The GEO Group, the private prison company that runs the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma, Wash., was awarded a contract Wednesday worth about $1.5 billion to keep operating the 1,575-bed facility for up to 10 years, according to federal procurement records.

Federal contracting data on SAM.gov shows that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s detention compliance and removals office signed the contract Wednesday, Oct. 28, with work beginning the same day. The contract covers detention, security, health care, and transportation services at the facility, with orders allowed through Oct. 27, 2036. ICE received one offer. No money has been committed yet, because under this type of contract funds are committed through separate orders.

The new contract follows a sole-source agreement with GEO for housing at the Northwest ICE Processing Center that ran from March 28 through Oct. 27. USAspending.gov shows $63.2 million obligated under that agreement. GEO’s previous 10-year contract for the facility expired in 2025 and was worth at least $700 million.

The listed solicitation date is Saturday, Aug. 29. ICE had posted a solicitation for four turnkey detention centers on Friday, Aug. 28, as Project Salt Box reported the next day.

One of those sites, a 1,500-bed facility near Seattle, listed the Tacoma center as its historical location. The Tacoma record includes no solicitation number, and ICE has not said whether the contract came out of that solicitation.

Project Salt Box assesses that the contract is highly likely to stem from that solicitation, given the closely matching dates, the 10-year length, and the solicitation’s description of the Tacoma center.

That solicitation included a clause saying state law would not apply to a contractor’s work when it would regulate that work. It is unclear whether the Tacoma contract carries the same language.

The Seattle portion of the solicitation also required contractors to guard detainees held in hotels. A guard addendum calls for contractor detention officers to staff up to 10 hotel rooms at a time, on an as-needed basis, for “temporary lodging for migrant families and juveniles” for up to 72 hours.

Each occupied room would have two officers, one of the same sex as the detainee inside the room and one of the opposite sex outside, with a shift supervisor on duty while anyone is housed at the hotel. The officers would be unarmed or armed as ICE’s 2026 detention standards require. The addendum names a DoubleTree hotel at 18740 International Blvd. in SeaTac, and says the work could extend to “any other local hospitals or hotels as needed.” ICE reserves the right to add or change locations without changing the contract price. It is unclear whether the Tacoma contract carries these duties.

The facility, about 30 miles south of Seattle, has drawn repeated scrutiny. It has 1,575 beds and held nearly 1,460 people in mid-August, according to members of Congress who visited, The Seattle Times reported.

Two detainees died there in 2024. Charles Leo Daniel, 61, was found dead Thursday, March 7, and Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., later asked the Government Accountability Office to audit ICE health care. Jose Manuel Sanchez-Castro, 36, died Sunday, Oct. 27, days after being booked in. The Pierce County medical examiner ruled his death natural, caused by a perforated duodenal ulcer, in a finding reported in March 2026. A 911 recording obtained by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights captured a nurse saying he had been going through fentanyl withdrawal. His widow and the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project have sued ICE for records.

ICE has said detainees receive a health screening within 12 hours of arrival and that emergency care is not denied.

A 2020 University of Washington report found that the facility held people in solitary confinement longer, on average, than any other ICE facility. A Department of Homeland Security inspector general report in May 2023, based on an unannounced visit in 2022, found the facility met several detention standards. It also found that more than 30% of medical staff positions were vacant.

In February, three men held at the facility sued GEO in Pierce County Superior Court, accusing guards of assault and sexual abuse in 2024. The lawsuit also alleges that the company falsified reports to ICE and conducted sham internal investigations, The Seattle Times reported.

GEO Group and the federal government have said repeatedly that the facility meets rigorous standards.

The University of Washington Center for Human Rights found 157 reports of assault, sexual abuse, or other sex crimes at the facility to Tacoma police between Jan. 1, 2015, and Jan. 1, 2025. Detained people were the reported victims in 139 of them, or 89%. The center found that police apparently made no contact with the victim in 64% of the cases involving detained people.

Responding to the report, GEO spokesperson Christopher Ferreira said that the allegations were part of a politically motivated campaign to abolish ICE and end federal immigration detention, The Seattle Times reported in February.

In June, Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said the state Department of Health had received more than 3,500 complaints about the facility, including neglected medical care, contaminated food, and unsanitary conditions. In July, U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle ordered GEO to let state health inspectors in, excluding areas ICE controls for administrative and medical purposes. KUOW reported in August that state officials were still being blocked from inspecting.

Also in August, more than 140 detainees ended a nearly weeklong hunger strike over food and medical care. A GEO spokesperson told The Seattle Times that ICE is responsible for health care at the facility. ICE declined to comment.

The White House budget office has released about $7 billion for immigration detention, deportations, and hiring for the budget year that runs through next September. It is holding back another $36.6 billion until next October.

The money belongs to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and comes from the 2025 tax and spending law Republicans called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The White House Office of Management and Budget, which must sign off before an agency can use money Congress approved, gave its approval on Tuesday.

How can ICE use this $7 billion?

With OMB approval, ICE can now solicit, sign contracts, and place orders with this money. About three-quarters of the $7 billion is meant for two purposes: holding people in detention and moving them out of the country.

Detention gets the most, at $3.2 billion. That follows a year of heavy spending to add detention space around the U.S. and its territories. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees it, have done so in three ways. They spent about $1.07 billion on empty warehouses to convert into detention centers, a plan they have since paused. They paid about $3.15 billion to buy seven detention centers from the private prison companies CoreCivic and GEO Group, which still run them. And the department has awarded construction contracts worth up to $7.3 billion to build new detention space at five government sites. As of late September, no construction had started.

Another $2 billion pays for moving detainees between facilities and flying people out of the country.

Staffing is the next major cost. ICE can spend $598 million to hire officers and support staff, $120 million to hire government lawyers who argue deportation cases in immigration court, and $56 million on signing and retention bonuses.

The program known as 287(g), named for a section of federal immigration law, lets ICE deputize local police and sheriff’s officers to act as immigration officers. ICE revived its most aggressive version, the task force model, in January 2025 after it had been shut down for about 12 years. More than 1,900 agencies in at least 30 states have since signed up, with more than 29,000 deputized officers, ProPublica reported on Sunday. In Ingram, Texas, a town of about 1,900 people, police turned over to ICE a number of people equal to about 10 percent of the town’s population within a year, according to the report. One patrol officer there earned more than a quarter of his base salary from ICE work in nine months.

The apportionment sets aside a combined $645 million for 287(g). About $453 million of that is meant to repay local agencies for their costs, and the remaining $193 million covers ICE’s own costs to run the program. The document does not say how the $453 million will be divided. In September 2025, ICE announced incentives for participating agencies that include a $100,000 vehicle stipend, $7,500 per officer for equipment, quarterly performance bonuses, and help paying officer salaries and overtime. Another $177 million in the apportionment would repay other agencies that work with ICE on joint task forces.

The last $143 million, about 2 percent of the total, covers offices, computers, vehicles, recruiting, and radios, along with a few small programs. One line, for $200,000, is labeled “Promoting Family Unity.” The document does not say what it pays for.

Each of these amounts is a limit. ICE cannot move money from one category to another without new approval from the budget office.

How long does ICE have to use it?

ICE has almost three years — until Sept. 30, 2029 — to spend the full balance of about $43.5 billion.

The $36.6 billion being held for next October is not off limits. The budget office can release more of it whenever it chooses by signing off on a new apportionment. The portion authorized last Tuesday represents a fraction of the total amount left on ICE’s books. But more money can be apportioned throughout the year as ICE asks for it, or as the White House releases it.

Spread evenly over the next two budget years after this one, the $36.6 billion would come to about $18 billion a year, more than two times what has been cleared so far for this year.

Money that ICE has not committed by the 2029 deadline can no longer be used for new contracts. ICE can keep paying bills on contracts it has already signed until Sept. 30, 2034. After that, any money left in the account goes back to the Treasury.

Would the midterms change this?

Not really. The money is already law. To take it back, Congress would have to pass a new law, and President Trump would have to sign it. He can veto it until he leaves office in January 2029. Overriding a veto takes a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate, and even a big Democratic win on election night is unlikely to produce majorities that large.

Congress also passed a second law in June, called the Secure America Act. It gave ICE and Customs and Border Protection about $70 billion more through 2029. That means neither agency needs new money from Congress for the rest of Mr. Trump’s term. Speaker Mike Johnson said at the time that Democrats “will have no ability to defund these agencies” in this Congress or the next.

If Democrats win the House or the Senate, they could still hold hearings, demand records, and try to attach rules to other spending bills, such as the body cameras, mask ban, and judicial warrants they sought during this year’s fight over Homeland Security funding. Those bills would still need the president’s signature. In January, Senate Democrats backed an amendment to repeal $75 billion of ICE’s funding and redirect it to Medicaid. It failed 49 to 51. Democratic leaders have not said whether they would try again.

Two things could still change the outcome. One is the 2028 presidential election. A new president would take office in January 2029, about eight months before the money expires, and the new administration’s budget office would decide how much of what is left to release. The other is how members of Congress vote on future homeland security bills, which could carry new limits on ICE.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection hired a private contractor for up to $9.2 million to help review body camera video, cellphone data, and other evidence “for high-stakes, high-profile litigation” against the agency, saying its own lawyers cannot keep up.

A sole-source justification posted Tuesday to SAM.gov, the federal government’s contracting website, explains why CBP hired Contact Government Services, a Washington company, without seeking competing bids.

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The agency said the need was so urgent that following normal procedures would cause “unacceptable delays.”

Federal spending records show that CBP placed the order on Sept. 29 and added more money the next day. Those were the final two days of the federal fiscal year, when the one-year funds covering the work were set to expire. About $5 million has been committed so far, and the order extends through April 2027, with an option to extend it to September 2027.

According to the award notice, staff will review files for CBP’s Office of Chief Counsel and black out privileged or sensitive information before material is turned over in court. According to CBP, a single case can involve hundreds of thousands or even millions of files, and a missed court deadline could bring fines or rulings against the agency.

In its justification, the agency tied the work to lawsuits over how it is carrying out the Secure America Act, a roughly $70 billion law that funds CBP and ICE through 2029. The contractor would help defend CBP “in litigation challenging CBP’s legal authorities,” the agency wrote.

Although the agency called the rise in lawsuits “unanticipated and unexpected,” the strain had been palpable for months. In February, CBS News reported that one Justice Department official described the wave of cases from detained immigrants as a “tsunami.” The Hill reported this month that internal Justice Department figures showed record immigration caseloads while the number of government lawyers fell.

Filling its own legal jobs has also been difficult. In September, the agency advertised 20 attorney openings nationwide, and a recruiting post offered new hires bonuses of up to $50,000.

