Coming Soon, From the People Behind ICE Detention Camps: Data Center Company Towns

Remember when they were still trying to sell us AI as a force for good? Remember the panels and keynote speeches? Remember those claims that the injection of this still-nascent technology into every aspect of our lives was in pursuit of nobler purposes like curing disease and interacting with extraterrestrial beings? Those early promises are now mostly hazy blackout memories, flickering through our collective snake oil hangover. But as more and more American cities are moving out of fugue state and addressing AI data centers as an urgent environmental and existential threat, it’s completely ahead of the curve on the other side of the fight. The past week has been one of the most “masked” ever for the AI ​​industry, with fallout from the OpenAI Pentagon deal still rolling in and glowing reports on how the technology is “turbocharging” Israel’s attacks on the US and Iran.

But for those who still haven’t connected the dots between these companies and the rise of global fascism, a clear connection drawn by TechCrunch from a recent Bloomberg story helps clarify it.

Painting a picture straight out of the Taylor Sheridan series, Bloomberg’s piece details the rise of “man camps” created to facilitate the construction of data centers. Pop-up villages filled with amenities in remote areas served as carrots for oil industry contractors. The model has since expanded to facilitate crypto mining and now, the AI ​​industry is getting a boost.

Since many of these extractive industry workers come from military backgrounds, the man camp intentionally resembled a forward operating base (FOB). Far from the traditional type of company town that tries to recoup employees’ salaries through shares, these man camps offer free steak dinners and rounds of mock golf for roughnecks coming off a long day shift of desert construction, Bloomberg reports.

The camp featured in Bloomberg is being built to house and entertain more than 1,000 workers needed to build a 1.6-gigawatt data center in Dickens County, Texas. According to TechCrunch, government contracts paid to a company called Target Hospitality will cost taxpayers $132 million. Although Bloomberg’s story omits the fact that Target “also works for the government on immigration detention,” TechCrunch named the facility the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, which is south of San Antonio. Slated to reopen in March 2025 after Target signed a 5-year contract with CoreCivic, the Dilley center has already become notorious for its treatment of detained minors — reports of measles outbreaks, 911 calls about children struggling to breathe, and worm-laced meals are just a sampling of the controversies that have arisen during the center’s first year of operation.

With tech companies budgeting $700 billion for data capacity expansion in 2026 alone and industry evangelists swearing they’re just getting started, it’s no surprise Target Hospitality would want to try to shake off that ICE deal stink with a pivot to data centers. It’s a bountiful future that the company’s chief commercial officer Troy Schrenk describes as “the largest, most functional pipeline I’ve ever seen.”

Will Target Hospitality’s gravy train keep running smoothly as an increasingly angry and shameless populace makes it clear they want neither ICE nor data centers near their communities? Looks like we’ll all figure it out together.