President Trump’s dreams of a White House ballroom have highlighted what was once a relative secret: the construction of a military bunker beneath the now-demolished East Wing.

The administration started knocking down the East Wing in October to make way for Trump’s long-desired White House ballroom, a project that will cost at least $300 million. The plan has drawn disapproval from members of the public and ire from architectural and conservation groups, one of which sued to block it back in December.

U.S. District Court Judge Richard Leon sided with the National Trust for Historic Preservation this week, when he ruled that construction of the ballroom “must stop until Congress authorizes its completion.”

Yet, as the White House appeals the decision, Leon is allowing construction to continue for “the safety and security of the White House” — a nod to the administration’s argument that the renovation is about more than aesthetics.

That’s backed up in court filings from the case, as well as Trump’s own public comments.

A snapshot of the construction in February, after the East Wing was demolished to make room for a ballroom.

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“The military is building a big complex under the ballroom, which has come out recently because of a stupid lawsuit that was filed,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One over the weekend.

He said the proposed 90,000 square-foot ballroom “essentially becomes a shed for what’s being built under,” adding that the “high-grade bulletproof glass” windows would protect the facility below “from drones and … from any other thing.”

The existence of a World War II-era facility — called the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) — has been an open secret for decades, especially after the government released photos in 2015 of White House officials sheltering inside on Sept. 11, 2001.

But little is known about the current status of the bunker, which CNN reported in January had been dismantled in the renovations, or what kind of structure might come to replace it. When asked on Monday to share more about the underground complex, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt stayed tight-lipped.

“The military is making some upgrades to their facilities here at the White House, and I’m not privy to provide any more details on that at this time,” she said.

Trump was more forthcoming with reporters that same day, as he signed executive orders in the Oval Office, reiterating that the judge’s decision allows him to “continue building as necessary … to cover the safety and security of the White House and its grounds.”

Trump read through a handwritten note listing off the permitted upgrades.

“The roof is droneproof. We have secure air-handling systems,” Trump said. “We have bio-defense all over. We have secure telecommunications and communications all over. We have bomb shelters that we’re building. We have a hospital and very major medical facilities that we’re building … So on that we’re okay.”

For decades, little was known about the FDR-era bunker

The White House built the East Wing with an underground bomb shelter for President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, over concerns that the building could become the target of an aerial attack.

“This secret space featured thick concrete walls and steel-sheathed ceilings with a small presidential bedroom and bath inside,” the White House Historical Association wrote on social media in 2024. “Nearby rooms provided ventilation masks, food storage, and communications equipment.”

It has been upgraded in the decades since. On the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a number of White House officials under George W. Bush — who was in Florida at the time — took shelter there.

Former First Lady Laura Bush recounted the experience in her 2010 memoir, in which she wrote about being “hustled downstairs through a pair of big steel doors that closed behind me with a loud hiss, forming an airtight seal.”

President George W. Bush talks with Vice President Dick Cheney in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

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“I was now in one of the unfinished subterranean hallways underneath the White House, heading for the PEOC,” she wrote. “We walked along old tile floors with pipes hanging from the ceiling and all kinds of mechanical equipment. The PEOC is designed to be a command center during emergencies, with televisions, phones, and communications facilities.”

Key administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, were also there, seated at a long conference table in a small room. The government released hundreds of photos of that day — showing officials talking on landline phones and videoconferencing on large screens — in response to a Freedom of Information Act request in 2015.

Bush wrote that the Secret Service suggested the couple spend the night in the bunker: “They showed us the bed, a foldout that looked like it had been installed when FDR was president … we both said no.”

A decade later, when Barack Obama was president, the White House undertook a major, multi-year renovation project that involved digging a massive hole beneath the Oval Office, exposing what appeared to be a tunnel underneath. The General Services Administration (GSA) denied it was bunker-related, calling it a standard revamp of the air-conditioning and electrical systems.

A digging project near the West Wing, pictured in Jan. 2011, looked to many like bunker business.

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“However, what reporters and photographers saw during the construction appeared to go well beyond that: a sprawling, multistory structure whose underground assembly required truckload after truckload of heavy-duty concrete and steel beams,” the Associated Press wrote towards the end of the project in 2012.

It noted that the White House had tried to keep that work hidden by putting up a fence around the excavation site and “ordering subcontractors not to talk to anyone and to tape over company info on trucks pulling into the White House gates.”

Many people didn’t buy the official explanation for what some media outlets came to call “The White House Big Dig.”