Body camera footage has become a repeated point of conflict in court. In January, a federal judge in Chicago ordered the release of about 500 videos from federal agents within 120 days, after Homeland Security lawyers asked to release only 50 a month.

In explaining why it chose the company without competition, CBP pointed to the firm’s work for the Justice Department, whose lawyers represent CBP in federal court. According to the justification, the company has staffed nearly 100 attorneys for document review at the department. CBP said that work has made the firm familiar with how the department handles these cases.

The agency also said the company can quickly hire up to 63 people able to pass a Tier 5 background investigation, the most extensive check the government uses for national security positions. The company recruits staff with prior law enforcement experience, which CBP described as an advantage in reviewing the evidence.

CBP said the order covers only its immediate needs and that it is considering a longer-term contract.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to keep a private contractor running the nation’s largest immigration detention center into late 2028 without seeking competing bids, according to a revised federal justification reviewed by Project Salt Box.

JUSTIFICATION FOR OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION

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DHS ICE intends to definitize a previously awarded letter contract for detention and facility management services at Camp East Montana on a sole source basis.

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The extension would raise the estimated value of Amentum Services Inc.’s contract at Camp East Montana, a tent camp on the Fort Bliss Army post in El Paso, Texas, to about $2.8 billion.

That is more than double the $1.2 billion The Associated Press reported in July that Amentum stood to be paid for running the camp from March 2026 through September 2027.

Throughout the filing, the camp is called a temporary facility, and officials say they are still weighing whether to replace it.

The cost of running the camp would rise over time. The first seven months would cost about $477 million, or roughly $68 million a month. By the final six months, the cost would reach about $97 million a month. Another $57 million in the document is redacted with no explanation.

ICE’s contracting office argues that only Amentum can do the work because the company owns the camp’s housing units, generators, security systems, and kitchen equipment. Officials also point to a nationwide shortage of detention beds. Amentum was the only company to express interest after a notice in March, according to the filing. That notice told companies it was not a request for competitive quotes. How Amentum came to own the equipment is never explained.

Amentum, based in Chantilly, Va., had been a subcontractor to Acquisition Logistics, which won the Army’s original contract on July 18, 2025. Acquisition Logistics, a small business, had never won a federal contract worth more than $16 million. ICE took over the contract in October 2025, later ended it, and in March gave Amentum a $453 million no-bid contract. DHS said Amentum was picked for its “size, maturity and pedigree.”

Three detainees have died at the camp since it opened in August 2025. They are Francisco Gaspar-Andres, 48, of Guatemala; Geraldo Lunas Campos, 55, of Cuba; and Victor Manuel Diaz, 36, of Nicaragua.

The Government Accountability Office — the investigative arm of Congress — found that evidence in Lunas Campos’ death was missing or destroyed.

ICE posted a preliminary review of Lunas Campos’ death to its online FOIA library, along with 32 other redacted reviews of detainee deaths. Project Salt Box downloaded the reviews on Sept. 26. Two days later, they were no longer on the site, and the organization archived copies that afternoon.

The review, dated Jan. 16, says Lunas Campos had wrapped a sweatshirt around his neck and resisted guards who tried to handcuff him, and that the guards then used force. It does not describe what they did. About seven minutes later, nurses who had come to hand out medications found him without a pulse. The El Paso County medical examiner later ruled his death a homicide caused by pressure on his neck and torso. ICE did not respond to a request for comment about the review.

An ICE inspection in February found 49 violations of detention standards, including inadequate medical care and failures to document checks meant to prevent self-harm and suicide. The GAO later found that ICE did not inspect the camp before detainees arrived, and that a security guard lost a loaded gun in January. The GAO also reported a detainee escape in October 2025 that ICE blamed on the contractor’s oversight failures.

ICE’s case for the no-bid deal cites the February inspection as one reason the agency had to act quickly. Even so, the justification blacks out how many problems inspectors found and what they were, details the agency had already made public.

The GAO also found that the original contract required ICE to pay for meals and services for 5,000 people, even when the camp held far fewer. At the end of February, it held about 1,600.

In June, the GAO told the government to take four steps in response to what it found at the camp. None has been completed.

The GAO said ICE should pay based on how many people are actually held at its detention centers, instead of paying for empty beds. It said ICE should inspect new detention centers before sending anyone to them. And it said the Army and DHS should each study what went wrong at Camp East Montana so the same mistakes are not repeated.

DHS agreed. It promised that by the end of the year, ICE would pay for Camp East Montana based on the number of detainees.

But the new plan for Amentum lists a set price for each month and does not mention paying by the number of detainees. DHS also said it already has a rule requiring inspections before a center opens. The GAO pointed out that ICE did not follow that rule at Camp East Montana.

Neither study is done, and the Army does not expect to finish its study until Dec. 30.

A Homeland Security letter describes a privately owned office building in Round Rock, Texas, as a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office, the first public sign of what records suggest is a new enforcement office in the Austin suburb.

The letter, dated Sept. 11 and sent to Round Rock’s Historic Preservation Commission, titles the project “ICE ERO Round Rock Security Fence.” ERO stands for Enforcement and Removal Operations, the ICE division that arrests, detains, and deports immigrants. A person with knowledge of ICE’s plans in the Austin area provided the letter to Project Salt Box.

3161 Eagles Nest ICE Section 106 Letter

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Round Rock sits about 20 miles north of Austin in Williamson County, which is also home to the T. Don Hutto Residential Center, an immigration detention center in Taylor. CoreCivic, a private prison company, runs the center under a contract with ICE. Taylor is about 15 miles east of the Eagles Nest Street building.

Public records do not show an existing ICE field office in Round Rock, even though the DHS correspondence refers to the building as ICE’s field office in the city. Project Salt Box found no record of an awarded lease for 3161 Eagles Nest St., and the address does not appear in the General Services Administration’s public inventory of federally owned and leased property.

The building’s owner took a step this summer that landlords take before renting to the federal government. Federal agencies cannot sign a lease with a landlord or pay it rent unless the landlord is registered in SAM.gov, the government’s system for companies that do business with it. The owner, Burke Eagles Nest II LLC, was formed in 2017 but registered for the first time June 16, less than three months before the DHS letter was sent, according to Williamson County appraisal and federal contracting records.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment, and neither did the agency’s San Antonio field office, which covers Round Rock. A property manager for Burke Real Estate Group, who is listed in federal contracting records as the owner’s government contact, also did not respond.

Under the plan, ICE would install about 1,015 feet of new fencing to create a secure parking area, along with two security gates equipped with cameras and card readers. The letter says all work would stay within the property line.

The letter is part of a review required under Section 106 of the National Historic Preservation Act. The law requires federal agencies to consider how their projects could affect historic buildings, archaeological sites, and places of cultural importance to Native American tribes before the work begins.

As part of the review, agencies must consult with state historic preservation officials, local governments, and tribes. Because those parties must be notified, the filings can reveal federal projects before they are announced.

Gabrielle Fernandez, an environmental protection specialist with DHS, wrote that the building and seven nearby properties were built around 2009 or later and are not historic. She also wrote that past construction had already heavily disturbed the ground. ICE concluded that the project would not affect any historic properties.

Fernandez wrote similar Section 106 letters earlier this year for warehouses the department bought for ICE, including ones in San Antonio, Texas, and Williamsport, Md., according to public records and court filings. A federal judge has barred work at the Williamsport warehouse until ICE completes a full environmental review, and ICE agreed in court to pause conversion work at several other warehouses while the agency completes a new environmental assessment.

ICE invited the Texas Historical Commission, the Round Rock commission, and six federally recognized tribes to comment. The tribes are the Apache Tribe of Oklahoma, the Comanche Nation, the Coushatta Tribe of Louisiana, the Delaware Nation, the Tonkawa Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, and the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes. The letter said ICE had received no comments as of Sept. 11 and gave the parties 30 days to respond.

Project Salt Box has previously reported on federal lease searches tied to ICE office expansion in San Antonio and in Newburgh, N.Y.

A federal judge in Baltimore has dismissed Maryland’s lawsuit seeking records on conditions in the immigration holding rooms at the George H. Fallon Federal Building, in a ruling made public on Friday. The judge found that the state’s subpoena, a legal order to hand over records, relied on a state law that does not apply to the federal government.

Judge Julie R. Rubin of the U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland ruled that the state had no legal right to sue U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, and the Department of Homeland Security because its subpoena was invalid from the start. She wrote that the court could not enforce it.

She did not rule on whether conditions in the holding rooms are lawful.

The subpoena, issued by the office of Attorney General Anthony Brown, cited a state law which authorizes investigations of civil rights violations. The law applies to any “person.” Maryland defines that word to include individuals and companies but not the federal government, Rubin wrote.

She also left open whether the law could be used to investigate a private contractor working for the federal government.

Whether state law applies to federal agencies is likely to come up more often as ICE moves to own more of the places where it holds people. ICE’s draft contract terms for new detention centers say state and local laws would not apply to them. On an earnings call this year, George Zoley, chief executive of the private prison company GEO Group, was asked why ICE would want to own facilities rather than contract for them. He said federal ownership brings protection from what he called “unwarranted litigation” and is the logical response to states considering more oversight.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, has bought 11 warehouses for a combined $1.04 billion to turn into detention centers. It has also bought five detention centers from private prison companies, four from CoreCivic and one from GEO Group. The companies have said they will keep running the sites. A separate ICE plan calls for contractors to run new detention centers near Denver, Miami, Seattle, and State College, Pa.

Another Maryland law lets the attorney general challenge federal actions that threaten residents, including on immigration. The state cited that law in a cover letter but not in the subpoena itself. The judge said only the law named in the subpoena counted.

Brown’s office delivered the subpoena to ICE and the Department of Homeland Security on Jan. 30, asking for nine kinds of records from the previous year. The requests included detainee complaints, medical records, reports on the use of force, contracts for services, and detention logs.

The Fallon building has five holding rooms with a combined capacity of 56 people. They are meant for stays of up to about 12 hours and are not set up for medical care, hygiene, or sleeping. A video showing conditions inside led Brown’s office to open an investigation early this year.

The state alleged overcrowding, long detentions, too little food and water, unsanitary conditions, and denial of access to lawyers. Its lawsuit cited a former worker at ICE’s Baltimore office who told WUSA9 in February that blankets were soiled and that women were denied menstrual products.

ICE denied the subpoena on Feb. 25. The agency said the requests were too broad, too burdensome, and duplicated records it had already turned over in a separate lawsuit by detainees over the same rooms. The state replied that a court order in that case limits its access to those records. In March, the agency asked for another month to respond.

