The Navy is preparing to get into the immigrant internment camp business in a big way, with planned “temporary and austere” tent cities to be located in Alabama and California, housing tens of thousands of people. Each 25,000-person tent city would be estimated to cost $233 million for six months. No word on the climate change costs of air-conditioning tents in hot climates. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said he’s open to the prospect, using some interesting comparisons:
Earlier this week, Mattis deferred questions on the matter to the Department of Homeland Security but did acknowledge the military’s willingness to help with the Trump Administration’s latest crisis. “We have housed refugees,” he told reporters Wednesday at the Pentagon. “We have housed people thrown out of their homes by earthquakes and hurricanes. We do whatever is in the best interest of the country.”
Housing refugees and natural disaster refugees is kind of different from incarcerating families, although if Mattis wants to keep thinking of these migrants, accurately, as refugees, that would be just fine, and he should absolutely go ahead and treat them as such.