ICE’s Office Expansion Runs Through Baltimore Furniture Vendors
Federal spending records reviewed by Project Salt Box show Baltimore-based suppliers accounted for 99.4 percent of obligations in a dataset of ICE office furniture, design, and installation awards.
Price Modern LLC, a Baltimore office furniture dealer, received $95.7 million in federal contract obligations across fiscal years 2025 and 2026, according to Project Salt Box’s review of federal spending records. Nearly half of that total, $48.9 million, came from records tied to ICE office expansion under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the reconciliation measure that funded the administration’s immigration enforcement buildout.
Almost all of those expansion-related obligations went to two firms based in or near Baltimore, and almost all of that went to one in particular. Price Modern accounted for the great majority of the ICE office fit-out obligations reviewed by Project Salt Box.
MOI, Inc., another Baltimore-based commercial interiors firm, accounted for $287,570 in the same subset.
Vendors in Richmond, Va.; Alexandria, Va.; Clearwater, Fla.; Florence, Ariz.; and Zion, Ill., together accounted for about $296,200, or roughly 0.6 percent of the total reviewed.
Baltimore furniture vendors accounted for the other 99.4 percent.
The expansion-related records covered office furniture, workspace design, furniture installation, storage and workplace support services across 56 listed performance locations in 27 states and Puerto Rico. In federal contracting, an obligation is money the government has committed to spend; the records reviewed by Project Salt Box include new awards and later modifications to them. The $48.9 million figure refers to the ICE expansion-related subset, not all federal work the companies performed during the two fiscal years.
The two largest Price Modern awards in that subset were orders under a broader government purchasing agreement, totaling about $40.2 million. Both award descriptions tied the furniture purchases to Enforcement and Removal Operations officers hired under the reconciliation bill.
The largest listed place of performance was Baltimore, where Price Modern had $42.5 million in obligations across 92 award actions and 79 unique awards in the expansion-related subset.
Other listed locations included Elkridge, Md.; Brunswick, Ga.; Milwaukee; Dallas; East Boston; Washington, D.C.; Baton Rouge; New Orleans; Mesa, Ariz.; San Diego; Wilmington, Del.; and Huntsville, Ala. The listed place of performance does not necessarily mean all work occurred in that city, because office furniture contracts can include procurement, design, delivery, storage, installation and project support for offices in other locations.
Price Modern’s ICE work
Price Modern’s ICE work first appeared in Project Salt Box’s review of federal procurement records last fall, when DHS began posting awards tied to furniture and office fit-outs for the agency. The company’s role later drew scrutiny in Baltimore, where residents called the firm to object after it signed a $25.8 million deal in February to supply furniture to ICE offices around the country.
In reporting earlier this year, the Baltimore Sun described Price Modern as a more than century-old dealer in the city’s Remington neighborhood and reported comments from its president, Brent Matthews, who said the company employs 200 people, has done business with the federal government for 40 years, and draws about half its annual revenue from federal contracts.
“Across seven presidential administrations, we have had no role in policy or political decisions,” Matthews told The Sun. “We understand and respect that team members and others may hold differing views. Our responsibility is to do our work professionally by providing furniture and design services to our clients.”
The newspaper also reported that Price Modern has held a Homeland Security blanket purchase agreement for 14 years, has worked with nine DHS agencies and 96 federal agencies overall, and that ICE contracts account for more than half the value of its federal contracts since 2008.
Federal spending records reviewed by Project Salt Box show DHS is Price Modern’s largest federal customer, accounting for roughly 86 percent of the company’s listed federal obligations since 2008. That work has been driven largely by ICE, which accounts for approximately $45 million in furniture contracts over the period, or about 76 percent of the company’s listed federal obligations. The next largest agencies in the records were the Department of Transportation, at $4.27 million; the Defense Department, at $1.19 million; and the Executive Office of the President, at $1.03 million.
Within the FY2025 and FY2026 reconciliation-linked records, Price Modern appeared in obligations tied to 54 performance locations, covering office furniture, workspace design, furniture installation, storage and workplace support services. Several listed locations showed $0 obligations in the transaction-level data; those entries generally reflect award actions that did not add new funding at the time, such as administrative updates, corrections or changes to an existing award, and remain in the records as part of the award history.
Price Modern did not respond to an emailed request for comment.
MOI’s ICE contracts
MOI, Inc. has received three ICE-related contracts since 2024, two of them recent. The earliest, awarded under the Biden administration, obligated $796,768 for furniture services for Homeland Security Investigations and Enforcement and Removal Operations. The two more recent awards, obligated in fiscal year 2026, procured furniture, associated services and design work for ICE’s Office of the Principal Legal Advisor — the agency’s in-house legal division, which handles immigration court proceedings and enforcement litigation — and together totaled $278,768.
MOI is a worker-owned commercial interiors company with roots in Baltimore dating to 1983, when it was founded as Maryland Office Interiors. DHS accounts for 64 percent of MOI’s listed federal obligations, according to a review of federal spending records; the Secret Service is its largest DHS sub-agency customer, followed by Customs and Border Protection.
Office infrastructure and ICE expansion
The office fit-out records are one part of a logistics expansion Project Salt Box has tracked across ICE’s real estate and workplace needs since 2025. In recent months, ICE has appeared in federal records tied to traditional office leases, law-enforcement office space and a nationwide co-working space solicitation, including a search for 65,000 square feet in San Antonio, plans in Newburgh, N.Y., disclosed through a deleted filename, and as many as 90 flexible office locations sought through a single solicitation.
Price Modern’s federal work in FY2025 and FY2026 extended beyond the reconciliation-linked ICE office records. But within the expansion subset, two Baltimore-area firms supplied nearly all the obligations tied to ICE office furniture, design, installation, storage and workplace support, with Price Modern accounting for almost the entire total.
Smells like money laundering💎
The entire “office space” to rent was to include furnishings already in place. So it’s seems mighty many lofty for office furniture blowouts. It also seems waste, fraud, and abuse is rampant.