The state sued on March 10, arguing that the refusal was unlawful and arbitrary and that the agency had taken too long to respond.

In later court filings, the state said it was also investigating a private contractor it linked to conditions in the rooms. Rubin rejected that argument because the state’s lawsuit named only ICE and the Department of Homeland Security as targets of the investigation. She wrote that a party cannot add new claims in a later filing.

Rubin also oversees a separate lawsuit by people held in the same rooms. Earlier this year, she issued a temporary court order in their favor.

The judge dismissed the case without prejudice, which means the state can file it again. As of publication, the state had not filed an appeal.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services is seeking contractors to help build a sweeping criminal intelligence operation that would analyze information on people and businesses, rank investigative leads, and maintain a separate system for information about confidential informants.

The plans appear in a draft work statement that USCIS circulated Tuesday with a market research survey run through the General Services Administration, which helps agencies gauge interest from potential contractors. The contractor would support the Criminal Investigative Division, or CID, of the agency’s Fraud Detection and National Security Directorate, known as FDNS.

Criminal Investigative Intelligence And Analytics Support Capability For FDNS, CID

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The division is growing under a rule that took effect Oct. 6, 2025, and gave USCIS the power to make arrests, carry firearms, and execute search and arrest warrants. The draft says FDNS must build investigative and analytic infrastructure “on an accelerated timeline” while USCIS recruits, onboards, and trains special agents.

The draft was posted a day after agents with Homeland Security Investigations, the criminal investigative arm of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, searched the Washington home of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) as part of a criminal investigation into her immigration paperwork. A federal judge has limited the Justice Department’s access to Omar’s records in the investigation, CNN reported Wednesday.

The investigation aims to build a case to strip Omar of her citizenship and deport her, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing U.S. officials and others familiar with it. Investigators are examining whether Omar or her late father listed her age as 17 rather than 18 on paperwork that let her gain citizenship through her father in 2000, the Journal reported. Omar’s office told the Journal there is no basis for the investigation.

HSI officials reviewed a similar tip during the Biden administration and did not pursue it because they lacked evidence of fraud, the Journal reported.

The possible false statements on immigration paperwork that investigators are examining fall within the mission the draft gives the Criminal Investigative Division: investigating criminal activity that exploits immigration laws and programs, and referring cases for prosecution. The contractor would help sort tips, rank leads, and prepare case materials for government review. Reports describe Homeland Security Investigations as leading the Omar investigation with help from the Justice Department, and the draft does not mention her.

USCIS did not answer questions from Project Salt Box about the contract, including whether the agency already uses confidential informants and how many special agents it has hired. The agency referred Project Salt Box to the draft work statement, which does not address those questions. USCIS Director Joseph Edlow told The Wall Street Journal last year that the agency planned to train several hundred special agents to look for fraud in immigration applications and arrest the immigrants or lawyers involved.

Contractors would also combine information from USCIS files with data from law enforcement agencies, companies that sell personal data, public websites, financial records, and maps. They would use it to write summaries on people and businesses, draw charts showing how people are connected, and assess whether a case should be referred for further action.

The information USCIS may provide includes the results of visits officers make to homes and workplaces to check applications, background check findings, and reports banks file with the government on large cash transactions and suspicious activity. The draft also says the contractor’s researchers would search social media.

Within 90 days of an award, the contractor would deliver a framework for scoring leads by significance, urgency, potential impact, and resource needs. A second framework, due within 120 days, would help government staff judge whether the information in a case is complete and corroborated enough for further action. The draft states twice that this second framework will not predict whether a prosecution will occur.

The document repeats throughout that contractor work is “advisory” and that government employees keep all investigative, enforcement, and prosecution decisions.

The draft also describes a “secure and segregated” system for managing confidential informant information, kept apart from the division’s general case files. Contractors would help design, test, and document the system. The draft bars them from recruiting, directing, paying, or meeting with informants and says those decisions belong to government employees.

The contract would also support the FDNS Tip Unit, which receives about 600 tips per business day, according to the draft. Program estimates indicate about half may contain information that warrants further government review. The tips include fraud allegations, possible national security concerns, public safety allegations, and threats against protected persons.

The contractor would help configure rules-based or artificial intelligence tools to flag duplicate tips, link related ones, and recommend how each should be prioritized and routed. The draft bars the use of tip information to train outside or general-purpose AI models.

The draft calls for a 12-month contract based at USCIS facilities in the Washington area. Work would start with a headquarters “Jump Team,” with a plan to extend support to field offices later. Anticipated roles include criminal investigative analysts, forensic accountants, data scientists, open-source intelligence specialists, and geospatial analysts. Most positions require a high-risk public trust background check at a minimum, with secret or top-secret clearances for some assignments. The draft does not include an estimated value.

The USCIS draft follows a similar plan from ICE. In September, Project Salt Box reported on a draft statement of work for ERO ONE, an intelligence contract for ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division estimated at more than $100 million. That draft called for 142 contract analysts at ICE field offices and targeting centers, all with top-secret clearances and access to sensitive compartmented information.

A DHS forecast lists Dec. 10 as the planned solicitation date for ERO ONE. The contracting specialist listed on the ERO ONE document told The American Prospect that ICE already knows its potential bidders and is unlikely to hold an industry day.

Both drafts ask contract analysts to map networks and links between people while stating that contractors will not make enforcement decisions. USCIS sets a lower minimum clearance and a shorter term. Its draft also covers tip processing and informant records.

“Without this support, CID’s ability to identify fraud patterns, prioritize referrals, develop time-sensitive leads for Government review, and provide executive decision support may be materially impaired,” the draft says.

The Department of Homeland Security plans to give a Nebraska company a no-bid contract for software meant to let federal agents search billions of wiretap, phone, and location records, according to a notice posted Wednesday.

Agents using the system could question an artificial intelligence assistant in plain English. A requirements document attached to the notice calls for a single platform that gathers live wiretaps, call records, email, financial records, and social media data for investigators at Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s criminal investigations branch, Homeland Security Investigations.

ICE said in the notice that Pen-Link Ltd. of Lincoln, Nebraska, is the only company “reasonably available” to do the work because of its capabilities and the “proprietary nature of the services.” The contract calls for one year of work with four one-year options, for a possible five years. The notice gives no dollar amount. Other companies have until 10 a.m. Monday, Oct. 26, to send a one-page response showing they could do the job.

Pen-Link already sells ICE a separate tool called Webloc, which tracks phones using location data collected from mobile apps and digital advertising. ICE pays for access to that data instead of getting it through a court order. The notice does not say whether Webloc data will feed the new system. In March, 72 members of Congress called for an investigation of ICE and other agencies over what they called warrantless purchases of Americans’ location data.

The requirements document describes a system for thousands of agents, with at least 500 using it at the same time in offices across the United States and overseas. The system must store at least 10 terabytes of data, which the document says covers billions of communication records.

The requirements call for live wiretaps and live location “pings” from phones, along with records of who called whom and when. They also list “tower dumps,” which are lists of every phone that connected to a cell tower during a set period and can include many people who are not under investigation. The other data listed includes email, web browsing history, financial records, and social media records from companies such as Google, Facebook, Snapchat, and WhatsApp, along with data copied from seized phones.

The tools described include maps of where phones have been, alerts when a phone enters a marked area, and a phone app that displays live data. The system must also link to a national platform run by the Homeland Security Task Force that flags when two agencies are investigating the same phone number or account.

The document describes an assistant that runs on ICE’s own Microsoft Azure accounts. Agents ask it to summarize, map, and chart the data, and it translates and transcribes recordings. The document says ICE data and agents’ questions may not be used to train outside AI models and that every use of the assistant must be logged. A separate entry in DHS’s public inventory of AI tools describes an ICE project to search and summarize translated wiretap recordings with a large language model. The inventory lists that project as not yet deployed.

The requirements also say the AI assistant must “prevent vendor lock-in,” meaning the agency should not become dependent on one company. The notice does not explain how ICE weighed that goal against its finding that only Pen-Link can do the work.

The notice follows an Aug. 10 request for information in which ICE asked companies about a “Telecommunications Analysis System” with the same features, according to Biometric Update. ICE described that request as market research and said it was not committing to buy anything.

The notice comes as ICE is ramping up contracts for surveillance tools and intelligence analysts. A statement of work posted Sept. 18, first reported by Project Salt Box, calls for 142 contract intelligence analysts with top secret clearances at 24 field offices and three national centers under a program called ERO ONE. The government has said it expects to spend more than $100 million on the contract. Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in an American Prospect article published Wednesday that the program “looks dangerously like the construction of an internal spying agency.” DHS did not respond to the Prospect’s request for comment.

Pen-Link has sold investigative software to police and federal agencies since it was founded in 1987. Its main product, PLX, helps investigators organize and analyze call records, search histories, and other data that phone and technology companies turn over under court orders, according to an April report by the Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto. In 2022, Forbes reported that Pen-Link held about $20 million a year in contracts with federal agencies including ICE, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration. Fed360, a website that compiles federal contracting data, lists Pen-Link with $266 million in federal awards since fiscal 2015. Most of that money came from the DEA and the Justice Department, and ICE accounted for about 15%.

ICE already relies on PLX. A DHS purchasing forecast posted in February says the Homeland Security Task Force “requires” PLX for its “telecommunication analysis and intercept” work. The forecast estimated that purchase at $5 million to $10 million and said no competition was planned. In August, U.S. Customs and Border Protection posted its own notice saying it planned to negotiate a PLX contract with Pen-Link.

In 2023, Pen-Link merged with Cobwebs Technologies, an Israeli surveillance company, after both came under the same owner, the investment firm Spire Capital. Pen-Link now also sells two tools that Cobwebs built. Tangles searches social media and other websites. Webloc, the location tool, draws on records from hundreds of millions of phones. A January report by 404 Media described it as designed to monitor a neighborhood or block for phones and follow them from work to home. The Citizen Lab found that the data covers up to 500 million devices with up to three years of history, and that Webloc identifies each phone by its advertising ID, a number assigned to the phone for ad targeting, rather than by its owner’s name.

ICE bought Tangles and Webloc licenses worth up to $2.3 million for September 2025 through September 2026, according to a contract document first reported by 404 Media. The document says the HSI Office of Intelligence uses the tools to support investigations of cross-border crime. A DHS forecast posted in April lists a follow-on purchase of an open-source intelligence tool from Pen-Link for that office, worth up to $20 million over five years.

Pen-Link told the Citizen Lab that it gets its location data from providers that obtain users’ consent through apps and that remove sensitive locations. The company said its customers use its tools to find kidnapped children, fight human and drug trafficking, and identify possible terror threats.

