Western Marylanders woke up in January to stunning news that a warehouse in their backyard was being converted into an ICE detention center. After a court order, that renovation for the building in Williamsport is now on hold, but many were left wondering how the famously slow-moving federal government could do this in what seemed like a flash.

The answer is an obscure contracting vehicle overseen by the Navy and originally created for military use called the Worldwide Expeditionary Multiple Award Contract or WEXMAC that’s now being used by the Department of Homeland Security.

“It gives them this intensely fast way of just expediting the procurement process, but then also standing up what they consider turnkey detention facilities,” said Michael Wriston is a former defense intelligence professional and the founder of Project Saltbox, an ICE watchdog.

The method allowed DHS to buy a $102 million warehouse, award a $113 contract to retrofit it into a detention facility and nearly $650 million in add on work without the public knowing until the very end of the process.

Patrick Datillio is the founder of Hagerstown Rapid Response Network, a group pushing back against the facility.

“I am horrified at the idea, and angry and upset,” he said.

Wriston says WEXMAC was originally created for the military for emergency situations across the world like natural disasters to set up camps and aid using preapproved contractors, effectively circumventing the usual government buying regulations that provide oversight for quick response.

Think something like a landslide in Nepal or a hurricane in Haiti where refugees need quick housing and food.

However, the Trump administration has designated the use of WEXMAC for domestic use as ICE is scrambling to find enough space to fit detainees. So far, about $1 billion has been awarded, but the contracting method is approved for up to $65 billion.

Leaked documents showed DHS was looking into creating mass detention centers at major U.S. throughways that could hold 80,000 people.

It’s part of what acting ICE Director Todd Lyons called an attempt to run deportations like “Amazon Prime for human beings.”

“The Trump administration has expanded the immigration detention system by nearly 75% most of that expansion has occurred in preexisting jails and prisons, many of them were empty facilities that private prison companies quickly leased to the federal government,” said Aaron Reichlin Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council. “ICE is running out of empty facilities that they can add into its ever-growing network of detention centers. Therefore, you get the detention reengineering plan to build a brand-new system operating entirely out of facilities that ICE owns.”

WEXMAC is the tool ICE has been using for that.

Using the contracting method, DHS hired SK2, a brokerage firm to scout buildings that could be converted to detention facilities and then act on behalf of the government.

“SK2 is going out and brokering these as if they're the ones buying them. But then, ostensibly, it doesn't come out that it's DHS until the very end,” Wriston said.

By owning the building, DHS is able to circumvent any laws state or local jurisdictions may have regarding companies cooperating with ICE.

DHS then uses its roster of pre-approved military vendors through WEXMAC, KVG LLC in the case of the Western Maryland facility, to award a contract to refit the building without following the usual procurement rules asking for public comment.

“They're essentially treating the United States as a war zone, and it's just bringing this enormous level of opacity to what has been a more or less transparent process in the past,” Wriston said.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Jean Shaheen (D-N.H.) wrote to the Defense Department about their concerns over the lack of transparency last month.

“This contract vehicle uses Navy resources to provide domestic support to ICE, allowing DHS to sidestep the full federal acquisition process and fast-track the construction of migrant detention centers,” they wrote. “We are concerned that this is only the latest example of a systemic pattern of diverting DoD resources to support DHS missions.”

It brings up a whole slew of issues like if DoD contractors are fit to do the work they are awarded.

Reichlin Melnick noted the issues with Camp East Montana in Texas where another facility was created using WEXMAC.

“That facility has seen over 100 violations found over the course of the eight months that it's been in operation, and three people have died there already,” he said.

This year, one person has died every two weeks in ICE custody.

The lack of transparency also brings up local issues.

For the Western Maryland facility, residents feared it would stress systems, property values and emergency services.

That led to Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown suing DHS over the environmental impacts of the facility.

“A facility this size would generate nearly four times more wastewater than the site was designed for, risking sewage overflows on the property and backups throughout the surrounding community, increased traffic, air quality impacts and the burden of local emergency services were never assessed,” Brown said in a statement.

A federal judge agreed with Brown last week as he issued a preliminary injunction on the construction until DHS does more environmental review.

“It sounds to me like in this situation, things went completely backwards, and we're doing the [environmental review] at the end, when [it] should have been done, and at the beginning,” U.S. District Court Judge Brenden Hurson said explaining how the government already awarded the contracts by planned on doing the review after it was ready to bring in detainees.

WYPR’s Nathanael Miller contributed to this report.