Fort Anchor is the name the GLMZ Metropolitan Authority gave the former Great Lakes Naval Station when they converted it — or more accurately, when Ringo Defense Solutions converted it on a no-bid contract and the Metropolitan Authority signed the paperwork. The original naval training facility, which had processed American sailors for a century and a half, now processes a different kind of human traffic: climate refugees, economic migrants, and the steady flow of undocumented people moving north through the Corridor seeking entry into the upper GLMZ's marginally less catastrophic labor markets.

The processing center occupies the eastern half of the old base, a grid of repurposed barracks and administrative buildings where new arrivals are biometrically registered, neurally scanned, and assigned a provisional tier status that will determine every aspect of their life in the Corridor. Provisional Tier 1 — which is what most arrivals receive — grants the right to exist within GLMZ jurisdiction without being arrested for it. It does not grant employment authorization, medical access, or housing assistance. It grants existence. The distinction between Provisional Tier 1 and 'excluded' is technical, legal, and in practical terms, largely meaningless.

The western half of Fort Anchor is a Ringo garrison — the ground-force complement to the air and logistics operations at the Waukegan compound. Approximately 8,000 Ringo security personnel are stationed here, and their presence gives the processing center its particular character: a place where the humanitarian language of refugee assistance coexists with razor wire, automated sentry turrets, and the constant reminder that the people being 'processed' are being processed by the same company that sells weapons systems. Ringo's contract with the Metropolitan Authority specifies 'humane and orderly processing.' The contract does not define humane. The contract does not define orderly. Ringo defined both, and their definitions prioritize throughput.

The town of North Chicago — the civilian community surrounding the base — has been economically dependent on military and quasi-military installation spending since the 1940s. Nothing about that has changed except the uniform. Local businesses serve Ringo personnel. Local housing absorbs people who completed processing and couldn't afford to go anywhere else. The result is a community where the processors and the processed live side by side, eat at the same restaurants, and send their children to the same underfunded schools. The awkwardness of this is lost on no one.