ICE is a law enforcement agency, not an intelligence agency. It is not part of the U.S. intelligence community, so it does not have the national security spying powers that the National Security Agency uses to collect foreign communications.

Most of the data the system is designed to hold comes through criminal law tools that require a judge’s approval. To listen to calls or read messages as they happen, agents must get an order from a federal judge under the Wiretap Act. They must show probable cause that a specific serious crime is taking place. The law lists the crimes that qualify, and smuggling people into the country is one of them. Deportation cases are civil matters, and civil immigration violations do not qualify.

Wiretap content is among the most tightly regulated data in the telecommunications analysis platform ICE is contracting. The requirements section of the notice of intent files them under “Title III,” the common name for the federal wiretap statutes.

Under the law, a phone tap needs sign-off from a senior Justice Department official before prosecutors approach a judge, and the judge must be satisfied that other investigative methods have failed or appear unlikely to work. Orders generally expire after 30 days unless a judge extends them, and the statute directs agents to limit how much unrelated conversation they capture. Recordings go under seal and stay on file for 10 years, and people named in an order typically receive notice within 90 days of its end. Officers may pass the content to other law enforcement officials as their official duties require. The documents leave open how those limits apply to a platform that holds wiretap content alongside tower dumps, email, and financial records, links to partner agencies, and lets an AI assistant summarize translated recordings.

A separate court order lets agents see in real time which phone numbers, email addresses, or internet addresses a person contacts, though not what was said. The government only has to certify to a judge that the information is relevant to a criminal investigation. Agents can get records that phone and technology companies keep through subpoenas, court orders, or warrants, depending on the type of record. In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in Carpenter v. United States that police generally need a warrant to get a person’s past cellphone location records from a phone company. A 1994 law requires phone and internet companies to build their networks so they can deliver wiretaps and call records when a court orders it, and the requirements document says the new system must accept data in the formats that law requires.

Tower dumps face a legal challenge of their own. On Aug. 5, Judge Carlton Reeves of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi ruled that warrants for tower dumps are unconstitutional in every case. Reeves wrote that a tower dump amounts to a general warrant, the kind the Fourth Amendment was written to prohibit, because it names no suspect and reaches every phone near a tower. The case grew out of a federal gang investigation in Jackson, where investigators sought records from towers near the sites of violent crimes. Reeves wrote that the requests could produce “thousands if not tens of thousands” of records.

The government appealed to the Fifth Circuit on Sept. 3. Neither the Supreme Court nor the Fifth Circuit has ruled on tower dumps, and lower courts are divided on whether they count as searches at all. The Eighth Circuit, in a 2021 case, found a tower dump warrant for 90-minute periods particular enough. The order does not say which federal agency sought the records.

Purchased location data is different. Agencies that buy it have said no warrant is needed because the data is sold commercially. Privacy groups such as the Electronic Privacy Information Center say buying the data lets agencies avoid the warrant required to get the same location history from a phone company.

In 2023, the DHS inspector general found that ICE, CBP, and the Secret Service did not follow federal privacy rules before they bought and used phone location data. The report said the agencies did not complete required privacy reviews first. ICE disagreed with a recommendation to stop using the data until those reviews were approved and said continued use helped HSI carry out its mission. ICE later said it stopped using such data in late 2023. It bought the Webloc licenses described above in 2025.

Neither the notice nor the requirements document says how long ICE may keep the data in the new system. They also leave open whether records on people who are not suspects, such as those in tower dumps, stay searchable for other cases, and whether ICE’s deportation officers, who cannot get wiretaps for civil cases, can search data that HSI collects in criminal cases.

Bottom Line Up Front

ICE establishes its own detention construction contracts: ICE signed seven contracts with a combined ceiling of around $8 billion for construction at 13 government-owned sites nationwide, including several outside of the continental United States. The awards establish a five-year framework for ordering design and construction work, and one of the first funded projects is the design and build-out of secure housing units at the Port Isabel Service Processing Center.

Planning begins for a nationwide intelligence network: ICE outlined plans for ERO ONE, a contract intelligence workforce that would place 142 analysts across field offices, headquarters, and national targeting centers. Analysts would conduct background research, prepare threat assessments, and map relationships among individuals, organizations, locations, and events to support enforcement planning. ICE expects the eventual contract to exceed $100 million, and plans to release the RFP in December of this year.

CBP awards contracts for new Border Patrol stations and checkpoints: Customs and Border Protection awarded fifteen new contracts totaling over $1.6 billion for the design and construction of border patrol stations, checkpoints, and other facilities. The portfolio includes Border Patrol stations in Texas, New Mexico, California, and Maine; checkpoints in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona; and aviation projects in San Angelo and Tucson.

Detention expansion includes modular and temporary units: ICE is pursuing smaller-scale detention capacity alongside its permanent construction plans. The agency added $7.2 million to an existing order for a tent facility for detained women at Batavia, New York, while seeking contractor input on prefabricated detention, interview, and virtual courtroom units at approximately 50 enforcement offices nationwide.

September’s Biggest Contracts

CBP awarded over $5 billion in contracts this month, and almost a third of that was awarded for the design and build-out of new border patrol stations and checkpoints. The 15 contracts will fund the construction of seven Border Patrol stations, five checkpoint facilities, a hangar in San Angelo, Texas, and a renovation of the Tucson Air Branch in Arizona. A separate $332 million project in Laredo, Texas, is described only as a design-build project, leaving its facility type unspecified.

Texas is the center of this month’s construction activity, with Border Patrol station projects in Rio Grande City, Brackettville, Eagle Pass, and Presidio; new checkpoints in Sierra Blanca and Laredo; and the San Angelo hangar. Elsewhere in the Southwest, CBP awarded both a station and a checkpoint in Las Cruces, New Mexico, checkpoints in Wellton and Nogales, Arizona, and a station in Calexico, California. The portfolio also reaches the northern border with a new 50-agent Border Patrol station in Houlton, Maine.

At ICE, the majority of spending this month went towards continuing operations. Amentum received an additional $200 million to operate Camp East Montana, the temporary immigration detention center at Fort Bliss that has drawn scrutiny over its conditions and is the subject of a lawsuit alleging abuse, unsafe living conditions, and inadequate medical care.

B.I. Incorporated, a subsidiary of The GEO Group, was awarded an additional $41 million to continue running the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program (ISAP). ISAP is an alternatives-to-detention program that uses ankle monitors, smartphone check-ins, and other surveillance technology to monitor immigrants living outside detention while their immigration cases proceed. ICE has increasingly shifted participants from smartphone-based monitoring to GPS ankle monitors.

In San Antonio, GardaWorld Federal received an additional $44 million to continue converting a recently purchased warehouse into an immigration detention center. It is the only ICE warehouse conversion project that has not been paused or canceled.

ICE has big plans for FY27

While September did not bring about a huge end-of-year spend at ICE, the agency made some big moves to set itself up for the future. The largest contracting action was the award of “Single Award Construction Contracts” that will be used to build additional detention space at 13 locations nationwide, including several sites outside of the continental United States.

Most of the contracts don’t have any projects funded through them yet, but Burrow Global JV was awarded $21.4 million to start building Secure Housing Units at Port Isabel Service Processing Center. As we previously reported, the building will consist of 26 steel cells: 21 in a men’s section, three in a women’s section, and two built to meet accessibility rules, one on each side. It would also have three day rooms, three showers, two soundproof search rooms, secure entry vestibules, a control room, staff offices, and storage space. The men’s and women’s sections would have separate fenced recreation yards. To stay up to date on the detention expansion construction contracts, visit our tracker.

ICE is also laying the groundwork for a larger intelligence operation. The agency’s September market research for ERO ONE - Enforcement and Removal Operations Overwatch and National Security Enforcement - outlined a network of 142 contract intelligence analysts supporting 24 field offices, headquarters, and three national targeting centers. Analysts would research classified and unclassified information, prepare threat assessments, and build link charts mapping relationships among individuals, organizations, locations, and events.

The agency expects the eventual intelligence contract to exceed $100 million, and ICE said it planned to release a formal solicitation by December 10 and award the work in spring 2027.

Another procurement to watch as FY27 begins is ICE’s request for proposals for “turn-key detention facilities” serving the Denver, Miami, Philadelphia, and Seattle areas of responsibility. Interested companies have already submitted proposals, and ICE is currently evaluating them with the intent to award separate contracts for each facility that will have anticipated ordering periods of 10 years. Those awards are expected in October.

Together with the construction contracts and ERO ONE planning, the turnkey procurement shows ICE preparing several parallel routes for FY27 expansion: building additional detention space, contracting for facilities and their operation, and adding intelligence support for enforcement.

About this Report

All procurement data used in this report is from usaspending.gov and SAM.gov. If there are specific procurements, companies, regions, or topics you would like us to cover in future monthly reports, please reach out to us and let us know.

Phone calls, messages, and video visits from people in immigration detention could soon feed a single AI-powered system that builds voice profiles, interprets slang, and maps whom detainees talk to and spend time with, according to a request for information the federal government posted Friday.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement posted the request on SAM.gov, the federal contracting website. ICE facilities produce phone, message, video, and camera data “at volumes that cannot be reviewed and correlated manually in a timely manner,” according to the accompanying draft work statement.

The work statement describes a surveillance system for detention facilities. It would combine and analyze what detainees say, how their voices sound, where they go, and who they spend time with.

SI-Powered Communications and Video Intelligence Suite Performance Work Statement

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Requests for information are not formal solicitations or requests for proposals. Agencies typically use them as a first step to gauge whether industry can deliver a capability, and they do not commit the government to issuing a solicitation or awarding a contract. The requirements in the work statement could change or never lead to a purchase.

A shared database would automatically link calls, messages, voice matches, camera events, housing assignments, movement records, and investigative files. It would connect to “investigative or case-management sources designated by the Government,” which the work statement does not name. ICE’s existing case management system is called Investigative Case Management and is supplied by Palantir.

Analysts could view a detainee’s contacts and activities as a relationship map or timeline. Vendors may also offer “outside-party identity enrichment” from public or commercial data sources, which ICE would have to specifically authorize before use.

Voice profiles, or digital records of how a person’s voice sounds, would be built from calls ICE has already recorded. Detainees would not be asked to give a voice sample or to cooperate in any way, and ICE would not need new recording equipment, according to the work statement.

A call would be flagged if the caller’s voice does not match the person who holds the account, which could mean someone is using another person’s account or PIN. The system could also compare whoever answers a call against a voice profile tied to the number that was dialed. That would bring relatives and others outside the facilities into the analysis. The same voice could be matched across accounts, phones, and facilities, and, with separate approval, across other agencies.

