The Trump administration wasted millions of dollars in its rapid expansion of immigration detention, including almost $3 million on tents at Guantánamo Bay that were never used, a Government Accountability Office review has found.
The camp at the US naval base in Cuba was intended to hold 5,000 detainees but had an average daily population of just 16 as of June. The shelters failed to meet federal detention standards and the wider plan was eventually abandoned.
The findings detail a series of costly decisions made as officials pursued President Donald Trump’s pledge to detain and deport record numbers of immigrants. Immigration and Customs Enforcement launched six major expansion efforts without a strategic plan and later scaled back four of them.
Immigration detention expansion faced scrutiny
By July, ICE had spent more than $2.5 billion on warehouses and other facilities for detainees without assessing their long-term costs, the congressional watchdog said. The agency agreed with a recommendation to produce a broader plan setting out goals and budgets for future expansion.
At Camp East Montana, an Army site in El Paso, Texas, the government spent $11.5 million on detainee services during a two-week period when the facility was empty. The camp was designed for 5,000 people but held about 1,600 as of February.
ICE also spent $7.1 million on meals between October and March that were not needed at the Texas camp, the review found.
The agency bought 11 warehouses for about $1 billion before deciding to sell seven of them. The seven properties cost $707 million, while zoning assessments and title insurance added $7.7 million; utilities and security for the unused buildings cost a further $12.8 million.
To break even, the government would have to sell the seven warehouses for exactly what it paid for them, according to the review.
The administration also expanded detention capacity through a now-closed Florida site known as Alligator Alcatraz. Rather than using a formal agreement with state or local agencies, the Department of Homeland Security reimbursed Florida through a grant paying $249 for each detainee bed — nearly three times ICE’s average payment this year.
Neither ICE nor the Department of Homeland Security responded to a request for comment.
The review comes as immigrant arrests have reached record levels and illegal border crossings have come to a halt, while the administration has committed billions of dollars to enforcement officers, detention facilities and related operations.
Senator Dick Durbin, the senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, said the findings showed “a shocking pattern of waste” within the administration’s mass deportation campaign. Mr Durbin and two other Democratic senators had asked the Government Accountability Office to examine the cost of the detention expansion.
