STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
In a New Jersey town, immigration authorities have been secretly using a warehouse to detain people. This despite courts in several states ordering pauses in the agency's conversion of warehouses that it bought into detention centers. And we have news about how administration figures may see such projects because a federal contractor told NPR about a meeting with a top Homeland Security official. The contractor said he understood the message was presidential aide Stephen Miller wanted immigration facilities to be painful, not humane.
NPR's Jasmine Garsd has been revealing all of this. Jasmine, good morning.
JASMINE GARSD, BYLINE: Good morning.
INSKEEP: What's this meeting?
GARSD: So Homeland Security bought 11 warehouses this year to turn into ICE detention facilities - spent about $1 billion on that. And I spoke to this contractor whose company was approached to help convert them. He asked to remain anonymous because he's afraid of government retaliation. He says his company pushed back and was told White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who again was not at this meeting, was set on it.
UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR: Steve Miller himself had come to DHS and said that he did not want facilities that were comfortable. He did not want facilities that were humane. He wanted them to be difficult and painful because he wanted to make a point. Steve Miller certainly seemed to make that point to everyone - that he wanted it to be cruel. And this was what Miller had stated to the DHS, at that time, director and deputy director.
GARSD: This was literally relayed to you?
UNIDENTIFIED CONTRACTOR: Yeah. Yeah. We were in an official meeting. I would say in 25 years of working with the U.S. government, I've never been in that position before.
GARSD: Now, in a statement to NPR, White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said the contractor's comments were, quote, "false hearsay allegations from someone who has never met or talked with Stephen Miller" and that Miller, quote, "has never made any remarks to anyone about wanting illegal aliens to have worse detention facility conditions," end quote. She didn't respond to repeated requests to interview Miller.
INSKEEP: OK. Although I guess we do know that DHS went for these warehouses, tried to build these warehouses, and several state attorneys general sued. Where does that stand?
GARSD: So Homeland Security's selling several of them. But they're holding onto a few, including Maryland, Arizona and New Jersey warehouses. Now, court orders and agreements between DHS and states forbid converting any of those into detention centers until there's environmental impact assessments. And that brings me back to New Jersey. At the end of summer, people started messaging me, saying they believed ICE was secretly using the Roxbury, New Jersey, warehouse to detain people. So I decided to investigate.
INSKEEP: And found what?
GARSD: Well, on the morning of September 4, there was a raid in the town of Dover. That's 15 minutes from the Roxbury warehouse. One woman, who asked NPR not to name her for fear of retribution, told us she followed the ICE vehicle with the detained people all the way to the Roxbury warehouse. Steve, I also found people who say they were detained that morning. One man, now deported to Honduras, spoke to me anonymously. He fears repercussions for loved ones still in the U.S.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Speaking Spanish).
GARSD: And he's saying, "I was picked up on my way to work. The agents loaded me into a van, and they drove us to Roxbury, to the warehouse." He says they were handcuffed in the parking lot for several hours. And in a state of panic, he signed his deportation papers. Eventually, they were all transferred to an official ICE detention center.
INSKEEP: OK. Does this mean that ICE is breaking a court order about the use of warehouses like that?
GARSD: Activists say it violates the order. Lawyers say, technically, it might not 'cause ICE isn't converting the site into a detention facility. DHS declined to say whether they're using it to hold immigrants, citing pending litigation. But the New Jersey attorney general told NPR they're looking into these reports.
INSKEEP: So many new details. NPR's Jasmine Garsd. Thanks so much.
GARSD: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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