Category: Washington Post

MUNICH — Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that the United States and Europe “belong together” in a speech Saturday aimed at unifying the Western alliance, while condemning hallmarks of globalization, open borders, unfettered free trade, “deindustrialization,” and mass migration.

Rubio’s message, in a keynote address at the annual Munich Security Conference, received applause from a demoralized audience of European leaders who are deeply distressed about divisions with the United States stoked by President Donald Trump’s punitive tariffs, territorial ambitions for Greenland, and disagreements over how to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together,” Rubio said.

But even as he appealed to those ties, Rubio promoted several Trump administration positions that are deeply controversial among the United States’ closest traditional allies. He showed disdain for policies to reduce carbon emissions, staunchly criticized the United Nations — which many in Europe view as critical to protecting smaller states’ sovereignty — and lauded unilateral U.S. military action in Latin America and the Middle East.

“On the most pressing matters before us, [the U.N.] has no answers and has played virtually no role,” Rubio said.

Compared, however, to Vice President JD Vance’s blistering speech in Munich last year, which left the audience stunned by his seeming contempt for Europe, Rubio’s appeal to strengthen the alliance was received as more constructive.

“Our home may be in the Western Hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe,” Rubio said.

The moderator of the event, Wolfgang Ischinger, called the remarks a “sigh of relief” and a message of “reassurance” and “partnership.”

Europe’s top leaders descended on the Bavarian capital this weekend, proclaiming the need to overhaul the relationship with the U.S. that has spurred economic prosperity and guaranteed security since World War II.

European leaders promised to chart their own course and forge a version of the Western alliance in which they depend less on the United States.

“In today’s fractured world, Europe must become more independent — there is no other choice,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a speech early Saturday, to applause.

As European and American politicians issue post-mortems for the world order in Munich, officials from each side of the Atlantic said it was high time for Europe to pay its own way for security. On that point, European and U.S. leaders appeared in sync.

For the Europeans, the call to take charge of the continent’s defense is about more than addressing U.S. demands: It could also provide the ability to stand up to Washington and an administration with which they concede they do not share some interests.

Rubio’s remarks about Europe were softer than Vance’s criticism of the suppression of far-right parties — and, in his characterization, free speech — or Trump’s threats to seize Greenland from NATO ally Denmark.

But European leaders know well that a crisis with the administration could still erupt on an array of issues, including Greenland, negotiations with Russia over Ukraine, and regulation of hate speech and Big Tech.

The leaders of Europe’s political and economic powerhouses, France and Germany, stressed that a more powerful Europe could shield itself from the whims of Washington and Moscow, and they delivered a stern rebuke of Trump’s foreign policy gyrations including on trade and climate.

French President Emmanuel Macron, speaking at the conference Friday night, said Europe had been unjustly “vilified” as a continent of unfettered immigration and repression — an apparent reference to Vance’s speech and to a recent U.S. National Security Strategy that said Europe was facing “civilizational erasure.”

“Everyone should take their cue from us, instead of criticizing us or trying to divide us,” Macron said. He called for “derisking vis-à-vis all the big powers,” not just in defense, but also in the economy and technology.

“Europe is rearming, but we must now go beyond,” he added. “Europe has to learn to become a geopolitical power.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, in his welcoming remarks on Friday, said: “The culture wars of MAGA in the U.S. are not ours.”

Merz also said that the U.S. claim to global leadership was being “challenged” in an era of great power rivalry, including rising Chinese influence, and he warned that Washington will need allies.

“Even the United States will not be powerful enough to go it alone,” he said. “Dear friends, being a part of NATO is not only Europe’s competitive advantage. It is also the United States’ competitive advantage.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that “we shouldn’t get in the warm bath of complacency. He said the U.K. must reforge closer ties with Europe to help the continent “stand on our own two feet” in its own defense, and said there needs to be investment that “moves us from overdependence to interdependence.”

Hanno Pevkur, the defense minister of EU and NATO member Estonia, said it was “quite a bold statement to say that America is ‘a child of Europe’.”

“It was a good speech, needed here today, but that doesn’t mean that we can rest on pillows now,” he told The Associated Press. “So still a lot of work has to be done.”

A meeting on Greenland

Rubio didn’t mention Greenland. After last month’s escalation over Trump’s designs on the Arctic island, the U.S., Denmark, and Greenland started technical talks on an Arctic security deal.