A 2011 New York Times report cited unnamed administration officials speculating that the effort was actually “security-related.” People did not take the GSA’s story at face value, the article added, “despite the size of the hole, the controlled silence of the construction workers and the fact that funds were allocated after Sept. 11, 2001.” A 2011 Washington Post piece put it more bluntly: “It’s a bunker, right?”

Questions about the bunker surfaced again during Trump’s first term, after the New York Times and CNN reported that the Secret Service had rushed him inside and kept him there briefly during a night of Black Lives Matter protests outside the White House in May 2020. Trump later confirmed that he had spent time in the PEOC, but denied that he’d been rushed inside — told Fox News he had gone in briefly during daytime hours “more for an inspection.”

What we know about the new construction 

Still, the existence of a bunker — and plans to construct a new one — were not necessarily top of mind for people when Trump began demolishing the East Wing last fall.

Critics were quicker to call out the lack of public input and congressional authorization, the sheer scale of the proposed ballroom and concerns about environmental impact and historical preservation.

In January, as the legal battle unfolded, Trump wrote on Truth Social that the project was being undertaken with “the design, consent, and approval of the highest levels of the United States Military and Secret Service,” without elaborating.

“The mere bringing of this ridiculous lawsuit has already, unfortunately, exposed this heretofore Top Secret fact,” Trump wrote.

The National Capital Planning Commission voted to approve Trump’s ballroom plan on Thursday, days after a federal judge ordered construction to stop without authorization from Congress.

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In court filings reviewed by NPR, the Secret Service confirmed its involvement but kept details to a minimum.

In one signed declaration, Secret Service Deputy Director Matthew Quinn wrote that his agency was working with the contractor on “temporary security and safety measures around the project’s construction site,” which were not fully complete at the time.

“Accordingly, any pause in construction, even temporarily, would leave the contractor’s obligation unfulfilled in this regard and consequently hamper the Secret Service’s ability to meet its statutory obligations and protective mission,” Quinn wrote, before offering to brief the judge privately on more details, “including law enforcement sensitive and/or classified information.”

In a separate filing, Trump administration officials sought to submit further details in a classified setting so as to keep “the discussion of national security concerns” off a publicly available docket.

Trump allies have been similarly vague in other public settings, including at a National Capital Planning Commission meeting in January, where Josh Fisher, the White House director of management and administration, said: “There are some things regarding this project that are, frankly, of top-secret nature that we are currently working on.”

After a period of soliciting public comments, the commission, a government agency that meets monthly to provide planning guidance for D.C.’s federal land and buildings, held its approval vote on a tweaked version of Trump’s ballroom plan this week. It gave it the green light, despite the judge’s order just days earlier.

“When I saw the new fertilizer price, I’m like, holy crap. Talk about a kick to the gut.” Spring is here, which means it’s planting season in Iowa. For corn farmers preparing to sow their fields, the war with Iran couldn’t have come at a worse time. “So this is the fertilizer. So how much did the price of it go up after the war in Iran erupted?” “It went up about $250 a ton in my neck of the woods.” Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical transit point for a third of the world’s fertilizer, sent the price soaring. The cost of two widely used nitrogen fertilizers shot up by 20 and 50 percent in the first few weeks of the war. A decade of inflation, low commodity prices and tariffs have squeezed Jolene Riessen’s profit margins. She’s now facing her toughest year yet as a farmer. “Every year is a risk when you farm. But this has kind of been compounding. Our prices have been low. And yet our input costs continue to ratchet up.” With the price of fertilizer already higher than last year, she put off buying until last month, hoping the price would go down. Then the war started and the opposite happened. With the window to plant closing, she had little choice but to buy at a high price. “For the amount of fertilizer I was going to buy, it had gone up about $13,000 in two days. What pot does that come out of? Fertilizer price, we can’t control. Fuel price, we can’t control. Where is it all going to end up? We don’t know.” “This is like the worst I’ve ever seen it. Gambling what our futures are going to look like.” Farmer Lance Lillibridge has been representing Iowa corn growers for 14 years. “The current conflict in Iran is hurting farmers everywhere in Iowa and across the country. If we’re not able to sustain our land with the nutrients that’s needed to grow a crop, then our yields are going to go down. Eventually going to drive up the price of corn, which is what we use to feed chickens, pigs and cattle, amongst other things. And eventually that is going to go back to the consumer at the grocery store.” While it may take some time for shoppers to see the price increase reflected in their groceries, Jolene’s costs continue to climb higher than what she makes for her corn. “This is the corn that we’ve been talking about.” “Yep.” At today’s price of corn, she could lose roughly $110 per acre across her 530 acres. “We just did the math. And so maybe looking at losing $58,000. So what am I going to do to negate that? I have never lost quite that much before.” Still, she has hoped the price of corn will go up this year to offset at least some of that loss. She keeps a close eye on its every move in the market. “Time to check the markets.” “How many times a day are you checking the prices?” “Sometimes you — Half-dozen times a day. And sometimes that isn’t enough. Now you know that at closing at 2 o’clock, they were, they were up 4 cents and now they’re down 2 cents. Which means that was a 6-cent move in the market. Crazy.” “And today, I’m promising to request additional farm relief for our great patriots in the next funding bill.” Last month, the Trump administration lifted sanctions on fertilizer sales from Belarus and Venezuela to try to ease the price surge and promised more aid to farmers. Still, Jolene is making hard calculations to stay on the farm that has been in her family for 85 years. “Those income sources could very well be selling some equipment. There’s a chance that there could be some ground sold. And then what are you left with? For some farmers, it’s a legacy. That’s my legacy that I’m selling. If it was up to me, the war would be done yesterday.”

