Halliburton Constructing Detention Centers

When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was picking someone to plan and perhaps build centers to handle a crush of immigrants, it turned to a familiar name.

The Corps last week awarded a contract worth up to $385 million to KBR, a subsidiary of engineering and defense contractor Halliburton Co. KBR held a similar contract from 2000 through 2005.

The contract calls on KBR to set up temporary processing, detention and deportation facilities in case of a surge of people trying to enter the country, according to immigration officials.

“It’s part of (the government’s) planning should there be some sort of emergency, say some sort of upheaval in Latin America, that would cause a mass migration,” said Jamie Zuieback, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the Department of Homeland Security.

Zuieback called it a “contingency contract” and that the Halliburton unit might never be asked to build any such centers.

Halliburton said KBR might also be used to open more detention centers if they were needed for new government programs.

The Army Corps issued an open call for contractors, but only KBR bid for the work, said Clay Church, a Corps spokesman.

KBR has been paid just $5.9 million so far under the 2000-2005 contract, although up to several million dollars in additional claims from last year are awaiting routine auditing, Church said. That contract, like the new one, included a one-year base period and four one-year options.

Halliburton announced last week that it will sell a minority stake in KBR through an initial public offering of stock.

Houston-based Halliburton, which was led by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995-2000, is the largest government contractor in Iraq. It recently passed $10 billion in orders to provide housing, meals and other services for U.S. troops and to rebuild Iraq’s oil industry.

Source: Associated Press, Jan. 30, 2006

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