Software would scan calls and messages for what the work statement calls “coded language,” slang, and words or phrases that start turning up more often than usual. Investigators would get summaries and alerts.

Cameras would be watched for fights and for behavior the work statement labels “isolation or withdrawal,” “unusual congregation,” and “unusual movement or interaction.” Staff would also be alerted to signs of distress or self-harm, and analysts could track who interacts with whom over time.

A human being must review the system’s findings, and the work statement says anything it produces cannot be the only basis for enforcement or punishment. ICE’s standard contract language, approved by its legal office on July 16, 2025, more than a year before this request, also bars using the technology to predict a person’s “future behavior or emotional state” in ways that lead to discriminatory or unlawful actions. The work statement says that language will be added to all ICE contracts.

Nothing in the text explains how a detainee or family member would find out about a wrong voice match or challenge it. It also does not say whether signs of distress flagged for staff could be used for security or discipline.

Monitoring detainee calls is nothing new. Under ICE’s detention rules, a facility can monitor calls for security reasons at its own discretion. It must have a written policy and tell detainees about the monitoring in its handbook and on a notice posted at each monitored phone. Phone and video calls about legal matters cannot be electronically monitored without a court order. But the system described in the work statement would do much more than monitor calls. It would also handle messages, video visits, and camera footage, build voice profiles, and connect the results to detainees’ housing, movement, and investigation records.

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The Federal Bureau of Prisons, part of the Justice Department, has already bought AI for monitoring communications. It selected Leo Technologies for a five-year contract worth more than $106 million, Correctional News reported in May. The company’s Verus platform will provide “AI-enabled translation and transcription services” for monitoring inmate phone calls and electronic messages and would search them for “actionable intelligence” on security threats, contraband, and gang activity. The report does not say whether the contract includes voice identification or video.

DHS keeps a public list of the artificial intelligence tools its agencies use. The list has 50 entries for ICE, and this system is not among them. Two earlier ICE tools, one that analyzed voices and one that analyzed video, are listed as discontinued.

A White House Office of Management and Budget memo from April 2025 requires extra safeguards for federal AI that could affect people’s rights or safety, which it calls “high-impact.” The safeguards include testing before use, ongoing monitoring, and a way for people to appeal.

That label applies when an AI system’s output is the “principal basis” for a decision with a significant effect on a person. ICE has reviewed 15 of its tools that were presumed to be high-impact and decided none of them were, mostly because a person checks the results before anyone acts on them.

The work statement posted today requires the extra safeguards only if this system is eventually labeled high-impact.

Throughout, the work statement refers to the technology as “SI,” for “super intelligence,” the term President Donald Trump ordered federal agencies to adopt in an executive order last month.

ICE did not respond to a list of questions that Project Salt Box emailed Friday.

The federal government has signed two leases worth a combined $51.2 million for office space in San Antonio, Texas, that federal records link to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The General Services Administration finds and manages office space for federal agencies. A review of federal contracting records shows it awarded the leases Tuesday and Wednesday to BOZIII-WatersEdge II LLC.

The company’s listed address belongs to a four-story office building at Brooks, a redevelopment of the former Brooks Air Force Base on the city’s Southeast Side.

Over their full terms, the leases are worth $42.5 million and $8.8 million in rent. GSA’s April solicitations called for 17-year leases, and the government could not end them during the first 15 years. After that, it could cancel either lease, or part of the space, with 90 days’ notice. The award notices do not say what terms GSA finally agreed to or how much rent the government will pay each year.

The award notices published this week do not name a tenant, which GSA often withholds on leases for agencies with special security needs. They carry project numbers 4TX0983 and 5TX0805, the same two numbers in a GSA order signed Oct. 30, 2025, that hired a real estate broker to work on the two lease projects. The order’s description reads “Agency: U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE),” with San Antonio listed as the location. Project Salt Box reported the connection in May.

The records do not say what ICE plans to do in the offices or how many employees will work there.

ICE said in a statement that it would not confirm office locations because “our officers are facing a coordinated campaign of violence against them including an 8,000% increase in death threats against them and a 1,600% increase in assaults against them.” The statement said ICE has added 12,000 officers and agents with funding from the 2025 budget law, a 120% increase in its workforce, and asked, “Is it really news that when a federal agency hires more personnel that they need more space?”

With the two leases, ICE has committed about $134.6 million in public funds to San Antonio property this year. The total also includes the $66.1 million purchase of a warehouse at 542 SE Loop 410 on the East Side and a $17.3 million order to GardaWorld Federal Services, signed Aug. 27, to renovate and run it.

The address listed for BOZIII-WatersEdge II, 7611 Inner Circle Drive, belongs to WatersEdge II, the newer of two four-story office buildings at Brooks, each with about 100,000 square feet. Listings posted this year described it as empty and offered it for sale. Combined, the leases cover about 65,800 square feet.

Texas business records list Stephanie L. Tavenner, an accounting manager at Cambridge Holdings LLC of Vienna, Va., as the registered agent for BOZIII-WatersEdge II. Cambridge’s website lists the firm as the developer and property manager of both WatersEdge buildings and names past projects for federal agencies, including a Drug Enforcement Administration laboratory in Miami and a Federal Aviation Administration charting office.

The Brooks Development Authority, a public agency that oversees the redevelopment of the former base, has its offices in WatersEdge I, the building next door. It promoted the WatersEdge project as the first high-end office space built on the city’s South Side.

Brooks lies in a federal Opportunity Zone under a program Congress created in 2017 to give investors tax breaks for putting money into low-income areas. The sale listing for WatersEdge II advertised the building’s location in the zone.

The warehouse ICE bought is on the city’s East Side, separate from Brooks, and the agency plans to hold 1,000 to 1,500 people there at a time while their immigration cases are processed. Then-acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told local officials the site would open by Sept. 30, but acting Director David J. Venturella moved the expected opening to early 2027 in a June letter to Mayor Gina Ortiz Jones. The GardaWorld order calls for work to run through Aug. 25, 2027.

San Antonio’s City Council passed a zoning rule in April that requires council approval for new detention centers near homes, schools, parks, and places of worship, but the rule does not apply to property the federal government owns or leases. Bexar County Commissioner Tommy Calvert organized an Oct. 3 march toward the warehouse to press city and county attorneys to sue.

Cambridge Holdings, the Brooks Development Authority, and the San Antonio mayor’s office did not respond to emailed requests for comment.

This story was updated Oct. 9 to include a statement from ICE.

The seven properties are in Hamburg and Tremont, Pa.; Social Circle and Flowery Branch, Ga.; Socorro, Texas; Salt Lake City; and Romulus, Mich.

The listing describes the buildings as vacant and mostly new bulk distribution centers, with six of the seven built since 2018. It markets them to logistics and distribution companies and says they will be sold free of existing financing. The listing does not mention ICE or the government’s plans to use the buildings for detention.

Cushman & Wakefield is marketing the properties through a website called the Federal Warehouse Portfolio, offering the seven buildings individually or as a package.

A strategy built for speed and ‘cruelty’

The warehouse strategy was designed to let ICE expand detention capacity faster than traditional construction would allow.

Rather than build new facilities, the government bought large industrial buildings that could be converted into detention and processing centers. Internal documents described facilities ranging from short-term processing sites to so-called mega-centers capable of holding thousands of people.

Project Salt Box reported in March that the Hagerstown and Surprise, Arizona, warehouses were each being converted under contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The Hagerstown facility was designed for an initial capacity of 540 detainees, and internal planning documents contemplated as many as 1,500.

Career officials inside ICE warned early that the plan would not work. In February, a federal procurement specialist with 25 years of experience in national security logistics told Project Salt Box that career staff believed the detention expansion was “doomed to failure.” The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation, said warnings from experienced civil servants were being overruled by political leadership that viewed “cruelty as the policy.”

According to the source, a senior ICE official had recommended buying federal property or former detention facilities that already had working utilities. Instead, the source said, the administration “went the wrong way and looked at warehouses,” largely because people with connections to the administration owned such sites and wanted to sell them. The Hagerstown warehouse had been allocated only enough water for a logistics operation, not for 1,500 people.

“ERO staff continues to state this is not a viable option, but they are consistently overruled,” the source said, referring to ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division.

The speed of the purchases created its own problems.

In Hagerstown, federal officials completed an environmental review and approved the project on Jan. 15, one day before the government closed on the purchase. Project Salt Box later reported that ICE’s environmental analysis treated the proposed detention facility as functionally equivalent to the existing warehouse. ICE planned to turn the building into a secure, 24-hour residential facility with dormitories, medical care, kitchens and recreation areas.

A federal judge later halted the Hagerstown project after Maryland challenged the government’s environmental review. Similar legal challenges followed in Arizona, Michigan, New Jersey and elsewhere.

By spring, work on the Hagerstown and Surprise facilities had stopped. Project Salt Box reported that the Surprise construction contract, valued at up to $313 million, had been placed under a federal stop-work order before Arizona filed its lawsuit.

The government paid a premium

The purchases also raised questions about how much ICE paid for the properties.

Project Salt Box reported in March that ICE paid $145.4 million for the Salt Lake City warehouse, a property previously valued at about $97 million.

In Social Circle, Ga., ICE paid about $129 million for a property previously valued at about $29 million. In Socorro, Texas, a warehouse last valued at about $11 million sold to the federal government for about $123 million.

Across more than a dozen transactions examined by Project Salt Box, ICE repeatedly paid well above previous valuations and recent sales of comparable properties.

Some of the private owners who sold the properties made substantial gains.

The Hagerstown sale was one of the clearest examples. Project Salt Box reported that the property had been refinanced at $76.8 million in June 2025, seven months before the federal government bought it for $102.4 million. The refinancing and sale generated tens of millions of dollars for the property’s owners.

In a joint investigation published in April, Project Salt Box and More Perfect Union found that several of the warehouses had been owned by institutional real estate funds and financed with bank debt. When the government bought those properties, the loans were paid off and the liens were released.

The Tremont, Pa., warehouse, a former Big Lots distribution center that sat empty after the company went bankrupt in 2024, belonged to a subsidiary of a real estate fund managed by Blue Owl Capital, a New York private equity firm. ICE bought it for $119.5 million, about double its estimated market value. The Salt Lake City warehouse had belonged to Deutsche Bank through a series of subsidiaries. Both properties are among the seven now for sale.

Goldman Sachs refinanced the Hagerstown property as part of a $352 million loan months before the sale. The bank was also once the majority owner of the Roxbury, New Jersey, warehouse that ICE bought for $129.3 million.

