Arrested Development

He’s an ICE nightmare.

Former Air Force intelligence analyst Michael Wriston has been turning up the heat on immigration officials as they try to convert warehouses into detention centers, a multibillion-dollar effort by the Department of Homeland Security that’s been hobbled by a host of setbacks.

The 40-year-old Wriston built a searchable database mapping 11 such properties through his Project Salt Box, which provides protest groups and reporters with documents and stats on the rollout. The site includes how much the federal government paid to acquire the buildings for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and details on contracts and lease agreements.

It also shows the number of detainees the feds seek to hold at each facility and has updates on conversions that stalled or were thwarted due to lawsuits, demonstrations or pushback from local authorities.

Wriston, who encourages users to plumb his free database, has become a trusted source for media outlets, including “The Rachel Maddow Show,” amid ICE plans to detain as many as 100,000 immigrants at the newly purchased properties.

Last month he led a demo for journalists on Project Salt Box, an all-volunteer nonprofit, at the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors conference in National Harbor, Maryland.

“Data only matters when it drives action,” Wriston said in an interview with The Real News Network.

“And so we have data and we have lots of it and we are putting it out on the internet on a daily basis. We are keeping these maps updated. We are providing information, but the question then becomes what action derives from that data.”

In his day job Wriston serves as a senior manager at the Baltimore-based CHS Inc., the largest farmer-owned cooperative in the US, which supplies growers with fertilizer and feed for livestock. But he’s a bit of an everyman.

Among his pursuits are linguistics and photojournalism. He speaks fluent Pashto and is a devoted arborphile who posted a 10-minute video of his favorite tree in West Baltimore. On his Blue Sky profile page, he describes himself as “Forever enamored by the liminal, the misunderstood, and the unconventional.”

Wriston adds: “Documenting abuses of power, and binding your fate to your neighbors’ while you do it, is the oldest patriotic work there is.”

He notes that the warehouse development plan, with as much as $65 billion in potential government funding, has largely failed, after the feds spent about $1 billion for the 11 structures, paying collectively 134 percent more than their estimated value.

“The markups that the government paid in rushing to buy the warehouses set the floor for any loss, and a private buyer has little reason to pay what the government did for the warehouses that had sat empty for years before ICE acquired them,” Wriston told Reason magazine in June.

The agency is scrambling to get rid of many of the properties, according to a New York Times story. “In a major turnabout, [ICE] is planning to offload seven warehouses purchased for more than $700 million by either giving them to other federal agencies or selling them outright,” the paper reported.

Among acquisitions that went nowhere was the $102-million purchase of a former freight warehouse in Williamsport, Maryland, in January. The building was to be retrofitted for a 1,500-bed detention center by KVG, a defense contractor that got a $640-million DHS contract to do the work, but the project has been stymied due to injunctions and lawsuits.

“It is sitting on what used to be a farm in a very lovely part of Western Maryland,” Wriston said.

“It is now an 823,000-square-foot empty shell with minimal air conditioning, minimal insulation. It has four toilets, two water fountains, a shower, and one drain. And that is what it is built to accommodate.” ICE, he said, is expecting the structure to hold 1,500 people for seven days at a time. “They’re calling [it] detention pods, which according to the plans, are essentially just cages with mats on the floor.”

Though none of the properties are located in New York City, ICE agents have targeted immigrants at shelters and court hearings across the five boroughs, detaining more than 5,500 people between Jan. 20, 2025 and March 10, 2025, according to a city audit released in May. Most were taken at immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan, the audit said.

Salt Box documented two properties in the tri-state area where ICE eyed development: a 425,000-square-foot warehouse in Newburgh in Orange County, New York, about 60 miles north of the Big Apple; and a similarly sized center in Roxbury, New Jersey, which has now been abandoned.

But New York City immigrants continue to be detained without being charged, including as many as 200 who are locked up at the federal Metropolitan Detention Center in Sunset Park, according to the protest group The Remedy Project.

“There are ICE detainees being held here at this facility, and I don’t think too many people know that,” said Anna Sugrue, who co-founded the group,  during a “Vigil for Democracy” rally at the jail on July 7. She said 1,200 others are incarcerated with them at MDC.

“This facility is notorious for having horrendous conditions,” she said. “People are locked in a cell for 22 hours a day. No outdoor access. There was an incident in 2019 when there was a power outage and everything froze. We’re hearing complaints recently about there not being consistent clean water, about the food being infested, abusive guards.”

 

“This is how we break the cult of ICE,” said reverend Juan Carlos Ruiz, pastor of the Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Bay Ridge.

“And how we begin to respond to a system that is cruel, and that costs a lot of money. This building represents shame and injustice, which is being sown and taking place all across our nation.”