- The Government Accountability Office found ICE detention grew 71 percent without a comprehensive strategic plan.
- ICE spent more than $2.5 billion on facilities without adequately assessing long-term costs or alternatives.
- DHS says ICE will deliver a plan by August thirty-first, twenty twenty-seven, a schedule GAO questioned.
The Government Accountability Office faulted ICE for expanding detention without a strategic plan as the ICE Detention Population rose 71%. The average daily count climbed from about 39,300 on January 20, 2025, to nearly 67,200 on July 30, 2026.
The watchdog released its report on September 24, 2026. It titled the review Urgent Planning Needed to Avoid Further Waste of Taxpayer Dollars and assigned it the number GAO-26-108663. The report tied the growth to expansion efforts that lacked a comprehensive framework.
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Congress provided $45 billion for detention-capacity expansion through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The funding increases the stakes of decisions about what facilities ICE needs and what those facilities will cost over time.
GAO said ICE began six detention initiatives without first setting out how the expansion should work. The agency had invested billions since January 2025. It had not established consistent targets for bed capacity or the characteristics those beds should have.
ICE expanded six initiatives without setting consistent bed goals
The review also found that ICE had not sufficiently assessed the costs and risks of different facility types. A plan, GAO said, should connect agency goals to activities and resource needs, with implementation milestones to track progress.
That analysis would give ICE a basis to compare new facilities with options already available in its traditional detention portfolio. Instead, GAO found the agency had not adequately assessed long-term costs or compared more expensive choices with less costly alternatives.
ICE had spent more than $2.5 billion on warehouses and other facilities. The review faulted the agency for making those investments without enough information to judge their long-term affordability.
Facility spending and unused supplies added to the documented losses
One GAO-related finding put waste on abandoned or scaled-back warehouse purchases and associated costs at more than $20 million. ICE had acquired 11 warehouses for detention use and later moved to sell seven of them.
Other reported examples involved supplies that went unused. ICE spent $7.1 million on unneeded food at one Texas detention site, while nearly $3 million in tents remained unused at Guantánamo Bay.
The plans for Guantánamo once contemplated housing 30,000 people. The average daily detained population there was 16 in fiscal 2026. Those figures accompanied the broader concern that ICE had not sufficiently tested its facility choices against actual need.
DHS set a 2027 deadline as GAO urged faster action
DHS accepted GAO’s recommendation and told the watchdog ICE would produce a plan or similar document by August 31, 2027. David Schmitt, the department’s director of the Departmental Audit Liaison Office, set out that timetable in a September 15, 2026 letter.
GAO questioned whether the schedule would curb waste quickly enough. It warned that “given ICE’s unprecedented multi-year detention funding and the potential for continued waste of taxpayer dollars, more timely completion may be warranted.”
The department’s agreement means the agency has accepted the recommendation, but the deadline remains its stated target. GAO’s warning focuses on the risk of continued spending before ICE establishes how to assess its investments.
A GAO director described starts and stops as lawmakers criticized the effort
Heather MacLeod, GAO’s director of Homeland Security and Justice, said the review found a broad failure to plan. “We just saw a real lack of planning overall,” she said, describing the resulting process as “stops and starts.”
On September 24, 2026, Sen. Gary Peters, Sen. Dick Durbin and Sen. Jack Reed said the report showed “reckless expansion.” The senators also characterized ICE’s planning document as effectively just a spreadsheet.
GAO recommendations do not bind an agency as law does. The findings can still shape congressional scrutiny, appropriations and agency planning as lawmakers weigh the detention expansion.
GAO warned that absent better planning, ICE risks continued uninformed decisions, inefficiency and wasted taxpayer dollars. Its recommendation calls for milestones alongside goals, activities and resource needs, giving the agency a way to track whether future expansion matches its stated objectives.
