What's Going On At The Corner Of Weird And 150

What would you call it? Yes, it's an AI-generated image. I used it to describe what I was seeing.

So, what would you call this? At an old location of a discount store, I drove by and again noticed the place is less closed than it appears. And again, the tells are oddly striking. The place practically screams at me when I see this.

It's always blacked-out trucks or SUVS. The times I have seen someone there, they're wearing outfits similar to what you see in the image. A few times, I would have called them the "Men in Black" because they wore black shirts and black pants.

The biggest difference about the property is perhaps the addition of gates to keep people from driving onto the lot. The gates wouldn't keep anybody from walking onto the lot, but anybody who walked onto the lot would get seen on camera, and if there is security there, be far more easily apprehended if they got too close and too curious.

What would you think if you witnessed something like this? Say you witnessed it many times over a year or so, and the building has always had a space for lease banner draped across one side, conveniently visible to the nearest highway.

Would you find it odd?

During the period between 2010 and 2014, while I was a third-shift officer in a jail, I remember one of my guys coming to me and showing me a weird story about several Walmart and a few Target stores, closed without warning, boarded up, and people showing up for work the next day to find they were without a job.

At the time, it was sort of interesting. Not stop what you're doing and chase for the truth interesting, but interesting nonetheless. Think Chloe Sullivan, Wall of Weird from Smallville interesting.

Even one of the third shift road guys found the story and thought it was oddly mysterious. Imagine that, a bunch of guys in a Sheriff's Department finding something mysterious about others' behavior. However, as time went on, we would eventually get a look into the now-infamous buildings. During the Obama years, those buildings were being bought and would eventually become the immigrant detention centers some of us have seen.

What would make an old big box store or discount store good for a detention center?

On the outside, the roofs are flat. That makes them easily accessible, easy to use, and easy to mount surveillance cameras. They are the perfect type for having security staff should there be an incursion and the building's position needs defending.

There's ample space. Not only is there ample space, but there's more than enough space to do modifications. Retrofitting a building such as this, which is more than capable of being converted into multi-floor sections, and putting cages into, or even proper housing, is entirely possible.

If you don't believe it, remember the videos we saw on CNN and Fox News during Donald Trump's first administration, and the whole "Families Divided" scandal his opposition pushed?

One such place that's been converted was in Brownsville, Texas, near the border with Mexico. By April 2018, it was known as Casa Padre instead of the Walmart Supercenter that it was.

Before there's any confusion, yes, coming across the border is an illegal act if you don't come through a port of entry, if you don't have permission to enter the country, and these facilities came about as a result of so many rushing the border of the United States. By actively enforcing border security, it was learned by the administration that there was a real problem. And while some politicians wanted to decry the separation of children and their families, it was a requirement of United States Federal Law, a law that affects each state-level prison and even jail.

That's not really the point.

The point is that sometimes the government or contractors take over buildings such as old WalMarts, because of the space available, the ease of retrofitting the interiors, and the ease of security.

So, if you were to see an old discount store building, one that's suddenly had security gates put in at the physical driveways onto the property, and there were blacked-out vehicles, what would you envision is going on in there? Is it another immigrant detention center? Doubtful; there's not a regularly noticeable presence.

Let's hear your thoughts.