accountability.
This would certainly seem to apply to ICE detention centers and the system the Trump regime has set up. It’s a system of mass detention based largely on (actual or presumed) national origin and immigration status (that has extended to civilian protesters and political opponents), generally without meaningful judicial process. They fit within the broader historical category of concentration camps that have emerged across numerous countries and political systems.
This broader, historical category exists because, unfortunately, concentration camps are globally ubiquitous - over the last 100 years, they have existed continuously at varying locations on the planet (including in the U.S.). Though people - the hardliners, true believers, and sadists as well as the compliant officials and others going along to get along - will convince themselves that their country’s detention camps aren’t like those other concentration camps, because they as a people are not like that, and these people in the camps are actually bad (or are there for their own good). That’s part of the normalization process, as are the backlashes we’ve seen against using the term concentration camp.
While not every historian or scholar may agree with calling these facilities concentration camps, a significant number do. Michael Zank, a College of Arts and Sciences professor of religion and Jewish studies as well as director of BU’s Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies is one of these scholars: By referring to the caging of asylum seekers as “concentration camps,” she [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez] managed to get our attention. The analogy is correct, as many scholars have confirmed. Historians note that ICE detention shares the definitional features: mass detention without trial, punitive conditions designed to deter others, detention based on identity. The term fits longstanding academic definitions of concentration camps.
And there is evidence that U.S. officials intended the cruelty and brutal nature built into these camps (as laid out earlier in this piece in great detail) to act as a deterrent. In 2018 a top HHS official openly stated the family separation policy (that is apparently still informally part of this larger concentration camp system) will result in a deterrence effect on future immigration. Historian David Silbey notes that when modern concentration camps first emerged (by the British during the Boer War, in Spain’s campaign against Cuban insurrectionists, and during the U.S.’s campaign against Philippine insurgents), the intent was to isolate and punish civilians to cut insurgents off from their support – an effective but brutal tactic leading to mass suffering. This aligns with the Trump regime’s logic of using severe measures (like separating families or confining children and pregnant women in inhumane conditions) to deter asylum-seekers. In other words, as I’ve stated many times already, the cruelty is the point - it’s an immoral policy tool.
In different locations concentration camps evolved over varying periods of time before some became formal death camps. We know this history. We know where we’re currently at. We know where this path can lead. We should resist the beginnings.
“Wehret den Anfängen”, which means “Resist the beginnings” - per Michael Zank, a likely better slogan than “Never again”.
The AEC Industry - the Good, the Bad, and the… Indifferent?
This resistance should extend to developers, building owners, the real estate sector, and other AEC Industry organizations and businesses. But there are definitely financial incentives working against people’s better natures.
The private prison sector, acknowledging the presence of some volatility, is nevertheless looking to prosper overall under this expansion of the concentration camp system (particularly those at the top). CoreCivic and GEO Group stock prices soared following the 2024 election. CoreCivic CEO Damon Hininger told shareholders: Never in our 42-year company history have we had so much activity and demand. Their contract for the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Dilley, Texas alone is expected to generate approximately $180 million in revenue annually. Their Leavenworth six month contract is worth $4.2 million per month. Hininger himself earned over $7 million in 2024.
GEO Group’s CEO Executive Chairman George Zoley told investors that the company has about 6,000 idle beds at six of its facilities that, if fully utilized, would generate more than $300 million in combined incremental annualized revenues. That’s significant incentive to fill those beds, regardless of how it’s done, what it will lead to, or how many people are harmed. As is ICE’s use of no-bid contracts to bypass competitive bidding, awarding hundreds of millions to firms with minimal oversight. Michael A. Hallett, a professor of criminal justice at the University of North Florida who studies private prisons has called it the gold rush. When demand is spiraling and you’re the only provider that can meet demand, you can pretty much set your terms.