The Secretary of State met briefly in Munich on Friday with the Danish and Greenlandic leaders, a meeting Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen described as constructive.

But Frederiksen suggested Saturday that although the dispute has cooled, she remains wary. Asked whether the crisis has passed, she replied: “No, unfortunately not. I think the desire from the U.S. president is exactly the same. He is very serious about this theme.”

Asked whether she can put a price on Greenland, she responded “of course not,” adding that “we have to respect sovereign states … and we have to respect people’s right for self-determination. And the Greenlandic people have been very clear, they don’t want to become Americans.”

Working in strict secrecy, a government scientist in Norway built a machine capable of emitting powerful pulses of microwave energy and, in an effort to prove such devices are harmless to humans, in 2024 tested it on himself. He suffered neurological symptoms similar to those of “Havana syndrome,” the unexplained malady that has struck hundreds of U.S. spies and diplomats around the world.

The bizarre story, described by four people familiar with the events, is the latest wrinkle in the decadelong quest to find the causes of Havana syndrome, whose sufferers experience long-lasting effects including cognitive challenges, dizziness, and nausea. The U.S. government calls the events Anomalous Health Incidents.

The secret test in Norway has not been previously reported. The Norwegian government told the CIA about the results, two of the people said, prompting at least two visits in 2024 to Norway by Pentagon and White House officials.

Those aware of the test say it does not prove AHIs are the work of a foreign adversary wielding a secret weapon similar to the prototype tested in Norway. One of them noted that the effects suffered by the Norwegian researcher, whose identity was not disclosed by the people familiar, were not the same as in a “classic” AHI case. All spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the subject’s sensitivity.

But the events bolstered the case of those who argue that “pulsed-energy devices” — machines that deliver powerful beams of electromagnetic energy such as microwaves in short bursts — can affect human biology and are probably being developed by U.S. adversaries.

“I think there’s compelling evidence that we should be concerned about the ability to build a directed-energy weapon that can cause a variety of risk to humans,” said Paul Friedrichs, a retired military surgeon and Air Force general who oversaw biological threats on the White House National Security Council under President Joe Biden. Friedrichs declined to comment on the Norway experiment.

The Trump administration took office promising to pursue the AHI issue aggressively. But there has been little apparent movement. A review ordered by Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is expected to focus mostly on the Biden administration’s handling of the issue, and its release has been delayed, people familiar with the issue said.

In a separate development that has become public in recent weeks, the U.S. government covertly purchased at the end of the Biden administration a different foreign-made device that produces pulsed radio waves and which some experts suspect could be linked to AHI incidents, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The device is being tested by the Defense Department. It has some Russian-origin components, but the U.S. government still has not determined conclusively who built it, said one of the people.

The U.S. acquisition of the device was first reported last month by independent journalist Sasha Ingber and CNN, which said it had been purchased for millions of dollars by Homeland Security Investigations, part of the Department of Homeland Security.

The device that the scientist constructed in Norway was not identical to the one that the U.S. government covertly acquired, one of the people familiar with the events said. The Norwegian device was built based on “classified information,” suggesting it was derived from blueprints or other materials stolen from a foreign government, this person said.

At about the same time the U.S. became aware of the two pulsed-energy machines, two spy agencies altered their previous judgment and concluded that some of the incidents involving AHIs could be the work of a foreign adversary, delivering that verdict in an updated U.S. intelligence assessment issued in January 2025 during the Biden administration’s final weeks.

“New reporting,” the assessment said, led the two agencies “to shift their assessments about whether a foreign actor has a capability that could cause biological effects consistent with some of the symptoms reported as possible AHIs.”

One was the National Security Agency, which intercepts and decodes foreign electronic communications, several people familiar with the issue said. The other, said two of those people, was the National Ground Intelligence Center, a U.S. Army intelligence agency in Charlottesville that produces intelligence on foreign adversaries’ scientific, technical, and military capabilities.

The majority of U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA and four others, said they continued to judge it “very unlikely” that the attacks were the result of a foreign adversary or that a foreign actor had developed a novel weapon. In conversations intercepted by U.S. spy agencies, American adversaries were heard expressing their own surprise at the AHI incidents and denying involvement, U.S. officials have said.

