Watchdog finds ICE wasted tens of millions on detention projects it never contracted
A GAO report released by three Senate Democrats found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies spent public money on detention sites chosen without the planning the expansion required.
Assembled by Claude from 5 sources at 5 outlets · Thursday, September 24, 2026, Evening edition, 5:20 PM EDT · no human byline
What happened
An investigation found that United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other agencies have wasted tens of millions of dollars pursuing detention projects, the Associated Press reported apnews.com. NewsNation put one figure on it, reporting that ICE wasted $20 million on migrant detention because of poor planning, according to the watchdog newsnationnow.com.
Senators Dick Durbin, Jack Reed and Gary Peters released the Government Accountability Office report, which detailed the expansion of immigration detention and referred to an ICE detention facility on Fort Bliss known as Camp East Montana durbin.senate.gov. The senators' account noted that a stated goal was not reflected in ICE's own detention expansion documents durbin.senate.gov.
Why it matters to investors
The detention buildout is a contracted business, and the report speaks to how those contracts were formed. The Guardian reported that ICE never reached a contract with the state of Florida to operate the facility known as Alligator Alcatraz in the Everglades, which housed detainees for a year until it was closed theguardian.com. Spending without a contract in place is the specific failure mode the watchdog describes, and it is the kind that invites clawbacks and congressional scrutiny.
The named operators are listed companies. NewsNation's account referenced the ICE Processing Center in Adelanto, California, a privately operated immigration detention center run by the GEO Group newsnationnow.com. Coverage from newsfromthestates pointed to CoreCivic's former Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, Minnesota, which is to be used as an ICE detention center newsfromthestates.com.
For holders of those names, the report does not change contracted revenue today. It changes the political cost of the next contract, and it hands appropriators a documented case that the expansion was, in the report's framing, uninformed apnews.com.
What to watch
The first marker is whether the three senators who released the report convert it into oversight hearings or into appropriations language durbin.senate.gov. A GAO finding is an input to that process, not the end of it.
The second is the fate of specific sites. The Everglades facility operated for a year without a state contract and has since closed theguardian.com, while the Minnesota site is being brought into service newsfromthestates.com. Those two trajectories, one closing and one opening, are the practical test of whether the planning problems have been addressed.
The third is the size of the number. The watchdog's figure as reported by NewsNation is $20 million for one strand of the problem newsnationnow.com, while the wire framing is tens of millions across agencies apnews.com. The gap between those two is where the next round of reporting will land.
Sources
- newsnationnow.com: ICE wasted $20M on migrant detention due to poor planning: Watchdog - NewsNation (2026-09-24)
- theguardian.com: ICE has wasted tens of millions to carry out Trump's mass detention agenda - The Guardian (2026-09-24)
- apnews.com: ICE is wasting tens of millions of dollars on 'uninformed' detention projects, report finds (2026-09-24)
- durbin.senate.gov: Durbin, Reed, Peters Release GAO Report Detailing Reckless Expansion Of Immigration ... (2026-09-24)
- newsfromthestates.com: Millions of dollars of waste found in Trump administration push for immigration detention (2026-09-24)