DHS Signs Contracts Worth Up to $7.3 Billion to Build ICE Detention Space at Government Sites in Five States

Five States, $7.3 Billion, and a Warehouse Deal ICE Is Already Unwinding

The Department of Homeland Security has signed five construction contracts worth up to a combined $7.3 billion to build new immigration detention space^[1][20]. The sites sit on government-owned land in New York, Texas, Arizona, Florida and California^[1][20]. Public radio reports dated September 23 described the signings as happening within the past week^[2].

Three days later, the timing turned awkward. On September 24, the Government Accountability Office, Congress's nonpartisan auditing arm, reported that ICE's earlier attempt to expand detention capacity had gone badly^[4]. ICE had bought 11 warehouses for about $1 billion to convert into detention centers, without the analysis or planning the purchase needed^[4]. It now plans to sell seven of them, and more than $20 million already spent on things like security and zoning work cannot be recovered^[4].

So the same agency that just wasted tens of millions of dollars on one detention expansion plan signed off on a bigger one days before the waste became public. Both of those things are true, and neither cancels the other out.

What "Up to $7.3 Billion" Actually Buys

The contracts are what's called ceiling contracts. That means $7.3 billion is the maximum ICE could spend over the next five years, not money that's already been spent^[1]. ICE places specific orders against that ceiling only when it needs them, and the first orders on the table are for standard detention cell blocks costing $24 million to $42 million each^[1].

That structure is why supporters and critics can look at the same number and see opposite things. To the administration, a ceiling contract is flexibility: ICE pays only for what it actually builds, on land it already owns^[1][4]. To critics, it's a large pot of spending authority attached to no fixed plan — which is close to what went wrong with the warehouses.

The single largest piece reported so far is a $1.2 billion contract for detention expansion near Florence, Arizona, awarded to GardaWorld Federal Services^[12][13]. ICE has said the broader building program, of which these five contracts are the first phase, could eventually reach $10 billion^[1].

The money itself isn't in dispute. It comes from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed in 2025, which gave ICE about $75 billion in total funding, including $45 billion set aside for detention capacity through fiscal year 2029^[3][6]. For comparison, Congress's regular fiscal 2025 budget had given ICE about $3.8 billion for detention facilities^[6]. That's roughly twelve times more money for detention, spread over a longer runway, than the agency was used to working with.

The Number Behind the Push: 67,200 Beds and Counting

The reason ICE wants more space traces to one figure in the GAO report. ICE's average daily detained population rose 71% in a year and a half, from about 39,300 people to about 67,200, between January 20, 2025, and July 30, 2026^[10]. ICE officials told GAO in June 2026 that their target is 100,000 beds^[10].

That's the structural pressure underneath everything else here. Every person ICE arrests and holds while their case moves through the system needs somewhere to stay. More arrests, driven by an expanded enforcement effort that includes 12,000 newly hired officers, mean more people held at once, which means more beds are needed just to keep pace^[7][10]. This isn't a dispute anyone is having — it's the mechanical fact both sides build their arguments on top of.

Where the sides split is over how fast that capacity should be built, and under what rules. GAO's report wasn't just about wasted money. It also found that DHS agreed to write a formal detention expansion strategy but set a completion date of August 31, 2027 — more than a year after the report itself, and well after the new $7.3 billion in contracts will already be committing money^[4][10]. GAO's underlying warning is that the spending is moving faster than the planning that's supposed to guide it.

Vans With No Stated Rules on Food or Bathrooms

Beyond the warehouses and the new construction, planning documents reviewed by NPR describe a third track: "mobile detention facilities" planned for Pennsylvania^[3]. These would be vans, operated by GTI, a subsidiary of the private prison company GEO Group, that would follow ICE officers as they make arrests^[3].

NPR reported that the documents don't specify limits on how long someone could be held in one of these vehicles, or what access detainees would have to food or a bathroom^[3]. Neither ICE nor GEO Group responded to NPR's requests for comment on the plan^[3]. That silence, paired with the lack of detail in the documents themselves, is a big part of why advocacy groups have reacted the way they have.

The American Civil Liberties Union has connected this and other expansion efforts to what it describes as record deaths in ICE detention, arguing that the system is growing faster than the safeguards meant to protect people held in it^[17]. GEO Group, for its part, already holds contracts covering about 25,000 ICE beds and has been placed on a pre-qualified vendor list that lets the government order more capacity from private operators quickly^[7]. The company recently won an extended contract at its Moshannon Valley facility in Pennsylvania and a new five-year contract in North Carolina^[14].

Same Facts, Different Conclusions

Three Senate Democrats — Peters, Durbin and Reed — released the GAO report with a statement calling the detention buildout "reckless."^[9] Immigrant-rights groups, including the American Immigration Council, argue the pattern shows an agency expanding a detention system before it has worked out basic protections for the people inside it^[16][17]. For them, the goal of holding more people is itself the problem, not just how well the agency executes it.

Fox News covered the broader buildout differently, framing it around capacity being built to match a stated enforcement goal: 12,000 new officers and a target of 92,600 new beds, described as a $38.3 billion expansion^[7]. That framing treats the spending as Congress carrying out a law it already passed, not as an agency overstepping its mandate^[6][7].

Right-leaning commentary, including from PJ Media, took a narrower position: the deportation effort "needed more beds," not $20 million in waste^[8]. That's a criticism of ICE's competence and execution, not of the underlying goal — a notably different target than the one Senate Democrats and advocacy groups are aiming at^[8][9].

Coverage differed in more than tone. NPR led its story on the Pennsylvania vans with the most unsettling detail — the lack of stated bathroom and food rules — while noting that ICE and GEO didn't respond to requests for comment^[3]. The Associated Press rounded GAO's "more than $20 million" figure up to "tens of millions" in its headline^[11]. And in this reporting window, no right-leaning outlet was found covering the $7.3 billion contracts themselves at all — the right's attention went to the broader deportation buildout and the GAO waste finding, not the specific new deals^[7][8]. Coverage from outside the U.S. was largely absent too; the one non-U.S. pickup found was a Canadian outlet running the AP's wire story on the GAO report^[11].

What's Still Open

GAO's own warning is the thread left dangling. DHS has agreed that it needs a coherent detention strategy, and it has set a date to deliver one: August 31, 2027^[4][10]. Until then, the $7.3 billion in new contracts, the seven unsold warehouses, and the still-undefined rules for facilities like the Pennsylvania vans will keep moving forward without the plan GAO says should have come first^[3][4].

Whether that gap closes before the money is largely spent is the question GAO posed and didn't answer. It's also the question neither side disputes is real — they just disagree about how much it should slow things down.