The CIA declined to comment on the Norwegian test or how it impacted the agency’s analysis. Norway’s embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

Some former officials and AHI victims have pointed to Russia as the prime suspect in the AHI incidents because of its decades of work in directed-energy devices. So far, no conclusive proof has publicly emerged, and Moscow has denied involvement.

Taken together, the two known directed-energy devices along with other research appear to have prompted a reconsideration by some of the causes of Havana syndrome, so named because of the mysterious 2016 outbreak of symptoms reported by personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Havana.

In subsequent years, U.S. personnel reported hundreds of cases globally, in China, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. A top aide to then-CIA Director William J. Burns reported symptoms while traveling in India in 2021.

At a conference in Philadelphia earlier this month, retired Air Force Lt. Col. Chris Schlagheck, at times his voice breaking, said he was hit five times in 2020 in his home in Northern Virginia, where a Russian family lived across the street. It was not until last year that a doctor told him his symptoms were the same as those reported from Havana a decade earlier.

Much about the Norway test remains obscured by its highly classified nature. People familiar with the events declined to identify the scientist or the Norwegian government agency he worked for.

The results were all the more shocking because the Norwegian researcher had earned a reputation as a leading opponent of the theory that directed-energy weapons can cause the type of symptoms associated with AHIs, those familiar with the events said. Trying to dramatically prove his point, with himself as a human guinea pig, he achieved the opposite.

“I don’t know what possessed him to go and do this,” one of the people said. “He was a bit of an eccentric.”

A delegation of Pentagon officials traveled to Norway in 2024 to examine the device. In December of that year, a group of intelligence and White House officials also went to Norway to discuss the issue, those familiar with the events said.

In January 2022, the CIA produced an interim assessment that concluded a foreign country was probably not behind Havana syndrome. It emerged weeks before a major panel of government and nongovernment experts produced a report commissioned by the director of national intelligence and deputy CIA director that came to a markedly different conclusion.

That panel concluded in February 2022 that pulsed electromagnetic energy, particularly in the radio-frequency range, ‘’plausibly explains the core characteristics of reported AHIs,” although it acknowledged many unknowns. “Information gaps exist,” it reported.

The conclusion marked the first time a report issued publicly by the U.S. government acknowledged that the symptoms could be caused by human-made, external events.

The IC Experts Panel, as it was known, interviewed several people who had suffered accidental exposure to electromagnetic energy, said David Relman, a Stanford University microbiologist who chaired the panel.

But the CIA interim assessment overshadowed the expert panel’s report. Then, in March 2023, the full intelligence community issued an assessment that unanimously concluded that it was unlikely that a foreign adversary was behind the incidents. “There is no credible evidence that a foreign adversary has a weapon or (intelligence) collection device that is causing AHIs,” the unclassified version of their report said, citing secret intelligence data and open-source information about foreign weapons and research programs.

U.S. intelligence agencies “essentially ignored” the experts panel’s work, Relman told the conference in Philadelphia. The agencies, particularly the CIA, “had developed a very firm set of conclusions, world view that caused them I think to become dug in,” he said.

By late 2024, senior White House officials in the Biden administration had come to question the absolutist position taken by U.S. intelligence agencies in their 2023 assessment.

There were some officials, including within the intelligence community, who insisted that “there was nothing here” — that every reported case could be explained by some environmental or medical factor, said one person familiar with the administration’s views.

The more “responsible” view, the person said, was to admit “we don’t know the answers” and that it was “plausible that pulsed electromagnetic energy could account for some subset of cases.”

After the November 2024 election, White House officials who were working on an AHI brief for the incoming Trump administration invited several victims to a meeting to offer their input. The officials also wanted to reassure the victims that they realized the intelligence community assessment called into question the very real health issues they experienced and what caused them.

At one point, an official turned to the victims who were gathered in the Situation Room and said, “We believe you.” The White House wasn’t yet certain it was a foreign actor but believed it was plausible that the symptoms had been caused by external factors, said the person familiar with the administration’s views.

Marc Polymeropoulos, a former CIA officer and AHI victim who attended the unclassified meeting, said, “It was clear to the victims, but also unsaid, that new information had come into the NSC that had caused them to make such a statement.”

The U.S. military has completed the transfer of thousands of suspected Islamic State fighters to the Iraqi government, setting the stage for the expected withdrawal of many — perhaps even all — American troops from Syria within months despite concerns about the Syrian government’s ability to prevent a resurgence of the group, officials familiar with the issue said.

