In late 2011, reports emerged that Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR) was seeking subcontractors to staff and equip emergency detention facilities across five regions of the United States. The development drew attention because it followed several years of documented government preparations for potential domestic civil unrest.
The KBR Contract and FEMA Camp Infrastructure
Documents indicated that KBR was working to activate camps originally built for FEMA and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The facilities were to be equipped and staffed for unspecified emergency situations.
This was not new territory for KBR. In 2006, the company had been awarded a Homeland Security contract to construct detention centers designed to handle what was described as an emergency influx of immigrants or the rapid implementation of new government programs requiring large-scale internment capacity. The contract’s open-ended language raised concerns among civil liberties advocates about the potential scope of the facilities’ use.
Legislative Context: NDAA and Emergency Powers
The KBR subcontractor solicitation coincided with the Senate’s passage of Section 1031 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a provision that authorized the indefinite detention of individuals, including American citizens, without trial. The convergence of expanded detention authority and the physical preparation of detention facilities created what critics described as the infrastructure for domestic martial law.
Separately, the National Emergency Centers Act (HR 645), first introduced in January 2009, proposed making emergency camps available for purposes to be determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security. The bill’s deliberately broad language allowed for uses well beyond immigration processing, though it had not been passed at the time.
Military and Law Enforcement Preparations
The detention camp preparations were part of a broader pattern of domestic readiness activity that had been documented over several years.
In 2008, U.S. troops returning from Iraq were designated for homeland patrol duties, with civil unrest and crowd control listed among their potential roles. That same year, the Washington Post reported on plans to station 20,000 additional troops inside the United States for domestic security purposes, an expansion of Northern Command’s role in American civil affairs.
A 2008 report from the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute warned explicitly about the possibility of large-scale civil unrest in the United States. The report, authored by retired Lieutenant Colonel Nathan Freir, stated that widespread civil violence would force the defense establishment to reorient its priorities toward maintaining basic domestic order and human security. The report specifically referenced the possibility of needing to address what it termed “purposeful domestic resistance.”
Major police departments, including the NYPD, also conducted mobilization exercises specifically designed to train officers for civil disorder scenarios.
Continuity of Government and Secrecy
The United States maintained continuity of government plans for implementation under martial law declarations. However, the details of these plans were classified at such a high level that even members of Congress with appropriate security clearances were denied access. Congressman Peter DeFazio of Oregon, a member of the Homeland Security Committee, publicly stated in 2007 that his request to review the plans had been refused.
This level of secrecy around domestic emergency protocols raised questions about the scope of executive authority that could be exercised during a declared emergency and what oversight mechanisms, if any, would constrain that authority.
The Broader Context of Domestic Unrest Concerns
The preparations occurred against a backdrop of global economic instability and social upheaval. The 2008 financial crisis had triggered widespread protests across Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Within the United States, the Occupy movement had emerged as a visible expression of economic grievance, while polling data indicated growing public anger across the political spectrum.
Political analyst Zbigniew Brzezinski warned publicly that economic disenfranchisement would eventually produce middle-class unrest in the United States, a prediction that pointed to potential instability reaching beyond the poverty-stricken populations traditionally associated with civil disorder.
The Department of Homeland Security’s expanding definition of potential domestic threats, which by 2011 encompassed categories far broader than foreign terrorism, suggested that federal agencies were planning for civil disturbance scenarios that could involve large segments of the American population.
Questions That Remained Unanswered
The fundamental transparency issues surrounding the emergency detention infrastructure were never fully resolved. The precise locations of the facilities, their capacity, their operational protocols, and the specific emergency scenarios for which they were intended remained largely outside public knowledge. The combination of physical detention infrastructure, expanded legal authority for indefinite detention, and documented military preparations for domestic deployment constituted a significant expansion of federal emergency powers, the full scope of which was shielded from public scrutiny and congressional oversight.
