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Thursday, January 29, 2009

New Legislation Authorizes FEMA Camps In U.S.

A new bill introduced in Congress authorizes the Department of Homeland Security to set up a network of FEMA camp facilities to be used to house U.S. citizens in the event of a national emergency.

The National Emergency Centers Act or HR 645 mandates the establishment of “national emergency centers” to be located on military installations for the purpose of to providing “temporary housing, medical, and humanitarian assistance to individuals and families dislocated due to an emergency or major disaster,” according to the bill.

The legislation also states that the camps will be used to “provide centralized locations to improve the coordination of preparedness, response, and recovery efforts of government, private, and not-for-profit entities and faith-based organizations”.

Ominously, the bill also states that the camps can be used to “meet other appropriate needs, as determined by the Secretary of Homeland Security,” an open ended mandate which many fear could mean the forced detention of American citizens in the event of widespread rioting after a national emergency or total economic collapse.

Many credible forecasters have predicted riots and rebellions in America that will dwarf those already witnessed in countries like Iceland and Greece.

With active duty military personnel already being stationed inside the U.S. under Northcom, partly for purposes of “crowd control,” fears that Americans could be incarcerated in detainment camps are all too real.


The bill mandates that six separate facilities be established in different Federal Emergency Management Agency Regions (FEMA) throughout the country.

The camps will double up as “command and control” centers that will also house a “24/7 operations watch center” as well as training facilities for Federal, State, and local first responders.

The bill also contains language that will authorize camps to be established within closed or already operating military bases around the country.

As we have previously highlighted, in early 2006 Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root was awarded a $385 million dollar contract by Homeland Security to construct detention and processing facilities in the event of a national emergency.

The language of the preamble to the agreement veils the program with talk of temporary migrant holding centers, but it is made clear that the camps would also be used “as the development of a plan to react to a national emergency.”

As far back as 2002, FEMA sought bids from major real estate and engineering firms to construct giant internment facilities in the case of a chemical, biological or nuclear attack or a natural disaster.