Other examples include global defense contractor KVG LLC’s award of a $113 million contract to convert a Maryland warehouse (originally designed to hold big box store goods) into a 1,500-bed facility. The contract also contains potential growth options set at $642 million over three years. GardaWorld Federal Services, a Canadian based security contractor, was also recently awarded a $313.4 million contract to renovate a warehouse to hold detained immigrants in Surprise, AZ. And in the greater Kansas City area, while community efforts seemed to initially put the breaks on Platform Venture’s deal to sell a local warehouse to the government for use as an ICE concentration camp, the story may not be over. As reported by Melinda Henneberger at Kansas City Stack (and followed up by Dan Margolies), the government may simply take possession of the warehouse by condemning the property, compensating Platform Venture in the process. It’s then a win / win for the Trump regime and Platform Ventures while being a lose / lose for humanity and democracy.
And for all of these deals, there are the unnamed contractors, architects, consulting engineers, manufacturers, etc., providing the services and materials to design and build / renovate these facilities, enabling the expansion of a concentration camp system they know - or should know - undermines democracy, supports a fascist, authoritarian takeover, and causes systematic harm to so many, including to some of our most vulnerable populations. I hope these companies and individuals do some intensive soul searching.
However, there are examples of better natures prevailing. The Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation fired leaders of one of its businesses - KBP Services, a subsidiary of the the Nation’s business arm, Prairie Band, LLC - in response to accepting a $30 million contract for ICE detention center related services. The tribe also confirmed that they successfully exited all third-party related interests affiliated with ICE. But this doesn’t come without financial risk to the Nation - the $30 million is itself a loss, and they risk losing future government contract awards. But, as Joseph Rupnick, chairman of the Tribal Council stated:
We know our Indian reservations were the government’s first attempts at detention centers. We were placed here because we were treated as prisoners of war. So we must ask ourselves why we would ever participate in something that mirrors the harm and trauma once done to our people.
At the beginning of this article, I mentioned the January 2026 national strike protesting ICE detention practices by architects and designers across the U.S., following the lead of several Minnesota firms. Previously, in August 2018, The Architecture Lobby (TAL) and Architects / Designers / Planners for Social Responsibility (ADPSR) issued a joint statement calling on…
architects, designers, planners and allied professionals to refuse to participate in the design of any immigration enforcement infrastructure, including but not limited to walls, checkpoints, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) offices, detention facilities, processing centers, or juvenile holding centers.
History has taught us that what is strictly legal is not always what is just. It is time for this to end. We call on professionals to join us in this pledge: We will not design cages for people.
In July of 2019, the American Instituted of Architects (AIA) issued a statement denouncing the conditions at ICE detention centers. Key parts of the statement are as follows:
The American Institute of Architects urges local, state, and federal leaders to work together to safeguard the dignity, safety, and welfare of everyone regardless of race, creed, gender, age or national origin in their custody and care at detention facilities.
Above all, the misuse of these buildings and the impact on the occupants in them are contrary to our values as architects and as Americans.
AIA calls for building inspectors and others (with appropriate authority) to proactively evaluate facilities to ensure that they are in full compliance with applicable laws and regulations to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of inhabitants. Consistent with applicable laws and codes, we urge swift correction and mitigation of all building code violations and that existing building codes be used to ensure the safety and welfare of all.
This last paragraph of AIA’s statement is particularly important in my opinion. So many of these facilities - these concentration camps - are NOT in compliance with various applicable building codes and laws. Our industry must step up here and forcefully and loudly advocate for these inspections and appropriate follow throughs. And then finally in December 2020, the AIA officially added new rules to the organization’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct prohibiting members from “knowingly designing spaces intended for execution and torture, including indefinite or prolonged solitary confinement of prisoners.”
But where are the other professional organizations here? Where are the statements, code of ethics revisions, etc., from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), the International WELL Building Institute (IWBI), the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), the Illuminating Engineering Society (IES), the Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA), and others? Why the apparent indifference?
