The Government Accountability Office reported on September 24, 2026, that Immigration and Customs Enforcement rushed to expand detention without a plan and wasted money as a result. “In the absence of a comprehensive strategic plan to guide detention expansion ICE has wasted funds on unsuccessful detention initiatives and lacks important information about the long-term affordability of its investments,” the report says. It was requested by Democratic Sens. Jack Reed, Gary Peters and Dick Durbin and Rep. Bennie Thompson. Congress gave ICE $45 billion to expand detention through Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act in 2025, and the detainee population rose from 39,000 in January 2025 to 67,000 as of July 30, 2026.
The largest item is the warehouses. Earlier this year ICE bought 11 of them for about $1.07 billion, in a plan backed by former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, to convert into detention centers. The idea was dropped amid public opposition before any detainee was held in them, and in June 2026 ICE told GAO it would sell seven. It has spent more than $20 million on costs it will not recover, including zoning assessments, title insurance, utilities and security, and it must sell the seven for their full purchase price of $707 million to avoid further waste, the report says. ICE paid an 11% to 13% premium on the warehouses, according to the real estate analytics firm CoStar, as cited by CBS News.
Other initiatives were abandoned after money was spent. After the White House directed officials in January 2025 to use Guantánamo Bay for immigration detention, the Defense Department assembled tents for 5,000 people at a cost of $2.85 million; DHS found they did not meet detention standards, and they were removed before they housed a single detainee. The base has held an average of 16 detainees a day this year. At the Camp East Montana facility in El Paso, an earlier GAO review found ICE spent $7.1 million on detainee meals it did not need.
Some detention costs far more than ICE's normal rate. ICE never signed a contract with Florida for the facility known as “Alligator Alcatraz.” DHS instead reimbursed the state through a special $608 million FEMA grant at $249 per detainee per day, 171% above ICE's normal rate of $92, and pays the same rate for a second state facility in Sanderson, Florida. The Bureau of Prisons charges ICE $182 per detainee per day at eight facilities, a rate driven up by overtime and temporary staffing.
GAO also found that ICE forecast the costs of the facilities it has bought only three years ahead, without planning how to pay for them once the funds Congress provided through 2029 run out, CBS reported. DHS agreed to write a strategic plan but said it would not be finished until August 31, 2027, which GAO said may be too late to prevent more waste. Heather MacLeod, GAO's director of Homeland Security and Justice: “We just saw a real lack of planning overall.” The DHS inspector general is conducting its own audit of how ICE acquired detention space.
A DHS spokesperson told CBS News that ICE is “working at turbo speed on cost-effective and innovative ways to deliver on the American people's mandate for mass deportations of criminal illegal aliens.” The report did not estimate a total amount lost to waste.