WorldPosted at: Sep 25 2026 7:23PM


ICE spent billions in expanding immigration detention capacity, but wasted millions due to poor planning

Washington, Sep 25 (UNI) Months after the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) spent billions of dollars to expand its immigration detention capacity, a new government audit has found that poor planning and abrupt changes to its plans have already resulted in millions of dollars in waste.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO), in a report released Thursday, said ICE had pursued six detention expansion initiatives since January 2025 without the necessary analysis and planning. The agency has since scaled back more than half of those initiatives, creating wasted or potentially wasted costs.
Among the biggest examples was ICE's warehouse programme.
Between January and April this year, the agency bought 11 warehouses for about $1.07 billion, intending to convert them into detention facilities.
By June, ICE was working with the General Services Administration to sell seven of them.
GAO said ICE had already spent $7.7 million on non-recoverable costs, including zoning assessments and title insurance, for the seven warehouses it planned to sell.
The agency had also spent about $12.8 million on utilities, security and other services at those properties by August. If the seven warehouses are eventually sold for less than the $707 million ICE paid for them, the losses would increase further.
ICE also bought existing detention facilities. In July, it purchased two facilities for approximately $1.5 billion, although GAO said the agency had not assessed the long-term affordability of owning them.
The audit found that ICE had reported purchasing more than $2.5 billion in warehouses and detention facilities by July, but had projected operating costs for only the first three years.
The funding provided through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) and the Secure America Act (SAA) is available through fiscal year 2029, leaving ICE without long-term cost projections beyond that period.
The report said ICE also lacked consistent goals for how much detention space it needed.
The administration publicly discussed targets ranging from 80,000 additional beds to 100,000 total beds, while ICE documents cited a 92,600-bed target. GAO said the agency had not developed a comprehensive strategic plan covering its goals, activities and resource needs.
Heather MacLeod, director of Homeland Security and Justice at GAO, said the review found a broader planning problem.
"We just saw a real lack of planning overall," MacLeod said. "The lack of planning has really led to stops and starts which have ultimately resulted in waste."
GAO recommended that ICE develop a comprehensive strategic plan. DHS agreed, but ICE said it expected to complete the plan by August 31, 2027. GAO said that timetable was not soon enough given the scale of the agency's new funding and the potential for continued waste.
The expansion has been fuelled by an unprecedented increase in immigration detention funding.
The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed in July 2025, provided ICE with $45 billion for detention capacity through fiscal year 2029, in addition to almost $30 billion that could be used for other immigration enforcement activities.
ICE's detention population has also risen sharply. GAO said the average daily population increased from 39,314 on January 20, 2025, to 67,180 on July 30, 2026, a 71% increase. The number of authorised detention facilities roughly doubled from 134 to 272 over the same period.
The audit found other examples of higher-than-expected costs.
At Florida's "Alligator Alcatraz" facility, which closed in June, FEMA awarded Florida $608.4 million through a detention support grant programme. ICE did not directly fund the facility or negotiate its costs in the normal way, according to GAO. The programme set a bed rate of $249 per detained person per day, about 171% above ICE's median rate of $92.
ICE has also been using facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.
GAO said the median daily rate at the eight BOP facilities was $182 in fiscal year 2026, roughly double ICE's $92 median rate. BOP officials said accommodating ICE detainees had put additional pressure on staffing, requiring overtime and temporary assignments.
At Camp East Montana in Texas, another earlier detention expansion initiative, GAO found that ICE had paid about $7.1 million for meals it did not need between October 2025 and March 2026 because its contract did not sufficiently account for lower occupancy.
The government also spent $2.85 million assembling tents at Guantanamo Bay that were never used to house detainees after DHS determined they did not meet detention standards.
ICE initially planned to expand detention capacity at the naval base to 30,000 beds, but the operation was later scaled down substantially.
The GAO said the rapid expansion has taken place as ICE works to increase detention capacity under the Trump administration's immigration enforcement policy.
It recommended that the agency improve its planning before committing further resources.
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