The Department of Homeland Security spent $1.074 billion of taxpayer money on eleven warehouses across the United States to convert into immigration detention facilities. Communities found out after the purchases were already made. There was no public notice. There was no community input. There was no local government consultation. Residents simply woke up one day to learn that a building designed for packages would be converted to hold up to 1,500 human beings.

In Washington County, Maryland, the story gets worse.

On February 10, the county commissioners approved a proclamation declaring their unwavering support for DHS and ICE. The next day, they forwarded that proclamation to then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem in an email identifying hundreds of millions of dollars in sewer, airport, and highway upgrades they said the county needed. ICE subsequently signed a $113 million renovation contract for the Washington County warehouse. A local resident running for Congress obtained those records through a public records request. The commissioners have since declined all interview requests.

That sequence of events is not subtle. A local government declared unwavering support for a controversial federal program and immediately asked for hundreds of millions in infrastructure funding. Whether or not that constitutes a formal quid pro quo, it represents exactly the kind of dynamic that erodes public trust in both local and federal government, and it is happening in communities across the country as DHS rolls out a program that bypasses democratic accountability at every level.

The fiscal accountability questions are equally serious. DHS paid double the assessed tax value for the New Jersey warehouse. It paid nearly five times the assessed value of the warehouse in Social Circle, Georgia. These are not minor discrepancies. They are potential indicators of significant overpayment of public funds, and they have received no independent review. Congress has not held hearings. No inspector general has published findings. The program is now paused and under internal review, but internal review by the agency that made the purchases is not the same as independent oversight.

Residents in Georgia locked the water meter at a DHS warehouse. Officials in Salt Lake City and Pennsylvania have threatened to withhold water. Maryland's attorney general has sued and won a temporary halt. Communities are doing everything they can with the tools available to them because the federal government gave them no seat at the table when these decisions were made.

They deserve one. And Congress owes the American public a full accounting of how $1 billion was spent, why communities received no notice, and what role local government cooperation played in the site selection process.

Sign this petition to demand Congress immediately launch an independent investigation into the DHS warehouse detention program including all purchase prices and contracts, require mandatory community notification and input before any federal detention facility is established in a residential area, and prohibit DHS from using federal spending to secure local government support for controversial federal programs without full public disclosure.