The movement of 5,700 detainees, underway for weeks, was completed Thursday night with a flight from northeastern Syria to Iraq, U.S. military officials said in a statement. The effort signals a forthcoming end to a yearslong mission overseen by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish militia group that had managed the detention facilities in territory it controlled in northeastern Syria.

The transfer began Jan. 21 as U.S. troops teamed with SDF and Iraqi counterparts to move the detainees using aircraft and armed ground convoys. It marks one of the most significant developments in years for the remnants of the Islamic State, the militant group whose bloody campaign across Syria and Iraq resulted in a multinational military intervention beginning in 2014. A smaller number of Syrians, fewer than 2,000, are expected to remain in Syria in the SDF-run detention centers until they are turned over to the Syrian government.

Many of the detainees who have been transferred are expected to be held at the Al-Karkh prison, an Iraqi facility near Baghdad International Airport, said U.S. officials, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations. It was once called Camp Cropper and used by the U.S. military to house detainees during the Iraq War. Iraq’s supreme judicial council said Friday that about 3,000 Syrians are among the detainees transferred.

In a statement, the White House said Trump is committed to a Syria that is “stable, unified and at peace with itself and its neighbors.” That requires Syria not being a base for terrorism or to pose a threat in the region and beyond, it says.

The United States is monitoring the situation in Syria and working with all sides, the statement says, to ensure that “ISIS detainees remain in detention,” including an organized transition of other detention centers in Syria to Syrian government control.

The shift underscores a major shift in U.S. policy toward Syria, as President Donald Trump, who has aligned himself with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, seeks to extricate the roughly 1,000 American troops who have remained there functioning as a backstop to prevent a resurgence by the Islamic State.

A report by the Director of National Intelligence last year said that the Islamic State will attempt to “reconstitute its attack capabilities,” including plotting against the West, and free prisoners to rebuild its ranks. Three U.S. troops were ambushed and killed by a suspected Islamic State member in Syria in December, prompting Trump to approve retaliatory airstrikes days later.

Sharaa, a former al-Qaeda militant who broke with the group in 2016, has sought to unify his country since his forces forced the December 2024 ouster of Syrian President Bashar Assad, a dictator whose 24-year rule was marked by mass atrocities and a civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people. The Islamic State has repeatedly attempted to assassinate Sharaa over the last year, according to a United Nations report released this week.

One step in the withdrawal occurred Wednesday, as U.S. troops at the Tanf garrison in the southeastern part of Syria turned control over to Sharaa’s forces. Adm. Brad Cooper, the top officer overseeing U.S. operations in the region, said in a statement that U.S. forces retain the ability to respond to any threats posed by the Islamic State in the region.

Other bases could be transferred to Sharaa’s forces in coming days or weeks as conditions warrant, two officials familiar with the issue said. Doing so could allow Trump to fully end the U.S. mission there, a goal since his first administration that consistently collided with challenges posed by Syria’s fractured state.

Trump has downplayed Sharaa’s past as a jihadist, telling reporters in January that the Syrian leader was “working very hard.” He’s characterized him as a “tough guy” with a “pretty tough resumé.”

“You’re not gonna put a choir boy in there and get the job done,” Trump said at the time.

Still, U.S. officials said, Washington had privately delivered warnings to their Iraqi counterparts about Sharaa’s ability to ensure security over the ISIS detention camps. One senior U.S. official said in an interview with the Washington Post that the Trump administration had told Baghdad in the fall that it was “entirely likely” that if Sharaa’s government took control of the alleged terrorism suspects, they could be freed or break loose at some point and attack Iraq again.

Sharaa could not be reached for comment.

Iraqi officials acknowledged then that there was cause for concern, the senior U.S. official said. But those anxieties accelerated last month, as Sharaa’s forces pressed forward with an armed offensive into SDF-held territory, forcing the group to abandon two major facilities, the Shaddadi prison and al-Hol camp, allowing about 200 detainees to escape on Jan. 19.

The detainees were considered “low-level” fighters, and dozens were later recaptured, U.S. officials said. But the episode triggered alarm in Washington and Baghdad and prompted numerous phone calls from senior U.S. officials to Sharaa, officials said, including at least one by Cooper on Jan. 21 and one by Trump on Jan. 27, these people said.