Those of us in the industry need to make some noise here - with the professional organizations we’re members of and with the companies we work for. While there are firms who refuse to work on such facilities - HOK for one - not every firm has made this commitment or publicly stated so. However, employee resistance can make a difference.
Things are apparently still playing out, but in the case of DLR Group, protests from a good percentage of employees against an existing contract to convert an old private prison in Oklahoma into a new detention center (involving CoreCivic) did make a difference. It led to leadership committing to no more new work involving ICE detainment or deportation facilities (though they wouldn’t walk away from the current contract or other correctional facility work overall, even though some employees walked away from DLR Group themselves). And the AIA’s statement and code of ethics revision above only came about after more than a decade of debate and discussion involving members. It may take some time (hopefully not more than a decade), but making noise can have an impact.
[Full disclosure, BranchPattern (my employer) doesn’t have a correctional facility focus or expertise, though we have occasionally worked on such projects (mostly county jails). To my knowledge, we have not worked on detention centers such as these, but nor have we publicly stated our opposition to such work to my knowledge.]
In a previous article Who Gets to Shape Federal Architecture, I argued that federal architecture should reflect democratic values and a pluralistic society, not a white, oppressive, authoritarian state. The choice to design concentration camps is a choice about what values American architecture will embody. When AEC Industry professionals choose to provide the design, technical, construction, and operational expertise to create harmful environments that end up violating codes, standards, laws, and basic human decency through their use, they are making their choice of values clear. They are declaring that American architecture will embody cruelty and white supremacist authoritarianism, will enable suffering, and will prioritize profit over human dignity. But we can choose not to do this. We can choose to speak out against this.
Concentration Camps - Resist the Beginnings
Never again was too short a time. We broke the unhyphenated American promise (though some Americans’ fingers were likely crossed behind their backs to begin with). We’re flirting with fascism and authoritarianism rooted in white supremacy and white Christian nationalism. We’re rounding up people because of what they look like, what they sound like, what papers they don’t have, and what political side they’re on. We think their due doesn’t include due process.
We’re concentrating these people in camps - brutally cruel environments - to deport them. If some die along the way, what does it matter? The goal is to remove them from society - from what we think society should look like - White and Christian and Cishet and Authoritarian.
According to the Trump regime, these people aren’t Americans or real Americans. They’re incompatible with Western civilization. They’re diluting U.S. society. They’re poisoning the blood of the country. They’re parasites. They’re the worst of the worst. They’re invaders. They’re traitors. They are the other. They’re due brutal treatment and inhumane environments - they’re due concentration camps.
Above, listen to a U.S. citizen describe her and others’ treatment at the hands of ICE and the conditions in a detention center - this is what happens when ICE agents fully embrace and embody the language of the Trump regime. Source: Senator Dick Durbin’s YouTube channel.
And so we have camps of weeping mothers, crying children hitting themselves, pregnant women bleeding alone on concrete floors, people crammed together like sardines, people denied food, water, and human contact, people living in filthy, tortuous conditions, people dying - killing themselves - being murdered. These are camps of despair. This is what we’ve allowed to be created. This is what some of us have helped create. These are the atrocities we’ve allowed.
So far… It could get worse, as it has before.
And many in the Trump regime and MAGA world may very well like it to get worse. Which means the German phrase Wehret den Anfängen - resist the beginnings - likely captures the urgency of the moment.
We can’t be indifferent and keep our heads down. We can’t hide behind bureaucratic language and narrowly focused administrative decisions. We can’t hide behind shareholder profit margins or just doing what my firm’s leadership tells me to do. We can’t tell ourselves we’re just making a bad situation or inhuman conditions less bad. We can’t let ourselves be cogs in the gears of evil.
We need to take action. We need to speak up and protest as citizens. We need to have a moral compass as elected officials and be brave. We need to have conversations with our fellow employees and the leadership of our firms, and not be afraid to walk away in protest. And we need to make complicity visible… and shameful.
We need to resist the beginnings before they become the even greater horrors we will one day struggle to comprehend. Before someone, again, must say Never again.