The Trump administration wasted millions of taxpayer dollars in its immigration detention expansion efforts because it didn’t have a strategic plan, a new watchdog report found.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent more than $20 million it can’t recuperate to turn warehouses into detention centers, an initiative the agency has since scaled back, the Government Accountability Office found.
“It is critical that the agency uses these taxpayer dollars efficiently and effectively,” the report published Thursday says. “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.”
After spending $1.07 billion on purchasing 11 warehouses across the country in the first four months of 2026, ICE plans to sell all but four, the GAO report says. But it has also spent $7.7 million on costs like zoning and nearly $13 million on utilities, security and other services for the warehouses.
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The agency could lose even more money if it sells the warehouses for less than $707 million, after paying millions more than previous buyers and appraisal values.
The Department of Homeland Security inspector general is also auditing warehouse purchasing plans that generated bipartisan backlash in Congress. The plan fell to the wayside once Markwayne Mullin became Homeland Security secretary.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) was one of the lawmakers who requested the report.
“Remember when Donald Trump promised to get rid of ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ in Washington?” Durbin said in a social media post. “Well, GAO continues to uncover incompetence and waste at the highest levels of ICE. Americans are outraged at ill-conceived immigration detention projects, and it’s time to hold DHS and ICE responsible.”
The Trump administration is moving ahead with other initiatives to ramp up its detention space without a strategic plan, the GAO report says. The average daily population was more than 67,000 at the end of July, according to ICE data cited in the report. The number of authorized detention centers has roughly doubled, according to the report.
The GAO report comes as ICE has signed five construction contracts worth up to $7.3 billion in Arizona, California, Florida, New York and Texas, according to watchdog group Project Salt Box.
David Schmitt, DHS’ director of the Departmental Audit Liaison Office, wrote in a Sept. 15 letter to GAO that the department would come up with a plan by Aug. 31.
“Securing the nation’s borders and safeguarding the integrity of the immigration system is ICE’s primary focus, and ICE plans to continue to meet the growing demand for bedspace by streamlining the detention and removal processes and focusing on non-traditional facilities built specifically to support ICE’s needs,” Schmitt wrote.
GAO criticized that timeline. “Given ICE’s unprecedented multi-year detention funding and the potential for continued waste of taxpayer dollars, more timely completion may be warranted,” the report says.
The report states that ICE’s recent purchases of existing detention centers could also result in waste. In July and August, ICE purchased four facilities in California, Minnesota and Kansas for $2.2 billion from private prison giant CoreCivic.
“While officials told us that they considered risks, such as environmental liabilities and site history for the facilities they identified for potential purchase, ICE has not assessed the long-term affordability of owning these facilities,” the report states.
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