FEMA Camps Series Part 1 of 3: Will They Happen?

 by Tara Dodrill
FEMA camps: Just reading those two words invoke an immediate sense of foreboding and anger in many Americans. Call such emergency government facilities resettlement camps or refugee camps if you like, but the freedom-infringing will be just the same despite the text on the entrance sign. If following a guy who introduces himself by saying, “Hi, I’m from the government and I’m here to help.” does not sound like a pleasant way to spend a few months or years, then you had better start preparing now.

A while back my husband Bobby was flipping channels and happened to land on Red Dawn (the original cult classic and not the cheesy remake) and we watched the scene where the townsfolk were herded into “re-education” camps by their new masters. Bobby turned to me and said, in all seriousness, “If you love me, you had better shoot me if I am ever ushered into a place like that.”
Now, I love my best friend with my whole entire heart and would surely rather use the expert target skills he taught me to rescue him than to put him out of his misery. Being captured and placed in a FEMA camp would be devastating, but feeling grateful that such a place existed and voluntarily walking behind the barbed wire because you felt it was you only option for survival would be far worse.
The likelihood of FEMA camps being created is an often-debated and highly controversial topic. Operation Jade Helm 15 theories have also included the idea of both government-run camps and “FEMA trains.” Although the mainstream media would like for you to ignore the possible existence of FEMA camps and see them as merely conspiracy theories surrounding recent headlines and part of the “whacko survivalist” mindset, a 2013 U.S. Army report and a U.S. Supreme Court justice appear to disagree.
An internment and resettlement camp “Army manual” went viral two years ago, yet still went largely unnoticed by the nightly news. The alleged military manual posted in PDF form shows a February 2010 creation date, but the text only found its way onto web in April 2013. The manual and an equally viral YouTube video about the FEMA camps has some concerned about history repeating itself.

The diagrams of the internment and resettlement camps, often dubbed FEMA camps, are eerily similar to the concentration camps of World War II. The alleged Army manual also describes the design of the internment and resettlement camps, right down to the placement of a massive amount of barbed wire and guard towers.
The supposedly official Army manual defines the “civilian combatants” who would reside in the FEMA camps as basically anyone who disagrees with current government policies. The work titles of those in charge at the internment and resettlement camps allegedly include psychological operations officers. Such officers would allegedly be in charge of re-education of civilian combatants.
Those Americans identified as malcontents would allegedly be subjected to drug treatments and various forms of psychological warfare. The alleged Army manual is entitled FM 3-39.40. Agencies mentioned as partners in governing and operating the camps include FEMA, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, the Red Cross and the United Nations.
Excerpts from the internment and resettlement camps manual notes that the Department of Defense will offer support to civil authorities dealing with a civil emergency. Scenarios offered as examples of a civil emergency include terrorist attacks, man-made or natural disasters, accidents and “incidents” in the United States and its territories.
The alleged FEMA camps Army manual also mentioned the need to garner an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act before initiating the camp. The act became law in 1878. The legislation made it illegal to employ any part of the Army as a posse or to execute laws except in a case when force has been authorized by an act of Congress. The supposed internment and resettlement camps manual states that such an exemption could be achieved via an executive order from the president.
In 2014, two FEMA camp stories went viral. The first was statements by Justice Scalia saying that “internment camps” could happen again in the United States. The second involved FEMA spending a ton of taxpayer money on manufactured homes that can be “quickly built and deployed” anywhere in the country.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency release also noted that the manufacturers of the homes seeking to bid on the project needed to respond to the posted solicitation only with homes that have the “potential to become permanent housing.” The FEMA homes ad first appeared late last week on the FBO.gov website. The federal agency noted in the solicitation that multiple contracts will be awarded and worth up to a “half-billion dollars” for an “indefinite” quantity of manufactured homes. Homes which meet the Federal Emergency Management Agency needs can have from one to three bedrooms. FEMA’s Disaster Relief Housing manual lists the manufactured homes as their “top-tier” of housing choices.
During Hurricane Katrina, the term “FEMA trailers” became commonplace. The taxpayer-funded acquisitions of the portable temporary units were in short supply the days following the catastrophic natural disaster. The vast majority of the FEMA trailers have been sold to the public because the federal government allegedly did not have enough space to store the camper style dwellings.
Excerpt from a FEMA trailers for sale ad on a government auction website:
“Good News! FEMA Trailers are back on sale by the Government after a long hiatus due to issues of formaldehyde. Back in March 2007 the Government started offering FEMA Trailers for sale from the Katrina and Rita Disasters at fire-sale prices. After the destructive hurricanes hit the Gulf Coast in August and September 2005, FEMA Spent more than $2.5 billion to buy up nearly 150,000 trailers, campers, and mobile homes, many of which were never even used. In 2007, the government started to sell these travel trailers, and many were bought for unheard-of prices, as potential buyers began inquiring how to buy a FEMA Trailer, many were gobbling up the FEMA trailer deals rather that spending $25,000 to $40,000 for a brand-new trailer.”
If FEMA did not have enough space to hold the trailers until needed again after a natural disaster, where will they put all of the mobile homes currently being sought? That question, among many others about the new purchasing program, has prompted renewed interest in “FEMA camps” stories. A few weeks prior to the FEMA home ad that went viral, a different post by the federal agency sought bids for companies that could provide “motor coach evacuation of the general population in response to a government-declared emergency.”

US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said that internment camps can happen again in America. The longest serving justice also stated that the nation’s highest court would uphold such camps. Scalia made the shocking statements while speaking to a University of Hawaii law school class.
Justice Scalia had this to say during the discussion about the Japanese internment camp, which sparked a lawsuit in 1944:
“Well of course Korematsu was wrong. And I think we have repudiated in a later case. But you are kidding yourself if you think the same thing will not happen again. [Panic] that’s what was going on. The panic about the war and the invasion of the Pacific and what-not. That’s what happens. It was wrong, but I would not be surprised to see it happen again in time of war. It’s no justification, but it is the reality.”
During World War II, the US Supreme Court ruled that President Franklin D. Roosevelt did have the power to prosecute Japanese-American citizens who refused to enter internment camps. Roosevelt assumed such power via the signing of an executive order.
The Korematsu vs. United States case began in 1942 when federal law enforcement officers ordered folks of Japanese descent along the West Coast to move into “assembly centers” or relocation camps for national security reasons. The “evacuation” into what were deemed by many to be nothing more than concentration camps did not involve any type of due process or even a single hearing. Some Germans and Italians were also ordered into internment camps as well.
Fred Korematsu, a Japanese-American, refused to comply with the national security order and was arrested. He appealed the arrest on Constitutionality grounds. Korematsu steadfastly maintained that the forced internment was a Fifth Amendment violation. In 1944 the US Supreme Court upheld Korematsu’s conviction – the vote was six to three. 
Then Justice Robert Jackson had this to say in his dissent brief:
“No claim is made that he is not loyal to this country,” Jackson wrote in his dissent. “There is no suggestion that apart from the matter involved here he is not law-abiding and well-disposed. Korematsu, however, has been convicted of an act not commonly a crime. It consists merely of being present in the state whereof he is a citizen, near the place where he was born, and where all his life he has lived.”
If you believe there is even a remote chance that FEMA camps will one day happen in America, make sure to check out the rest of the series to learn what you need to do to prepare to survive on your own  outside of the government-controlled confines of any type of “camp.”