Houston e-commerce company Cart.com states it will not support immigrant detention component of controversial $55 billion Navy program
The U.S. Department of War on Friday announced Cart.com Inc. as one of 24 awardees on the $55 billion ceiling WEXMAC TITUS contract with U.S. Naval Supply Systems Command.
Updated on February 18, 2026.
The PayPal Ventures-backed e-commerce services company Cart.com was on Friday awarded one of 24 new slots on a controversial, potentially $65 billion program administered by the U.S. Navy. The Houston-based company was founded in 2020 by Omar Tariq, who was previously chief operating officer of Home Depot subsidiary Blinds.com, and was valued at $1.6 billion in May.
The contract is formally administered by Naval Supply Systems Command in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania as an expansion of a long-running program known as the Worldwide Expeditionary Multiple Award Contract (WEXMAC). The Trump administration massively augmented the procurement vehicle via the “Territorial Integrity of the U.S. (TITUS)” extension last year, with Cart.com announced as a new awardee on Friday.
The initial batch of 96 WEXMAC TITUS awards were announced on September 4, with 37 of the contracts being extended from previous, Biden-era WEXMAC contracts, which included a focus on “base operations and life support service,” according to a converted agreement with the Colorado Springs-based Vectrus Systems. An additional seven TITUS contracts were announced on September 30, followed by eight on January 16, and then a further 24 on Friday.
A draft solicitation for WEXMAC TITUS published on June 9 detailed the program’s support for ICE detention facilities in a subsection entitled “Temporary Staging Facilities,” which stated that, “The objective of this contract is to obtain all infrastructure, including temporary housing structures, physical plant, staffing, resources, services, and supplies necessary to house aliens in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a safe and secure environment to effectuate their removal from the United States.” The draft solicitation continued that, “ICE is establishing a staging location at Fort Bliss located in El Paso County, Texas to house and supervise aliens pending their removal from the United States.”
The relationship between WEXMAC TITUS and ICE’s widely reported nation-wide warehouse acquisition program was first reported by CNN in October 2025, with follow-ups by Migrant Insider, Common Dreams, and San Antonio Express News. Friday’s announcement of 24 new TITUS contracts was first reported on Saturday by Project Salt Box.
The Washington Post revealed a list of seven “large-scale” and 16 smaller proposed detention sites on Christmas Eve, backed by a $45 billion immigrant detention appropriation, and Bloomberg subsequently reported a similar list of 23 proposed detention sites in late January, alongside each site’s estimated maximum capacity of beds. The largest such proposed facility — a Hutchins, Texas site projected to house 9,500 beds — has been one of many sites to receive local opposition.
A source with direct knowledge of the WEXMAC TITUS program expressed concerns about the feasibility of the aggressive detention center creation timeline, on condition of anonymity.
The second Trump administration’s allowance for ICE agents to hide their identities during arrests — via masks and by wearing plain clothes — has become central to public concern of the law enforcement agency having morphed into something closer to an American secret police. These concerns were exacerbated by the Trump administration’s lifting of a stop-work order on a $2 million Biden-era ICE contract to acquire phone-hacking software from the Israeli-developed, and now American-owned, Paragon Solutions, as first reported by this publication. (The ICE contract with Paragon was subsequently closed out on January 20, suggested 143 days of activity after the stop-work order was lifted.)
The author visited the two new Pennsylvania-based detention sites on Saturday: the 7,500-bed facility at the former Big Lots warehouse at 50 Rausch Creek Road in Tremont Township, reportedly purchased from the Manhattan-based Blue Owl Capital for $120 million, and the 1,500-bed warehouse at 3501 Mountain Road in Hamburg, which was reportedly acquired from the real estate investment firm PCCP for $87 million. Despite its large price tag, the Hamburg facility is across the street from a mobile home park.
A cross commemorating the apparent death of a dog named Bubbles can be seen at the road just outside of the Hamburg facility, next to a sign reading, “Bubbles, Go Run Free, Loving You Always.”
The co-CEOs of Blue Owl Capital, Douglas I. Ostrover and Marc S. Lipschultz, are both listed as members of the boards of directors of the Mount Sinai Health System and The Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research. Lipschultz was also announced as a trustee of Stanford University in May 2021.
While ICE’s new Hamburg detention facility is a stone’s throw away from the nearby Amazon warehouse, with a direct line of site, the one mile distance between the new Tremont location and a large Amazon fulfillment center is obscured by trees and requires a short drive.
Rumors of a relationship between Amazon and the ICE detention facility expansion program have swirled, with Cart.com’s addition as a contractor on WEXMAC TITUS perhaps serving as the first formal relationship between the program and a major e-commerce company.
Representatives for the Amazon fulfillment center in Tremont, codenamed QYY4, stated that they were unable to speak on behalf of the company when asked for comment in person about whether Amazon has any relationship to WEXMAC TITUS or the new ICE facilities.
Cart.com vice president of strategy Jack Ulrich responded after publication of this article, stating that “WEXMAC is a multi-award Department of War contract vehicle and is not specific to ICE or any single program,” adding that, “Cart.com has not been awarded or announced any related WEXMAC task orders.” (Cart.com was announced on Friday as a recipient of an Indefinite-Delivery/Indefinite-Quantity (IDIQ) contracting vehicle, through which task orders can be later placed.)
Ulrich subsequently further stated that:
“Cart.com is not engaged in any detention-facility work. Further, we do not intend to use WEXMAC to pursue or participate in such work. To be clear - while other WEXMAC participants may be using the vehicle to support ICE initiatives, Cart.com is not. Our motivation for becoming a WEXMAC vendor is to support our troops overseas as well as humanitarian aid missions.”
When asked for clarification regarding the draft solicitation’s language that “The contractor does not have a right of refusal and shall take all referrals from ICE,” Ulrich responded that, “our understanding is that we will only be awarded work that we actively bid on and, as I mentioned previously, Cart.com is not engaged in any detention‑facility work, nor do we intend to use WEXMAC to pursue or participate in such work.”
Other contractors are more clearly aligned with the detention facility aspect of WEXMAC TITUS, such as the Boca Raton-based private prison giant The GEO Group, which was named as one of the 24 new contractors on Friday, joining its competitor, the Brentwood-based CoreCivic. The Austin-based disaster response company Gothams was similarly one of the original 96 vendors announced in September, having made international headlines on February 2 as a result of its partner, former U.S. 75th Ranger Regiment commander Christopher S. Vanek, reportedly pitching The White House in November for Gothams to supply trucking and logistics support for Trump’s Gaza-focused “Board of Peace.”
Vanek has an ongoing lawsuit against his previous employer, the San Francisco-based gig-work information collection company Premise Data, for alleged fraud, age discrimination, and unpaid wages. Premise was covertly acquired by the Austin-based information warfare contractor Madison Springfield Inc. (MSI) in May 2022, and then both Premise and MSI were acquired by the Alexandria-based special operations contractor Culmen International in August 2025. Culmen was, like Gothams, one of the original 96 WEXMAC TITUS awardees.
The initial batch of TITUS vendors further included the intelligence contractor SOS International (SOSi) — whose “skip-tracing” surveillance contract with ICE was reported by The Lever one month after joining TITUS — as well as Day & Zimmermann’s private security subsidiary SOC LLC and the USAID-affiliated Palladium International.
Updated on February 18, 2026 with a more detailed response from Cart.com executive Jack Ulrich.
Updated on February 16, 2026 with a response from Cart.com and a link to the October 2025 reporting on WEXMAC TITUS from CNN.