Abdulkarim Omar, a representative with the SDF’s civilian government, called the moves of Sharaa’s forces in the region “aggression.” The Kurdish people, he said, “became victims of international arrangements concluded over their heads” and have seen “international silence.”

Cooper also made a visit to northeastern Syria on Jan. 22, as his team attempted to ensure that Sharaa’s forces and the SDF adhered to a ceasefire as the detainees were transferred from Syria to Iraq, according to a U.S. military statement at the time.

“It definitely could have gone completely sideways, to be completely honest with you,” a senior U.S. official told the Post, noting that U.S. soldiers remained in the region as tensions were high between the SDF and Sharaa’s fighters.

Trump acknowledged calling Sharaa, saying his team had “solved a tremendous problem in conjunction with Syria and saved many lives.” He did not elaborate.

The undertaking has triggered mixed feelings in the region, even as officials there appear to cooperate with U.S. desires.

Hussein Allawi, an Iraqi security adviser, said his government is urging other governments to take back ISIS suspects from their countries so that Iraq is not overwhelmed. Iraq, he said is “totally capable” of handling the issue, but will face infrastructure challenges.

Jiwan Soz, a Kurdish researcher, said that “despite the interference of the Americans” in the dispute between the SDF and Sharaa’s fighters, the Syrian president “cannot control the situation.” The armed groups Al-Sharaa relies on have a variety of tribal affiliations and allegiances, he said, and armed skirmishes have continued.

“There are huge challenges there, and I don’t believe al-Sharaa can succeed,” he said.

Nawar Rahawie, a Syrian official, said the ceasefire is fragile and will require persuasion. Tribal fighters who aligned with both the SDF and the Syrian government have kept their fighters out of the fray, he said, and Sharaa has “a certain level of control over the tribes and fighters.”

He added that people of all kinds were “harmed by the Assad regime,” and credited Sharaa’s government for offering a new way. Syrian officials are investigating “crimes and murder” that have emerged, and will seek accountability, he said.

James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador who focused on Syria during the first Trump administration, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee this week that he is “wary” of Sharaa, but has watched him push Iranian influence away from Syria and combat Islamic State fighters who remain — both core U.S. goals.

U.S. troops in Syria have worked with both the SDF and Sharaa’s forces in recent months, Jeffrey said, and Washington will have a better understanding of what occurs in the region the longer they remain.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement expects to spend $38.3 billion on its plan to acquire warehouses across the country and retrofit them into immigrant detention centers that can hold tens of thousands of immigrants, according to documents the agency provided to New Hampshire’s governor and published on the state’s website Thursday.

ICE plans to buy and convert 16 buildings across the country to serve as regional processing centers, each holding 1,000 to 1,500 immigrant detainees at a time, according to one of the documents, an overview of the detention plan. Another eight large-scale detention centers will hold 7,000 to 10,000 detainees at a time, and serve as “the primary locations” for international removals.

Detainees would spend an average of three to seven days at the processing sites before being transported to the larger facilities, where they would be held about 60 days before being deported, according to the document. The additional detention space is necessary, the document states, due to ICE’s hiring of more agents and an expected surge in arrests.

The documents offer the most complete picture to date of the Trump administration’s plan to overhaul immigrant detention using buildings that were originally designed for industrial purposes — an expansive effort aimed at boosting ICE’s ability to arrest more immigrants and deport them faster. Rather than moving people around the country to any detention center with available beds, the new system of warehouses is designed to funnel them into a series of large-scale holding centers where they will await deportation, ICE documents show.

They also demonstrate the scale and resources the Trump administration has devoted to building a mass deportation network. The plan’s $38 billion budget is more than the total annual spending for 22 states, according to state budget data.

The Washington Post first reported on an earlier, draft solicitation document in December. Warehouses in Berks and Schuylkill Counties would be converted into detention centers as part of the plan.

ICE has offered little information about the effort, prompting concern from state and local officials who have cited several logistical and humanitarian concerns of building large-scale detention centers in their regions.

New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte said in a news release that the Department of Homeland Security shared the documents for the first time with her office on Thursday. Her statement appeared to contradict a claim made by Todd M. Lyons, ICE’s acting director, who testified at a Senate hearing earlier that day that DHS officials had previously spoken to the governor about the project and provided “an economic impact summary” to her.

