In the Trump era, two interrelated agencies—Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection—have together generated some of the standout horrors of the president’s border and immigration agenda: separating migrant families, allowing children to die in filthy, disease-ridden cages at CBP “processing centers,” and staging shock-and-awe raids to detain and deport immigrant workers throughout the country. Together they form what is arguably the most loathsome wing of the Trump administration—no small feat. Yet while they enjoy vocal support from the president and his base, they have also quietly become the sort of federal agencies that Republicans claim to hate: big spenders.

Last year ICE and CBP funding briefly became front-page news, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed a $4.6 billion “emergency aid” package through Congress, ostensibly to alleviate a human catastrophe on the U.S.-Mexico border. In the larger context of the $74 billion budget for the Department of Homeland Security (which houses ICE and CBP), the summer outlay may seem a trifle. But it affords a rare opportunity to examine just what ICE and CBP are doing with all the new funds they have to play with, as a bipartisan Congress gives them more and more money every year.

Take, for instance, the film-production deal. In September, ICE signed a $961,348 agreement with Strategic Operations, a San Diego–based movie production company that makes realistic film sets for urban warfare training, usually for the military and police. Under the agreement, Strategic Operations is now building similar sets for ICE at the military base in Fort Benning, Georgia.

The contract stipulated that Strategic Operations would build “Chicago”- and “Arizona”-style sets, according to Representative Chuy Garcia, a Democrat who represents a district that covers parts of Chicago. ICE claims that the sets are intended to help train its special response teams in targeting drug gangs and conducting hostage rescues. But Garcia and other lawmakers say it sure looks as though ICE agents are preparing an elaborate simulation of full-scale military invasions of immigrant-heavy neighborhoods.

The language of the acquisition form “makes it sound like [ICE] is attacking a war zone, and that war zone happens to be our neighborhoods,” said Garcia, who lives a block away from a busy commercial strip in Chicago’s La Villita neighborhood. “So when I hear about ICE developing this kind of training facility, it’s difficult to not think of it as a declaration of war against my community.”