ICE and other federal agencies have squandered tens of millions of dollars pursuing ill-conceived plans to rapidly expand detention capacity, with ongoing mismanagement likely to drive costs even higher, congressional investigators warned on Thursday.
A report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office documented costly problems across several initiatives launched after President Donald Trump returned to office in January 2025 and ordered the mass arrest and deportation of people who are in the country illegally.
Key examples of misspending include nearly $3 million spent to erect tents at Guantanamo Bay that were never used, $20 million to maintain purchased warehouses that are now being sold without ever housing a detainee, and excessive rates paid to hold detainees at a deficient and now-closed Florida lockup.
Congress gave ICE an unprecedented $45 billion to expand detention capacity last year as part of the Trump-backed One Big Beautiful Bill, but the agency still lacks a comprehensive strategic plan to ensure the funds are spent wisely, the report warned.
In the meantime, the detainee population increased from 39,000 in January 2025 to 67,000 as of July 30.
"Without taking action to manage detention investments in accordance with program and project management practices, ICE will likely continue to make uninformed decisions and risk further inefficiency and wasted resources," warned the GAO, a nonpartisan agency that investigated at the request of congressional Democrats.
The Department of Homeland Security, ICE's parent agency, informed the GAO it would develop a plan to guide its detention expansion by Aug. 31, 2027, though investigators noted this may be too late to prevent further waste.
ICE and DHS offered no immediate additional comment on the report.
The watchdog detailed how the government began blowing money shortly after the White House directed officials to expand detention capacity.
After being instructed to use the military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, for immigration detention in January 2025, the Department of Defense built tents to hold 5,000 people for $2.85 million.
However, DHS found the tents failed to meet detention standards, and they were removed before housing a single detainee.
The mass detention plan at Guantánamo Bay was later found to be "infeasible" and scrapped due to the cost of building facilities that met federal standards.
Instead, the agency housed an average of 16 detainees daily there this year, costing millions of dollars.
Another initiative involved purchasing 11 large warehouses across the country for $1.07 billion under a plan backed by former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to increase capacity.
That project was scrapped amid public opposition before any detainees were housed in them because the department failed to perform "appropriate due diligence and planning," according to the GAO.
DHS is now planning to sell seven of those facilities.
ICE has spent $20 million on unrecoverable costs related to those seven warehouses, including zoning assessments, title insurance, utilities, and security, and must sell them for the total purchase price of $707 million to avoid further waste.
ICE has also incurred high costs for the four warehouses it plans to keep, including a $426 million renovation project in Arizona and Maryland that is on hold due to legal challenges.
After the warehouse plan faltered, ICE launched an initiative to buy facilities owned by private contractors that were already detaining people, saying it would grant more infrastructure control and limit local governments' ability to restrict their use.
The agency spent $1.5 billion to buy two facilities in July and could buy more even though ICE has "not assessed the long-term affordability of owning these facilities," the report said.
The report also found fault with other initiatives.
ICE never reached a contract with Florida to operate the facility nicknamed "Alligator Alcatraz," which housed detainees for a year until it closed in June following reports of substandard and abusive conditions.
Instead, DHS agreed to reimburse the state through a special $608 million Federal Emergency Management Agency grant authorizing a charge of $249 per detainee per day, 171% higher than ICE's normal rate of $92.
DHS is also paying the higher rate for a second facility that remains open in Sanderson, Florida.
Additionally, ICE faces high costs under an agreement in which the Bureau of Prisons is housing detainees at eight facilities, requiring ICE to reimburse full costs that have ballooned due to overtime and staffing assignments, alongside a rate of $182 per detainee per day.
