U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and different companies have wasted tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} pursuing ill-conceived plans to quickly improve detention capability, and the whole will probably rise because of ongoing mismanagement, congressional investigators warned Thursday.
The U.S. Authorities Accountability Workplace documented pricey issues in a number of initiatives ICE has pursued since President Donald Trump returned to workplace in January 2025 and ordered the mass arrest and deportation of people who find themselves within the nation illegally.
Among the many misspending was almost $3 million to erect tents at Guantanamo Bay that had been by no means used, $20 million to keep up bought warehouses that are actually being bought with out having housed a single detainee, and extreme charges paid to carry detainees at a poor and now-shuttered Florida lockup.
ICE has no strategic plan for spending its windfall
Congress gave ICE an unprecedented $45 billion to increase detention capability final yr as a part of the Trump-backed One Massive Stunning Invoice, however the company nonetheless lacks a complete strategic plan for how you can spend it properly, the report warned. The detainee inhabitants has elevated from 39,000 in January 2025 to 67,000 as of July 30.
“With out taking motion to handle detention investments in accordance with program and mission administration practices, ICE will probably proceed to make uninformed choices and danger additional inefficiency and wasted assets,” warned the GAO, a nonpartisan company that investigated on the request of congressional Democrats.
The Division of Homeland Safety, ICE’s mum or dad company, instructed GAO it could develop a plan to information its detention enlargement by Aug. 31, 2027, however which may be too late to forestall extra waste, the report mentioned.
ICE and DHS provided no speedy extra touch upon the report.
The federal government scrapped a plan for mass detention at Guantánamo Bay
Shortly after Trump returned to the White Home, the federal government started blowing cash by rapidly pursuing plans to detain extra individuals who had been within the U.S. illegally, the report discovered.
After the White Home directed officers to make use of the army base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for immigration detention in January 2025, the Division of Protection assembled sufficient tents to carry 5,000 individuals there at a price of $2.85 million, the report mentioned. However DHS discovered that the tents didn’t meet detention requirements, they usually had been eliminated earlier than they housed a single detainee.
The plan for mass detention at Guantánamo Bay was later discovered to be “infeasible” and scrapped due to the prices of constructing amenities that might meet federal requirements. As a substitute, the company housed a mean of 16 detainees day by day there this yr, at a price of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}, the report discovered.
ICE is losing hundreds of thousands of {dollars} on empty warehouses
Earlier this yr, ICE bought 11 massive warehouses throughout the nation for $1.07 billion as a part of a plan backed by former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to extend detention capability. However that concept was scrapped amid public opposition earlier than any detainees had been housed in them as a result of the division didn’t conduct “acceptable due diligence and planning,” based on the GAO report. DHS is now planning to promote seven of the amenities.
ICE has spent $20 million on prices and companies associated to these seven warehouses that it’s going to not get better, together with zoning assessments, title insurance coverage, utilities and safety, and might want to promote them for the whole buy value of $707 million to keep away from extra waste, the report mentioned.
ICE has additionally “incurred vital prices” for the 4 warehouses that it plans to maintain, together with a $426 million outlay to renovate amenities in Arizona and Maryland that’s on maintain because of authorized challenges.
Report finds waste on ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ and different plans
After the warehouse initiative faltered, ICE launched a plan to buy amenities owned by personal contractors that had been already housing detainees, saying it could give extra management over infrastructure and restrict native governments’ potential to limit their use.
The company spent $1.5 billion to purchase two of them in July and will purchase extra although ICE has “not assessed the long-term affordability of proudly owning these amenities,” the report mentioned.
The report discovered fault with different initiatives. ICE by no means reached a contract with the state of Florida to function the ability nicknamed “Alligator Alcatraz,” which housed detainees for a yr till it was closed in June following stories of substandard and abusive situations.
As a substitute, DHS agreed to reimburse the state by means of a particular $608 million Federal Emergency Administration Company grant that authorizes a cost of $249 per detainee per day — 171% increased than ICE’s regular charge of $92, the report discovered. DHS can also be paying the state the upper charge for a second facility that’s nonetheless open in Sanderson, Florida.
ICE can also be going through excessive prices beneath an settlement through which the Bureau of Prisons is housing detainees at eight amenities. The settlement requires ICE to reimburse the total price, which has ballooned due to time beyond regulation and different staffing assignments, and pay a charge of $182 per detainee per day, the report mentioned.
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