A spokeswoman for DHS did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The ICE document says all new facilities will need to comply with federal detention standards and provide for the “safe and humane civil detention of aliens.”

In recent weeks, ICE has spent more than $690 million acquiring at least eight industrial buildings in Maryland, Arizona, Georgia, Texas, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, according to real estate deeds and internal ICE records reviewed by the Post. The agency has confirmed its interest in at least four additional buildings in Georgia, New Hampshire, New York, and New Jersey, according to statements made by local officials in those places.

The government plans to hire contractors to carry out extensive renovations, turning vacant shells into holding facilities featuring lobbies, recreational space, dormitories, courtroom spaces, and cafeterias. At a building ICE plans to acquire in Merrimack, N.H., the agency expects to spend $158 million retrofitting the facility, according to an ICE economic impact assessment Ayotte posted to her website.

It’s not clear which companies will be hired to renovate and operate the new facilities. George Zoley, the founder and executive chairman of ICE detention contractor Geo Group, said on a quarterly earnings call with Wall Street analysts Thursday that his company wants to be supportive of the new initiative, but cautioned that renovating warehouses would be “more complicated than you may think.”

Geo Group once converted a warehouse into a holding center for 500 people about 30 years ago — nothing like the enormous size of the facilities being proposed now, Zoley said. “The operational implications of how you manage such a facility, particularly a large-scale facility, is going to be concerning,” Zoley said.

The Post previously reported that some warehouses are expected to accept detainees as soon as April. ICE appears to have given multiple deadlines for when it expects the centers to be operational, according to the overview document. The agency will “fully implement a new detention model” by Sept. 30 and will “activate” all facilities by Nov. 30.

Manchester Ink Link, a local news outlet, reported earlier on some of the details in the Manchester documents.

Details of the expensive warehouse renovation effort have come to light as Democratic lawmakers in Washington have blocked bills to fund DHS in an attempt to force lawmakers to include new restrictions on federal immigration agents. Though the federal government was hurtling toward a partial shutdown beginning this weekend, the closures would not impact ICE’s funding because Republicans sent the agency tens of billions of dollars last year — including a historic $45 billion for immigrant detention.

In several of the towns targeted for the project, local officials have said their water and sewer infrastructure would not be sufficient for a new facility holding thousands of people. For example, in Social Circle, Ga., a town with a population of 5,000, the town is permitted to pump up to 1 million gallons of water per day, and for much of the year, its peak usage is already above 800,000 gallons, according to data the city’s manager shared with the Post.

In the project overview document, ICE says it reviewed the water supply at all of the proposed buildings, and found that “the capacities currently at the sites are sufficient to support the new facilities.” However, at the larger sites, the document said, “additional infrastructure” would be needed to support wastewater systems, and “numerous solutions” will be implemented. The document did not providing any more details.

Federally owned real estate is often exempt from local permitting and zoning rules, but elected officials in some of the locations have pressed DHS to adhere to these requirements anyway. The detention plan overview states that the department will comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, federal law that requires environmental review of federal real estate projects before they can be built.

DHS is pitching the New Hampshire project as “a major economic investment” that will help create 1,252 jobs during renovations and 265 jobs each year of operation, according to the economic impact document. The department said it expects to spend $146 million on the first three years of the facility’s operation.

The analysis for New Hampshire contained what appeared to be a copy-and-paste error in describing “ripple effects to the Oklahoma economy.” ICE’s plans to buy a warehouse in Oklahoma City were scrapped last month, after the building’s owner decided not to sell.

At least two other proposed deals — in Kansas City, Mo., and in Virginia — have also fallen through.

These cancellations have revealed how the agency has pursued the projects. The owner of the Kansas City warehouse, a firm called Platform Ventures, said Thursday that it had begun negotiating a deal to sell its warehouse after being approached by a “third-party private enterprise” that it did not name.

Platform Ventures said it learned DHS was the buyer only once the deal got closer. When the public also learned about the buyer, the city council quickly passed a five-year ban on all new nonmunicipal detention facilities. The company said Thursday that it exited negotiations because it said “the terms no longer met our fiduciary requirements for a timely closing.”

The federal government also plans to take ownership of 10 existing detention centers where ICE currently operates in buildings owned by private contractors or local governments, the overview document said, without providing more detail.

These facilities, combined with the new warehouses, would accommodate a total of 92,600 detainees at a time, the documents said.