EL PASO, Texas — A long paved road, flanked by desert sand, leads to the big white tents usually housing some 3,000 immigrants with beds for up to 2,000 more.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, detention center is located on the grounds of the U.S. Army’s Fort Bliss military base and is known as Camp East Montana.

Opened in August 2025, it’s currently the largest immigrant detention center in the U.S. and one of the facilities with the most detainee deaths. Out of 25 people who died in ICE detention since October, 3 were at Camp East Montana.

Concerns are rising among immigration advocates, lawmakers and former detainees about the company that initially ran the detention center, Acquisition Logistics, which had never run a center before securing a $1.3 billion federal contract. Advocates and multiple members of Congress are calling for the facility to be shut down.

“When they say in the news that this is the worst facility in the country, they damn right,” said Owen Ramsingh, a man from the Netherlands who was detained at Camp East Montana for more than four months before being deported in February.

He called the living conditions, food, bathrooms, and treatment by the facility’s staff “horrible.”

Ramsingh said he saw detainees battling mental health crises due to being detained for long periods in large cells that could house up to 72 men. He says they were served small portions of food, and suffered in cramped quarters with foul excrement odor emanating from the bathrooms in the cells.

ICE inspectors in February found 49 violations to detention standards at the facility, including inadequate medical care and failure from staff to “accurately document required checks to prevent significant self-harm and suicide.”

More than 45 people interviewed by the ACLU at Camp East Montana “reveal alarming conditions of confinement and repeated instances of coercion, physical force, and threats against immigrants facing third-country deportations, in violation of agency policies and standards, as well as statutory and constitutional protections,” the civil liberties group said in its December letter to ICE.

Multiple detainee deaths raise big concerns

In December, Francisco Gaspar-Andres, a Guatemalan man, died of kidney failure after being hospitalized for two weeks, DHS said.

A month later, Cuban national Geraldo Luna Campos died while in detention. Initially, DHS said he died after experiencing “medical distress.” The agency said he had become “disruptive while in line for medication” and was placed in segregation.

However, an autopsy conducted by the El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled his death a homicide. The report said he died from “asphyxia due to neck and torso compression.” No one has been charged in his death.

A third death happened on Jan. 14, according to DHS. Victor Manuel Diaz, a national of Nicaragua died by suicide, DHS said in a statement.

But Diaz’s family do not believe that to be true.

“When we talked to Victor after he had been detained by ICE in Minnesota and brought to Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss Army Base in El Paso, we were not worried because Victor would just be returned to Nicaragua to us. It was a very brief call,” the family said in a statement to NPR. “Little did we know it was the last time we would ever hear his voice.”

Attorney Randall Kallinen holds a photo of the burial of Victor Manuel Diaz, a Nicaraguan man who died while in detention at Camp East Montana.

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The family’s attorney, Randall Kallinen, told reporters last month Diaz’s autopsy was performed by the Army’s medical examiner.

“It was said that he died in a room by himself, in a clinic room. And we haven’t received word of why he was in the clinic,” Kallinen said. “Because they’re not saying he he tried to commit suicide somewhere else and then went to the clinic room — they’re saying he was in the clinic. That’s what their story is.”

In a statement to NPR, the Department of Homeland Security said “When there are signs of a detainee self-harming, staff abides by strict prevention and intervention protocol to ensure the detainee’s health and wellbeing is protected.”

The agency said ICE conducts mental health intake screenings for detainees within 12 hours of their arrival to any detention facility.

Lack of nutrition, mental health crises

45-year-old Owen Ramsingh has lived in the U.S. since 1986, when he came to Omaha, Nebraska with his mother when he was just five years old.