A Goldman Sachs representative told More Perfect Union that the bank, as a lender, was not involved in the sale of individual properties and would not share in any profit from them. Blue Owl did not respond to a request for comment, and Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

The warehouses became liabilities

By May, ICE was weighing how to maintain warehouses that were no longer being converted.

Project Salt Box reported that the agency was preparing to hire a contractor for up to $20 million to perform caretaker and maintenance work at mothballed warehouses, including keeping security, electrical and fire-detection systems running. None of the warehouses was operating as a detention facility at the time.

In June, The New York Times reported that ICE planned to sell or transfer seven of the 11 properties.

In a report released Sept. 24, the Government Accountability Office found that ICE had already spent more than $20 million it could not recover on the seven warehouses it planned to sell. That included about $7.7 million for items such as zoning assessments and title insurance and another $12.8 million for utilities, security and other services through August.

Any sale below the original purchase price would add to those losses. The asking price for the seven properties is below what ICE paid for them.

A shift to prisons and new construction

The sale does not mean the administration has given up on expanding immigration detention. Project Salt Box’s procurement reporting shows that the strategy has changed.

As the warehouse projects stalled, the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, began buying existing detention facilities from private prison companies. It has also pursued new construction on federal land and sought turnkey detention facilities that can open more quickly.

In August, Project Salt Box reported that the warehouse strategy had become only one part of a broader detention expansion. ICE had bought existing facilities from CoreCivic and was pursuing other contracts to add detention space.

The seven warehouses now for sale account for about $707 million of the $1.07 billion ICE spent on warehouses. They include the Socorro property, which ICE once planned as an 8,500-bed detention center and later said would become a training and office campus.

The remaining four have followed different paths. The Hagerstown and Surprise projects remain tied up in court. In San Antonio, ICE has hired a contractor to convert its warehouse into a processing center. In Roxbury, the Department of Homeland Security reversed a decision to sell the warehouse and told a court it may convert the site to detention after all.

In January, the government was buying warehouses at a rapid pace to build a new detention network. Nine months later, it is relying on a commercial real estate broker to find buyers for seven of them.

@msnowProject Salt Box has been tracking the government’s buying spree for its new archipelago of huge, legal, black-site immigration prisons all over America.” MS NOW’s Rachel Maddow highlights the work of Project Salt Box, a Baltimore-based volunteer group tracking the rapid expansion of ICE facilities across the country. #news #ICE #immigration

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But that is no longer the whole story.

Click here to launch the updated tracker

Over the past year, the government’s expansion of immigration jail space has accelerated quickly and changed shape.

ICE spent $1.07 billion on 11 warehouses, then moved to sell seven of them after lawsuits, community opposition and a Government Accountability Office finding that it had spent more than $20 million it cannot recover.

In their place, the Department of Homeland Security has bought existing private prisons and signed contracts to build new secure units on federal land it already owns.

Tracking this expansion is critical to understanding where billions of federal dollars are going, which communities are affected and how ICE's approach is changing.

So we expanded the tracker.

Warehouses

This streamlined and improved version of our original tracker follows the 11 warehouses ICE bought — and nearly two dozen canceled by community pushback — with the current status of each site.

Track warehouses

Private detention center purchases

This new page tracks the government’s purchases of existing detention centers from private prison companies. So far, the government has spent $3.16 billion on five facilities from CoreCivic and GEO Group.

Track private prison purchases

New construction

New to the tracker, this page monitors contracts awarded to build on land ICE already owns. Six contracts awarded in September account for nearly $8 billion of a program with a $10 billion limit. Those figures are ceilings, not spending, and ICE has not yet ordered work under them.

Track new detention construction

We redesigned the pages to make them easier to use. Immigration detention has never been higher, and the government is spending billions of dollars to add more space to drive more arrests.

It is our hope that reporters, researchers, local officials, and residents can use these tools to understand what is being bought and built, who is being paid and where.

If you know of a purchase, contract or site we have not listed, email projectsaltbox@proton.me.

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, bought the 1,280-bed Adelanto West ICE Processing Center, the 660-bed Adelanto East ICE Processing Center, and the 704-bed Desert View Annex.

Together, the three hold 2,644 beds and about 501,767 square feet of building space, according to the purchase agreement GEO filed Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The sale closed Oct. 2, when the two sides signed the agreement.

CBRE, the world’s largest commercial real estate services firm by revenue, was the only broker GEO worked with on the sale, the agreement says.

GEO said it expects to net about $705 million after federal and state taxes, fees, and other costs. The Boca Raton, Fla.-based company said it will use that money, along with cash from its operations, to pay down debt, buy back shares of its common stock, and cover other general business needs.

In the same announcement, GEO said its board of directors had raised the company’s stock repurchase authorization by $750 million, to $1.25 billion. The authorization runs through Dec. 31, 2029, and does not require the company to buy any particular amount of stock.

A buyback reduces the number of shares in circulation, which can raise the value of each remaining share and the per-share earnings that investors watch.

The $750 million increase is about $45 million more than the roughly $705 million GEO expects to net from the sale.

George Zoley, GEO’s chairman, chief executive officer, and founder, said in a statement that the company is focused on using its capital to “enhance long-term value for shareholders, including through share repurchases.”

Under its existing contract with ICE, GEO will keep providing what it calls support services at all three facilities. The current term ends Dec. 19, 2029, and a five-year option could extend it to Dec. 19, 2034.

More sales may follow. In its SEC filing Monday, the company said it is in active talks to sell several other facilities it owns to ICE, though any deal depends on the two sides agreeing on a price and on GEO continuing to run those facilities under long-term contracts. GEO said no other agreements are currently in place.

CoreCivic, another for-profit detention company that contracts with ICE, used a similar model this summer.

On July 2, CoreCivic sold the California City Detention Facility and the Otay Mesa Detention Center in California to DHS for a combined $1.5 billion.

Two more facilities followed in August, when CoreCivic sold the Midwest Regional Reception Center in Leavenworth, Kan., and the Prairie Correctional Facility in Appleton, Minn., to DHS for a combined $734 million.

CoreCivic’s purchase agreements, filed with the SEC, also name CBRE as the broker. They say CoreCivic alone was responsible for paying CBRE’s commission under a separate agreement.

The government took ownership in each sale, and the seller kept running the facilities under contracts with ICE.

On Aug. 4, about a month after its California sales closed, CoreCivic’s board raised the company’s share repurchase authorization by $500 million, to $1.2 billion.

Six days later, on Aug. 10, CoreCivic entered a $500 million accelerated share repurchase agreement with a financial institution.

In that kind of deal, a company pays a bank the full amount up front and receives an initial batch of shares right away, with the rest settled later.

The company said it would pay the full $500 million that day and expected to receive about 12.4 million shares at the start.

GEO’s announcement did not include a deal of that kind. Instead, GEO said repurchases may be made over time, including on the open market, at management’s discretion.

The contract also reaches into immigration detention centers. ResponseAI will provide enrollment support "at each ICE detention facility" identified in future task orders, including help offering people voluntary departure "beginning at the point of initial apprehension."

A fast-growing ICE contractor

ResponseAI is relatively new to immigration enforcement. Its earlier federal work was mostly military logistics, and its website still describes it as a “Global Logistics & Emergency Response” firm. That has changed quickly. In December 2025, ICE named ResponseAI one of 12 companies sharing $1.1 billion in skip-tracing contracts, paying private firms to find immigrants for enforcement. ResponseAI’s share was $9,715,000. This year it also won an ICE order to support surge law enforcement activities in the St. Paul, Minnesota area.

In August, CBP hired ResponseAI as one of four companies to track down deported migrants in Mexico, Honduras and Guatemala who the government says owe hundreds of millions of dollars in unpaid fines. Each of those two-year contracts is capped at $9 million. According to USAspending.gov, ICE is now ResponseAI’s single largest federal customer, accounting for about $12.4 million of the roughly $29.7 million the company has received.

Outside of DHS, ResponseAI is expanding into another area of federal return and relocation work. On October 1, a notice was published on SAM.gov to announce the transfer of an additional contract held by ResponseAI from the Department of the Interior to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The award, titled “Repatriation Case Management and Financial Support Services,” adds a significant expansion in scope and operational requirements when combined with the company’s existing obligations.

The company’s president and co-founder, James Kraemer, also leads Global Emergency Response, a military health and logistics software company in Augusta, Georgia.

A glimpse into DHS’ planning

When DHS asked companies to bid on this contract, it gave them a sample month of work to price so it could compare bids side by side. DHS said the numbers were only for comparing bids and were not a promise of how much work the winner would get. Still, they show how large a program DHS asked companies to prepare for.

Initially, in a pricing request released on Aug. 21, DHS told companies to plan for 110,000 people a year leaving through the program, about 9,167 a month. It also told them where to assume those people would go: 20% each to Colombia and Venezuela, 11% to Honduras, 8% to Nicaragua and 7% to Mexico. The rest would go to Guatemala, Ecuador, El Salvador, Peru, Brazil or unspecified destinations. Companies were asked to price flights from seven large U.S. cities, including New York, Los Angeles and Houston, to those countries’ capitals.

A week later, DHS replaced that document and removed the annual figure and country-by-country breakdown. In its place, DHS gave companies a new, broader workload estimate: 15,500 cases a month, split evenly between people in ICE custody and people living outside detention. For bid-pricing purposes, DHS told contractors to assume that 12,307 referred people would depart each month and that 3,193 cases would end without a departure.

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DHS didn’t say where any of these numbers came from, and they shouldn’t be interpreted as real enrollment counts or official goals. That said, several of the deleted figures were oddly specific, including the uneven shares by country, an exact annual total and a precise share of people paying for their own flights. This may suggest that they were based on real data or an internal estimate, though the documents don’t say which. Project Salt Box reached out to DHS for clarity on these numbers and did not receive a response.

What Comes Next

DHS has disclosed little beyond the selection announcement. The agency has not yet publicly released the contract award, so the final ceiling, period of performance, and initial funding are still unknown. It’s also unclear if DHS has issued ResponseAI its first task order and, if so, what work that order covers, how much it is worth or where it will be performed.

The next step will be the transition from Salus, which has been running the program’s operations. ResponseAI has 10 business days to submit a transition-in plan and will be required to update it weekly until the handoff is complete. That plan is supposed to cover staffing, on-boarding, transfer of knowledge, systems access, reporting and facility coordination. Federal contracts often include transition provisions intended to prevent gaps when work moves from one contractor to another, so it’s likely Salus will be transitioning out over the next few months. DHS has not said how it will manage the handoff, including how active cases, personal data and detention-facility operations will move to ResponseAI.

ResponseAI, DHS, and Salus Worldwide did not respond to requests for comment.

