Afrasianet - Raed Salha - If the head of a country in this world does as Trump and his family do, the American hypocrisy would rise up and this country would be attacked under the pretext of corruption and lack of democracy, but what is happening with regard to Trump and his family no one dares to criticize him.
A journalistic investigation has revealed that people close to President Donald Trump's inner circle are making huge profits through deals struck by the Department of Homeland Security to buy warehouses used as immigration detention centers, which the website More Complete Union described as a "new level of corruption" within the Trump administration.
Earlier this year, it was announced that the department, under former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem (who was later fired), was planning to spend about $40 billion to buy dozens of warehouses across the United States, with the goal of turning them into temporary detention centers that could hold between 1,000 and 10,000 people in each facility, as part of President Trump's mass deportation plan.
But journalist Mae Ryan of the More Complete Union website said she noticed "something strange" when reviewing the contracts.
"Many of these warehouses have been on the market for years, but the Department of Homeland Security has been buying them at tremendously inflated prices," she said in a video.
She pointed to a warehouse in Socorro, Texas, estimated to be worth $11 million, but sold to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for $123 million, a profit of more than 1,000%.
According to former military analyst and investigative journalist Michael Weston, who has tracked these deals, "the Department of Homeland Security paid prices in most of the deals far above real estate valuations and comparable market values."
In other cases, the agency bought a warehouse in Surprise, Arizona, for more than $70 million, even though it was previously worth less than $12 million, and a facility in Georgia that was estimated at $30 million for about $130 million, according to Common Dreams.
Investigations indicate that many of these properties belong to financial institutions and investment firms with close ties to the Trump administration. In Roxbury, New Jersey, a warehouse valued at $54.6 million was sold for more than $129 million, mostly owned by Goldman Sachs, where several former Trump administration officials worked.
In Pennsylvania, ICE bought a warehouse for nearly $120 million, even though it was worth just $60 million, and it was owned by a private investment firm in which dozens of Trump administration officials reportedly have investments, including the president himself, through funds linked to the company.
In Salt Lake City, the government bought a warehouse worth about $97 million for $145 million, with plans to convert it into a detention center for 10,000 people. It was owned by Deutsche Bank, which has made billions of dollars in loans to Trump over the past decades.
Weston says the deals were not random, but part of a broader scheme linking politics and financial interests, according to the Common Dreams report.
"The plan came from people very close to the White House who owned properties that caused them annual losses, so the decision was made to buy them with taxpayer money."
This is part of a broader pattern of contracts awarded by companies linked to Trump. According to an earlier Open Secret investigation, GEO Group and CoreCivic, two private companies that run prisons, received more than $2.8 billion in ICE contracts, each of which made significant donations to the Trump campaign.
Although the administration has maintained that it targets the "most dangerous criminals," the majority of those detained during his second term had no criminal records.
Former detainees also reported harsh conditions of detention, including lack of food, health care and ill-treatment, as well as allegations of serious abuses.
The Department of Homeland Security has reportedly spent only about $1 billion of the more than $38 billion allocated to the project so far, while the administration plans to create a massive detention network that will hold more than 100,000 people in more than 20 facilities.
According to Weston's tracking of warehouse deals, at least 13 deals have been cancelled after public protests, but the government already has a holding capacity of more than 41,500 people.
"What is happening now I could not have imagined seeing in the United States... Never."