When he was a teenager, Ramsingh was convicted of possession of crack cocaine. He served 25 months in prison, part of that time in a state penitentiary.

After his release, Ramsingh said he “changed my life around.” He worked in construction for 15 years, had kids, later worked in security and even started his own power washing business.

Ramsingh had been a permanent resident all of these years, and he renewed his green card multiple times over the years. He says he often visited the Netherlands without any issues. But in March 2025, when he returned from Europe, he was detained at the Chicago O’Hare Airport by immigration agents. He said they told him he was being detained due to his nearly three decades old conviction.

Ramsingh was eventually transferred to Camp East Montana.

He said he saw at least one detainee collapse.

“We were beating on the windows,” he said, adding he yelled at the guards, “‘You guys are killing us!’ And they just laughed at us.”

Talking from his father’s home in the Netherlands, after being deported in mid-March, Ramsingh told NPR he also heard guards betting on which detainee was going to die by suicide.

“This is so screwed up that you’re trying to bet on our lives, you know, with these other officers thinking this s- – – is funny,” Ramsingh said. For him it was personal — he told NPR he talked three detainees out of killing themselves.

Acquisition Logistics LLC, the private company in charge of the detention center when Ramsingh was there, did not respond to NPR’s questions about this incident or its past management of the facility. DHS said in a statement that the agency inherited the contract from the Department of War.

The agency pointed out Ramsingh’s past conviction as the reason for his removal. “A green card is a privilege, not a right, and under our nation’s laws, our government has the authority to revoke a green card if our laws are broken and abused,” DHS said.

A woman who was detained at Camp East Montana told NPR she lost 35 pounds in her months-long detention there. The woman asked NPR for anonymity because she fears retaliation from immigration authorities.

“It was a horrible experience,” the woman said.

She told NPR the food was often inedible, and that the portions provided were very small. Detainees had to ration their food by hiding fruits and crackers under their shirts.

She said most of the women in her pod had stomach issues “because nobody wanted to eat.” People would eat a tortilla with water to feel full because they didn’t want to eat the food, which the woman said tasted bad.

The woman said she had trouble sleeping. She told NPR when she or others would get sick, the medical staff would most of the time tell them to drink water and offer acetaminophen.

An inexperienced company

Public complaints surfaced soon after Camp East Montana was opened in August 2025.

Several measles and tuberculosis outbreaks sparked multiple lockdowns.

Imelda Maynard, the legal director of the immigration legal clinic Estrella de El Paso, told NPR her team has repeatedly encountered roadblocks since the opening of the facility.

“We’ve always run into hiccups here and there, but with this camp in particular, there’s been issues from the get go on just trying to establish baseline communication with people there,” Maynard said.

Advocates have placed much of the blame on Acquisition Logistics, LLC, A Virginia-based small company that secured a $1.3 billion contract with the federal government to run Camp East Montana. However, the company had never operated a detention facility before.

“At that facility … it really does feel like one side doesn’t know what the other side is doing and everyone’s just kind of doing their own thing,” Maynard said. “It doesn’t seem like there’s coordinated efforts, and I really feel like that’s a management problem, and I think that’s on the contractor side of things.”

DHS replaced Acquisition Logistics’ contract last month. The company did not reply to NPR’s request for comment.

A new, $453 million contract was given to Amentum Services, a company that was working as a subcontractor for Acquisition Logistics. Amentum Services didn’t respond to NPR’s request for comment.

“ICE is always looking at ways to improve our detention facilities to ensure we are providing the best care to illegal aliens in our custody,” a DHS official said.

DHS said in a statement Amentum Services has been a partner of ICE in managing Camp East Montana. The contract, the agency said, “will allow Camp East Montana to continue abiding by the highest detention standards WITH the ability to provide MORE medical care on-site. This contract also allows more on-site staff and a PRECISE quality assurance surveillance plan.”

The agency said ICE will have “even more oversight of the contractors at this facility,” although it didn’t provide details of what that entails.

“Far from closing, Camp East Montana is upgrading,” DHS said.

But immigrant rights activists and members of Congress have called for the facility to shut down.

Congresswoman Veronica Escobar, D-Texas, called Acquisition Logistics LLC’s contract and the complaints from the detainees “very troubling.”

“These people are playing with the taxpayer dollars of hardworking Americans,” Escobar, who has visited Camp East Montana multiple times, said. “It’s unacceptable.”

She wants the Department of Justice to investigate the contract issued to Acquisition Logistics LLC.

“It’s not enough to just switch contractors,” Escobar said. “Acquisition Logistics needs to be investigated.”