Update, Oct. 8, 2026

A temporary detention structure planned for the federal immigration center in Buffalo, N.Y., will hold up to 100 people of all security levels in double bunks, according to a document posted Wednesday to SAM.gov, the federal contracting website.

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Justification for other than full and open competition for temporary structures at Batavia.

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The document explains why ICE is giving the work to Akima Infrastructure Protection without competition. While it does not mention women or tents, it involves the same contract, the same company and temporary housing at the same center as the tent facility for detained women that Project Salt Box reported on Sept. 30.

The structure will have its own water, sewage and electrical systems and will not connect to the existing building unless the government approves. It will include a separate medical unit, and Akima will choose where to place it inside the center’s secure perimeter.

ICE wrote that it needs more detention beds in New York because state and local detention space and cooperation with local jails have changed. The document does not name New York’s Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, which took effect Aug. 25 and bars counties from holding people for immigration authorities.

ICE called the structure a temporary measure while it puts “longer-term solutions” in place in the Buffalo area, and wrote that it expects to buy future detention space there in a different way. The new work runs for about three years. The agency also wrote that keeping the work inside the federally owned perimeter would let it carry out its mission “without undue regulatory interference.”

The document does not say what the longer-term solutions are. On Sept. 20, DHS signed a contract worth up to $1.5 billion with Rapid Deployment Inc., a company based in Mobile, Ala., to design and build at the Batavia center over five years, Project Salt Box reported. ICE has not ordered any work or committed any money under that contract, according to federal contracting records.

ICE posted a notice on Aug. 27 saying it planned to give Akima the work without competition and gave other companies one day to respond, and none did.

All dollar amounts in the document are redacted.

The Department of Homeland Security will pay Akima Infrastructure Protection, which runs migrant detention at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, $7.2 million to build a tent facility for detained women near Buffalo, N.Y., after the state barred county jails from holding people for immigration authorities.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of the department, added the money Tuesday to Akima’s work at the Buffalo Service Processing Center in Batavia, according to a federal contracting notice reviewed by Project Salt Box.

The record says the money is for “the establishment of a soft-sided tent facility for housing female aliens.”

The money was added to an existing $9.4 million order ICE signed in July for routine detention and transportation services at the center.

The contracting record does not say how many women the tent camp will hold, where on the property it will be built, or when construction will begin.

ICE uses “soft-sided” to describe tent-style detention camps, which it has increasingly favored over permanent buildings. The largest, Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, consists of large canvas tents on gravel and can hold up to 5,000 people.

Akima Infrastructure Protection is one of several companies under Akima, a federal contractor owned by NANA Regional Corp., an Alaska Native corporation. Another Akima company provided guards at Camp East Montana until this year. The family of a Cuban detainee whose death there was ruled a homicide is suing that company and NANA, alleging the guards killed him.

New York’s Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, which bars counties from holding people for immigration authorities, took effect Aug. 25. Homeland Security officials told New York Focus in July that the Batavia expansion was needed because of state laws barring counties from contracting with ICE to house detainees.

In August, ICE said it planned to add a temporary structure for up to 100 detainees at Batavia, Project Salt Box reported. It is not clear whether that structure is part of the tent camp.

The Department of Homeland Security, ICE, Akima, and Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Federal immigration authorities bought four robot dogs that can listen for movement inside buildings and help tactical teams look into hard-to-reach spaces, according to a government document explaining why the purchase was made without competitive bidding.

JUSTIFICATION FOR OTHER THAN FULL AND OPEN COMPETITION

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The document, posted to SAM.gov on Tuesday, shows ICE paid $110,200 for each robot package. The order also covers four robotic arms, four thermal zoom cameras, four radio kits and training for officers. With training and shipping, the total comes to about $326,000 per robot.

According to the document, the robots will support ICE’s Special Response Teams, including in dark settings where officers use night vision equipment. It says the robot’s microphone can pick up movement so the operator can alert the team “to the presence of a subject.” The robot’s arm can reach 5½ feet to see on top of closets, bunk beds and some crawl spaces, the document says.

The package also includes a two-way communication system that the document describes as being for de-escalation.

The document ties the purchase to the Subterranean Border Defense Act, a law on efforts against cross-border smuggling tunnels, and to President Donald Trump’s executive order titled “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.”

It says the robots will carry an oxygen sensor to check whether the air in tunnels is safe to breathe.

The document says the robots are also meant to detect radiation, toxic gas leaks and explosives. However, it describes RADeCO’s Blackstone detection software as optional and does not list it among the items purchased.

ICE posted a notice seeking potential vendors on Aug. 28, and two companies responded. The agency rejected GovTRobotics, which offered a standard Boston Dynamics Spot with an arm. The document says that offer did not meet ICE’s specifications and that GovTRobotics was not an authorized Boston Dynamics reseller.

This story has been updated to clarify that although ICE did not post a public solicitation for the order, it did post a notice on SAM.gov on Aug. 28 seeking potential vendors. Two companies responded, but ICE still awarded the order to RADeCO as a sole-source purchase without competitive bidding.

The document ties the purchase to the Subterranean Border Defense Act, a law on efforts against cross-border smuggling tunnels, and to President Trump’s executive order “Protecting the American People Against Invasion.” It says the robots will carry an oxygen sensor to check whether the air in tunnels is safe to breathe. The document also says the robots are meant to detect radiation, toxic gas leaks and explosives, but it describes RADeCO’s Blackstone detection software as optional and does not list it among the items purchased.

ICE posted a notice seeking potential vendors on Aug. 28, and two companies responded. The agency rejected the other bidder, GovTRobotics, which offered a standard Boston Dynamics Spot with an arm. According to the document, that offer did not meet ICE’s specifications, and the company was not an authorized Boston Dynamics reseller.

Federal immigration authorities have bought $1.3 million worth of robot dogs from a Connecticut company, according to a federal contract record reviewed by Project Salt Box Monday. The purchase comes a month after the agency disclosed plans to buy the machines.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement signed the $1,304,296 purchase order on Friday with RADeCO Inc. of Plainfield, Conn., an authorized distributor and industry partner of Boston Dynamics.

The order, which runs until Nov. 24, covers “Cerberus Spot quadruped robots and accessories” for the agency’s Office of Firearms and Tactical Programs, according to the record.

RADeCO sells the Cerberus as a customized version of the Boston Dynamics Spot robot and describes it as a fully integrated platform for explosive ordnance disposal and for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear detection, known as CBRN.

The agency did not seek competing bids for the order. According to the contract record, ICE used a rule that allows agencies to buy from a single company when only that company can meet their needs, and RADeCO submitted the only offer. ICE had posted a notice on Aug. 28 seeking potential vendors, and two companies responded before the agency asked only RADeCO for an offer. The record shows that ICE did not post a public solicitation for the order.

According to a product description on the company’s website, the Cerberus adds updated ground station controls, thermal, infrared and high-definition cameras for remote driving, extended-range communications equipment that RADeCO calls “military grade,” and its own Blackstone detection software.

The Blackstone software sends readings from CBRN sensors on the robot to the Android Team Awareness Kit, a smartphone app that the military and law enforcement agencies use to share maps, locations and other information in the field, according to RADeCO. The company says the software is part of a project funded by a Department of Homeland Security research division that works on countering weapons of mass destruction.

A Homeland Security procurement forecast, first reported by ABC News on Aug. 28, said ICE planned to spend up to $2 million on the robots and could use them to detect hazardous gas, inspect unexploded ordnance, investigate suspicious packages and explore underground or confined spaces. Some of that work overlaps with cases handled by Homeland Security Investigations, ICE’s investigative arm, which pursues cross-border smuggling tunnels and drug cases that can involve labs with toxic chemicals.

Detecting radiological and nuclear material, which the Cerberus package is also built to do, has mainly been the work of Customs and Border Protection and other federal agencies.

Boston Dynamics has said its terms of use bar customers from arming the robots. When news of the planned purchase broke, the company said “any attempted weaponization of Boston Dynamics’ robots is strictly prohibited,” according to Mass Daily News.

It is not clear why the agency’s tactical office needed the full detection package. ICE did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment from Project Salt Box.

Federal immigration authorities on Friday asked contractors whether they could lease and install prefabricated detention units at about 50 enforcement offices across the continental U.S., saying arrests have outpaced the space those offices have to process and hold the people they detain.

A draft work statement released with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement request calls for a “Field Detention Unit” of about 900 square feet at each office.

The unit “must already be designed for the intended purpose of secure holding and processing of detained individuals,” the draft says.

Modular Building PWS

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Each detention unit would sit on asphalt or concrete behind an office's existing security fence, with a counter for processing people and a separate holding area fitted with a toilet and sink for detainees according to the draft work statement.

The agency also wants a 300-square-foot unit for interviewing people in custody and a 60-square-foot “Virtual Immigration Court Unit” for hearings run by the Executive Office for Immigration Review, the Justice Department agency that operates the immigration courts. Both must also be designed for their purpose before delivery.

The draft says several of the agency’s enforcement offices “have exceeded their organic processing and temporary holding capabilities,” citing an “exceptionally high operational tempo with increased arrests.” It says temporary buildings are “urgently needed” to add holding capacity and “non-detained hearing space on site.”

The request does not identify the field offices.

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The draft sets no occupancy limit or maximum length of stay for the holding units, and it makes no mention of beds. The units must be climate controlled, furnished for operational use and cleaned three times a week.

The contractor would install and maintain the units, and the draft does not assign it any role in guarding or caring for the people held inside.

The request is market research rather than a contract offer. ICE asked companies to describe similar work from the past three years and to estimate how quickly they could deliver each type of unit, with responses due Oct. 6. The agency gives no estimate of cost or contract length, but states that upon award, the contractor must deliver a mobilization plan within 10 days.

The draft work statement ICE posted to SAM.gov appears to have originated from a GEO Group account. A review of the file's metadata performed by Project Salt Box shows that the Word document used to produce the PDF lists its company as “GEO Group Inc.,” the private prison operator that is one of ICE's largest detention contractors. The author’s name, which this publication has withheld, matches the name of a GEO Group Contract Compliance Manager in Boca Raton, Fla.

ICE field offices already contain holding rooms, which agency standards for decades limited to stays of 12 hours.

On June 24, 2025, the agency waived that rule in an internal memo to field office directors, extending the limit to 72 hours “absent exceptional circumstances.” Over the first six months of President Donald Trump’s second term, 18% of people placed in ICE hold rooms were kept longer than 12 hours, up from about 4% in 2024.

In Maryland, a class action on behalf of everyone held in holding cells at ICE’s Baltimore Field Office argues the waiver violates the Administrative Procedure Act and that ICE regularly holds people there for days at a time.

