Project Salt Box

GardaWorld Accelerates Hiring at Surprise Warehouse Despite Pending State Lawsuit

Over the past week, GardaWorld Federal Services has ramped up its recruiting efforts for the operation of the warehouse detention center in Surprise, Az. The company has published job postings for medical staff, security guards, transportation personnel, and operational support. Thi…

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a month ago · 71 likes · 9 comments · Em Knepp

This post will take you inside that building, to show you what such a concentration camp would look like from inside that warehouse. As Project Saltbox notes, “The job descriptions shed light into ICE’s longer‑term plans for the site, suggesting it is being built out as a long‑term detention facility, even though official documents portray it as a short‑term processing center.”

For an idea of the interior for the long-term detention, you can think back to what was revealed back in March 2021, when photos were published of ICE “pods” on the US-Mexico border.

ICE continues those pods today. Here are some specifics of how those pods fail any kind of standards for interior environment.

The plans and drawings below are based on a 3D model of the existing Surprise warehouse that ICE purchased, and two key working presumptions. 1) That ICE uses approximately the same dimensions of “pods” that they show in the Social circle, GA plans. 2) That ICE continues the cruel tactics of cramming people together with cots, similar to what you see above.

This is the plan for Surprise that emerges when you bring these presumptions together with the Surprise warehouse.

The space will be separated into a GardaWorld area (above in gray) with pods and ICE employee space with interior walls (below in purple). The GardaWorld portion will be partitioned into “pods” with clear textile or fencing.

This division, itself, is unsafe for occupants, creating problems in emergency egress.

Within this unsafe environment, the following drawings presume that ICE will aim to fill each pod to cover almost the entire floor surface with cots, as they have previously.

With a dimension of 116’ x 64’, such cramming could easily range from 100 to even 200 people per pod. Assuming the 28 pods shown, this equates to 2,800 to 5,600 people in the GardaWorld portion alone.

Here is a look inside, showing both the 100 per pod and 200 per pod occupancy on the GardaWorld side.

Architects have x-ray vision of a sort. We are trained to draw from facts meeting, usually looking for something meaningful. In this case the drawings show something horrific.

Firstly— 500 to 1,500 beds is a huge range. That range alone indicates that something very non-standard is happening here. An architect or engineer would not begin to design any facility with such a large range of expected occupancy. For reasons of plumbing, air handling, emergency egress, and furniture layout, such a range is too variable. For example, in a conventional prison or jail the beds would be bolted to the floor.

That range of 500 - 1,500 beds indicates that there will, in fact, be no beds. How can people be detained (imprisoned) overnight without a bed? The answer reveals itself wherever ICE detention photos leak out: people sleeping on the floor, on mylar blankets, on lightweight cots.

Secondly— it would seem that the second number, 542, would refer to a more specific plan that clarifies the first range (500 to 1,500). Some quick division shows differently. Rather, this 542 number indicates a second area where beds will actually be planned, distinct from the area with just cages.

To continue that thought — 542 is not a number an architect is used to seeing. Try dividing into rows and columns and you will see this. Architects lay out furniture and structure usually in grids. 542 is an even number, but a very odd even number. It divides into 271 x 2. 271 is a prime number. There is no way of making it into rows and columns.

The 542, then, indicates different groups within that number, itself. Mostly likely 500 + 42, where 42 breaks down into a grid of 6 x 7.

So the 542 reveals that there are at least 3 different modes of spaces planned for people imprisoned in Surprise. One mode for a smaller group (about 42 people), one mode for up to 500 people with prison-style beds and rooms, and another mode for over one thousand people without real furniture, walls, or plumbing.

Part 3 will show how these numbers and the list of interior spaces— combined with a close look at Social Circle GA floor plans— give the architects of No Stamps No Camps enough information to draw and render what ICE plans for its Surprise warehouse.

Here is what we, as architectural workers, have gathered, estimated, inferred, calculated, and drawn up for the public. This is the first part of an extensive analysis involving public data, review of other publicly available ICE plans, photographs and reports of other detention sites, and plans of the existing warehouse building and surrounding infrastructure. The analysis begins with a pdf that DHS presented in a recent (May 2026) town meeting in Surprise, AZ.

There is no “minimal footprint” when over 1,000 people are brought to this warehouse.

The fantasy that Homeland Security seeks to sell is that it can move human beings through your town as seamlessly as FedEx and Amazon move packages. It will buy or rent an existing warehouse to move people through for a day or two at a time, and you won’t notice anything.

No loud construction for a new building. Just smooth logistics.

Architecturally this is not possible. Treating people like packages creates inhumane and dangerous circumstances, by design. Subsequent posts will share disturbing drawings that show what ICE protocols would look like in the Surprise warehouse.

To start with the basics — these warehouses don't have the hundreds of toilets and water fixtures that a hotel or apartment building or prison would have– they don't even have access to the infrastructure for such extensive sewage. Below is a site plan showing the ICE warehouse in orange. Local sewer lines are shown in blue and industrial rail in dark grey. The Surprise warehouse is clustered near other warehouses, which are connected by industrial rail, but this cluster is surrounded by single family residential to the east and north. The cluster of warehouses and the the houses all share the same streets, the same sewer lines, the same utilities.

20 years ago a masterplan for what became this cluster of warehouses proposed a business park and shopping center called Surprise Pointe or Bendalin Farms Commercial/Industrial Park. Residents who have patiently waited for the shopping center that never arrived deserve better than a concentration camp.