The courtroom units would arrive as immigration courts move some hearings into Homeland Security space.

In New York, the court began sending immigrants without lawyers on Sept. 14 to new hearing rooms inside 26 Federal Plaza, where DHS and the court have barred observers, reporters and attorneys. People in those rooms appear by video before a judge, a DHS attorney and a court clerk, each in a different part of the building.

Under the draft, the contractor must work with ICE’s facilities office and the General Services Administration to get each installation approved “in a manner that is acceptable with the building owner.”

It must also build and maintain the utilities and parking needed to provide what the draft calls “a safe, secure, and compliant detention environment.”

Representatives for GEO Group and ICE did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

A company that helped ICE buy warehouses for immigration detention has won a $655 million contract to build at seven sites the agency groups under the label “Mega Hub DC.”

SK2 Rudiarius LLC, a joint venture between two firms with past ICE work, was awarded the contract on Monday, according to federal contracting records reviewed by Project Salt Box.

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The contract covers Aguadilla, Puerto Rico; Broadview, Ill.; Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; Huntsville, Texas; Oakdale, La.; St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands; and Honolulu. It runs through September 2031. The joint venture is registered in Clarksville, Tenn.

The contract does not say exactly what will be built at any of the seven sites. Bid documents stipulated the construction of a 26-cell housing unit at two of them — Aguadilla and St. Thomas. The program’s overarching statement of work, reviewed by Project Salt Box, lists other facilities ICE could order, including clinics, classrooms, training buildings, warehouses, and firing ranges.

Both partners have worked on ICE’s detention expansion from its early days. SK2 LLC, a newly formed Puerto Rico company, received a sole-source contract of about $6 million to help ICE acquire warehouses, Bloomberg reported. When DHS bought two prisons from CoreCivic this summer for $1.5 billion, CoreCivic named James Grossmann of SK2 as the government’s agent.

Grossmann is also tied to Rudiarius Holdings Corp., which is registered at an address in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood that Project Salt Box identified in April as the office of Rise Construction Management, a company Grossmann founded.

Rudiarius paid for the environmental review of a warehouse ICE bought in Roxbury, N.J., and on Sunday won a separate $1.2 billion contract for detention-related construction at a site in El Centro, Calif. Grossmann and his company have faced more than a dozen lawsuits, including two bank suits over unpaid loans of $25 million and $10 million, The Lever reported in July.

When DHS bought two California detention centers from CoreCivic in July for $1.5 billion, the company's filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission named James Grossmann of SK2 as the government's agent.

This is the second time SK2 has formed a joint venture for ICE work. In late 2025, ICE gave KPB Services LLC a no-bid $29.9 million contract for due diligence and concept design of processing centers and mega centers. Bloomberg reported that KPB was a joint venture between SK2 and a company affiliated with the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation in Kansas. After tribal members objected, the tribe fired the leaders of its economic development corporation and gave up its stake in the company, which kept the contract.

Like the five contracts signed Sunday, the new award commits no money yet. Together, the six contracts account for nearly $8 billion of the program’s $10 billion limit.

The Department of Homeland Security on Sunday signed five construction contracts worth up to a combined $7.3 billion to expand immigration detention at government-owned sites in New York, Texas, Arizona, Florida, and California, including a center in El Centro, Calif., that ICE stopped using in 2014 and that a private prison giant The GEO Group now runs for the U.S. Marshals Service.

The contracts are the first under a new building program that Project Salt Box first reported on July 9 and that ICE has said could reach $10 billion. Each contract lets ICE hire the winning company on an as-needed business to design and build at a specific site over the next five years.

ICE has not yet ordered any work or committed any money under the contracts, according to a review of federal contracting records.

The California contract, worth $1.2 billion, covers a site in El Centro. It went to Rudiarius Holdings Corp., a Wyoming company registered at an address in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood that Project Salt Box identified in April as the office of Rise Construction Management.

Rise was founded by Boston developer James Grossmann, whose name appears on records tied to ICE's purchases of warehouses and a $1.5 billion prison deal.

Grossmann and his company have faced more than a dozen lawsuits, including suits by two banks over unpaid loans of $25 million and $10 million, The Lever reported in July.

The largest contract, about $2.2 billion, covers El Paso, Texas. It went to Rapid Deployment Inc., a company based in Mobile, Ala., which also won $1.5 billion for the detention center in Batavia, N.Y.

GardaWorld Federal Services, an Arlington, Va., subsidiary of the Montreal-based security company GardaWorld, won the contracts for Florence, Ariz., and Miami, each worth $1.2 billion.

Five companies competed for each contract. Two of the winners — GardaWorld and Rapid Deployment — also hold contracts under a Navy construction program that ICE used to speed up its detention expansion before dropping it this summer.

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After the warehouse plan failed, a shift to building from scratch

Last year, ICE began buying commercial warehouses to turn into detention centers, spending just over $1 billion on 11 of them. To handle the construction, it hired companies through a Navy program built for fast construction and supply work.

GardaWorld, which won two of the new contracts Sunday, was one of them. It was hired to convert a $70 million warehouse in Surprise, Ariz.

The warehouse projects drew at least six federal lawsuits from states and local governments. Arizona sued in April to stop the Surprise project, arguing ICE had bought the building next to a hazardous chemical facility without the required environmental review.

Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) pressed the Pentagon to stop letting DHS use the Navy program, which ICE later abandoned.

The agency has since moved to sell seven of the warehouses.

In June, a federal contractor with direct knowledge of the matter told Project Salt Box that ICE was shifting away from converting warehouses and toward building new facilities on land it controls.

A month later, the agency asked companies to bid on that work.

The contract descriptions available in public records describe the work only as “a broad range of construction-related services” at each location.

In August, ICE announced it wanted each building designed and finished within one year of ordering the work.

Secure housing units may come first

The first work ICE orders under its new detention construction contracts will likely be a set of small, standardized cell blocks the agency calls secure housing units. ICE told bidders to price one at each of the five sites covered by the contracts, estimating the cost at $24 million to $42 million apiece.

The units would be a small first draw on contracts worth up to $7.3 billion, but they would add detention space at facilities ICE already controls.

The plans for Port Isabel show what ICE means by a secure housing unit. The proposed one-story building has 26 steel cells: 21 in a men’s section, three in a women’s section, and two built to meet accessibility rules, one on each side. It would also have three day rooms, three showers, two soundproof search rooms, secure entry vestibules, a control room, staff offices, and storage space. The men’s and women’s sections would have separate fenced recreation yards.

Port Isabel is the furthest along. It was the only unit ICE said was funded when it put the work out for bid, and the agency already has a detailed scope of work, concept drawings, and a security layout. ICE has not awarded a contract for Port Isabel, and it has not said when or whether it will order similar units at the five sites covered by Sunday’s contracts. The Port Isabel plans, though, give the agency a template for 26-cell additions elsewhere once it orders the work and commits money.

In Batavia, a third step toward expansion since June

Three of the contracts signed Sunday cover detention centers where ICE was already preparing to grow. In June, the agency hired First American Title Insurance Company, without seeking other bids, to handle land purchases at Batavia, Florence, and the Krome detention center in Miami. A document explaining that decision said the centers “will be expanded to enable additional administrative, medical, training and detention facilities and space.”

The Miami contract signed Sunday names the city but not a specific facility.

The Batavia center, about 35 miles east of Buffalo, is the only federally-owned detention center ICE runs in New York. In February, it held 745 people in a space rated for 650, according to WHAM-TV.

DHS has said it needs more space there because of New York laws that bar counties from holding people for ICE, the latest of which took effect Aug. 25. In August, ICE said it planned to hire Akima Infrastructure Protection, the company that runs migrant detention at Guantánamo Bay, to put up a 100-bed “temporary detention structure” at the center.

The $1.5 billion contract signed Sunday is a separate contract with a different company.

In July, Gov. Kathy Hochul wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin asking about construction in the state. “So I ask: is your Department building or expanding immigration detention facilities in New York?” she wrote. “If so, where, to what capacity, and under what authority?”

A $1.2 billion contract for a center that has not held detainees since 2014

ICE stopped holding detainees at its El Centro jail in California’s Imperial Valley in October 2014 and moved them to a privately run facility in Calexico, Calif. When ICE asked for bids in July, it told companies to estimate costs at every site using a soil report written for its Port Isabel center in South Texas and to “assume the same soil conditions.” At El Centro, that meant pricing construction in one of the most earthquake-prone regions in the country with soil data from a coastal plain on the Gulf of Mexico.

The company that won the El Centro contract has ties to earlier stages of ICE’s expansion. Rudiarius Holdings was registered in Wyoming in July 2025, and its original state filing listed a Dorchester home owned by Grossmann, according to state records and Project Salt Box’s April reporting. Its federal registration lists Rise’s office address.

That April reporting found that Rudiarius paid for the environmental review of a warehouse ICE bought in Roxbury, N.J. The Lever reported that Grossmann signed a memo telling officials in Social Circle, Ga., that turning a warehouse there into a detention center would have “no adverse effect on the community,” and that his name appears on the $1.5 billion deal under which the government bought two California detention centers from the private prison company CoreCivic.

As of April, Rudiarius had no direct contract with DHS.

Among the lawsuits against Rise, a property owner sued in January 2024, alleging what it called a “massive fraudulent billing scheme,” and a judge ordered the company to pay $20 million this April, The Lever reported. One bank told a court that Rise was in “perilous financial condition.” Most of the suits were still pending as of July.

ICE’s July request said small businesses could not compete for these contracts, and it required each company to show it could obtain $2 billion in insurance guaranteeing the work would be finished if the company failed.

The government’s record of the award lists Rudiarius as a small business and does not show how it met the insurance requirement.

Asked by The Lever in July about his role in the CoreCivic purchase, which was brokered by a firm called SK2, Grossmann said, “I don't have a contract working with them.”

Sites from Texas to Guantánamo are still unassigned

The contracts signed Sunday do not include the one project ICE had money for when it asked for bids: a new wing at its Port Isabel detention center near Los Fresnos, Texas.

They also do not cover seven locations ICE grouped under the label “Mega Hub DC,” a term it has not explained, and planned to assign to a single company. The group includes Honolulu, St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Five of the seven have no ICE-owned detention center today.

The five contracts account for $7.3 billion of the program’s $10 billion limit, leaving about $2.7 billion for the remaining sites.

None of the contracts says how many people the new buildings would hold. The plans ICE shared with bidders show each wing with 26 cells, a security camera in every cell, and three showers for the whole building, but they do not say whether each cell would hold one person or two.