Government report calls for urgent immigration enforcement plans to stop wasting taxpayer money

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has spent billions expanding its operations since January of last year, including at the facility dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz.”

Congress requested a Government Accountability Office review of the agency’s spending.

The report found ICE's lack of planning in its immigration expansions wasted taxpayer money. Congress appropriated about $3.8 billion to the agency for detention operations in FY 2025. That amount ballooned to $45 billion for detention capacity through 2029 in July 2025, after passage of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

One expensive initiative listed in the report was the South Florida detention center dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz."

The facility closed in June, just shy of a year after opening. So far, it's cost the state about $1 billion.

ALSO READ: Florida's emergency agency spent nearly $1 billion on immigration. Now it'll get more

The report said ICE did not directly pay for the detention center, but the Department of Homeland Security is reimbursing the state through a $608 million grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The state is still owed more than $500 million.

"In April 2025, FEMA, in partnership with ICE, began developing the Fiscal Year 2025 Detention Support Grant Program with the state of Florida as the sole eligible recipient," the report states.

Center for Biological Diversity attorney Elise Bennett said that's months before she originally thought plans were in motion for the detention center.

"We knew that there were conversations going on before mid-June when Florida and DHS started standing up this facility, but April is quite, that is quite early," she said. "I think it is also evidence that there were conversations about this facility long before June."

The Florida Division of Emergency Management was instrumental in quickly building and operating the detention center. When it opened, officials said it only took eight days to get everything in order.

ALSO READ: How the 'Alligator Alcatraz' detention center stirred up a decades-old environmental fight

"Nobody takes the GAO seriously. Illegal immigration costs the American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars annually," a FDEM spokesperson told WUSF.

The lawsuit over "Alligator Alcatraz" violating federal environmental laws is ongoing. On Friday, attorneys for the state filed a motion to dismiss.

But Bennett said the GAO's report just confirms what they've said all along.

"Thorough planning — that is what these environmental laws that we were trying to enforce and still are trying to enforce are all about," she said. "It's just common sense to plan before you move forward."

Bennett said that while the report states ICE did not enter a contract with the state to build the facility, that doesn’t mean there weren’t agreements at higher levels. A major issue in the lawsuit is whether the facility was state-run.

“This entire facility was stood up through opacity and obfuscation, moving quickly, hiding information about what was happening, and frankly trying to get ahead of the courts,” Bennett said.

The report also said FEMA approved a request to add an additional state-run immigration detention center to the grant: the Baker Correctional Institution in North Florida.

Conversation with WUSF's Meghan Bowman and GAO report author and Director Heather MacLeod

Listen • 4:30

Report author and GAO Director Heather MacLeod, who oversees border security and immigration work, talked with WUSF's Meghan Bowman about its findings.

The interview below was edited for clarity and brevity.

Several members of Congress requested this review — Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI), Gary Peters (D-MI), and Dick Durbin (D-IL), and Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS).

For the sake of good government, developing a comprehensive plan that would include goals, activities, and the resources needed is a critical element of successful program management. In this case, the fits and starts and then multiple initiatives overlapping at times created a lot of challenges, not only for ICE but for those charged with overseeing the agency and understanding what the plan was.

Ultimately, our recommendations point to the need for a plan, and we hope to see them fulfill that in the future.

What was the process of putting all of this together? 

We start at the beginning. We go out to the field and visit local offices, or detention facilities in this case. For this one, we started last year. One of our first visits was to Camp East Montana, in Texas. When we visited that facility, we found some concerning waste and other challenges and so we kind of paused this work.

We issued a report on Camp East Montana in June, and so from then we picked up our work again.

Then we identified six different initiatives that ICE had embarked on to expand its immigration detention operations:

1. Detention operations at Naval Station Guatanamo Bay — In President Trump's Jan. 2025 executive order expanding immigration enforcement, he directed the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense to use the location for ICE detentions. The DOD brought tents with a capacity of 5,000 detainees, but DHS found they did not meet standards and downsized operations in mid-February 2025.
2. Domestic Department of Defense military installations — In Feb. 2025, DHS requested access to several military bases to detain immigrants. ICE and the U.S. Army opened Camp East Montana at Fort Bliss in Texas. By Oct. 2025, the DOD said they "no longer plan to build detention facilities on other military installations."
3. Warehouses — In Dec. last year, ICE spent about $1 billion on 11 warehouses for detention operations. Last June, the agency said they were selling seven.
4. Purchase existing detention facilities — That same month, ICE planned to buy operational facilities where detainees are already housed. They purchased two in July for a total of $1.5 billion.
5. State of Florida facilities — State officials in Florida opened the Florida Soft-Sided Facility, dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," in July 2025. The facility closed less than a year later. DHS is reimbursing the state through a FEMA grant, which ICE and FEMA began developing in April of 2025. FEMA officials said they approved the state's request to add Baker Correctional Institution to the reimbursement grant.
6. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) facilities — In Feb. 2025, ICE and BOP signed an agreement to house noncitizens at these facilities. The agreement has been extended to July next year.

I think our main takeaway is that there was no plan for ICE to proceed with these different initiatives. All of these things going on at the same time really indicated that ICE lacked a strategic plan to expand its detention efforts, and ultimately we found this resulted in waste.

Let's talk about the Florida Soft-Sided Facility, also dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz." Why was that chosen as a facility to look into and what did you find? 

We identified the Florida facilities as one of the initiatives. ICE didn't have a contract or agreement with the state authorizing its use as an immigration detention facility, but it was a key part of ICE's operations in the state until it closed in June of 2026.

At the end of the report, ICE said it concurs with the recommendation to develop a plan, but said it won’t be done for almost another year. So what happens until then? 

The title of our report includes "urgent planning needed." I don't think the year they've identified as the timeline to respond to our recommendation really falls under the urgent category.

So we do encourage them to develop this plan expeditiously to avoid further waste of taxpayer dollars. We're going to continue to monitor their progress on implementing this recommendation and we'll be following up on that recommendation and identifying steps that DHS is and ICE are taking to address it.

We do have other work that will continue to follow up on these issues with ICE. We have a report underway on the costs associated with ICE expansion efforts, and I expect to issue it before the end of the year.

We have several other reviews examining different aspects of ICE detention, including medical care and mental health care oversight. So while this is the end of this review, GAO does have additional work underway addressing these issues.

What does your agency think about the state's Division of Emergency Management statement about the report? In an email, a spokesperson said, "Nobody takes the GAO seriously. Illegal immigration costs the American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars annually."

I hadn't seen that response, but I would hope that our report is taken seriously. We've received indications from the Department of Homeland Security and ICE that they will address our recommendations.

The congressional members that requested this review also issued their own release supporting the work. So I would certainly hope that any GAO report would be taken seriously, but this one for sure.

In a statement to WUSF, a DHS spokesperson said:

"The costs cited in the GAO report were appropriate and necessary to execute valid real property acquisition transactions and to ensure the properties are properly protected and maintained post-acquisition. Any sale of properties is being managed by the General Services Administration. 
 
Under President Trump’s leadership, DHS has saved U.S. taxpayers more than $13.2 billion, without cuts to key law enforcement, border security, national security, immigration enforcement, or other public safety positions.
 
From day one, DHS has remained singularly focused on removing the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from the United States and is always evaluating the best methods to do so. These heinous criminals, once arrested, should be removed at lightning speed, not housed on American soil at the taxpayer’s expense. DHS is moving swiftly to utilize EXISTING detention space with our state and county partners."

If you have any questions about state government or the legislative process, you can ask the Your Florida team by clicking here.

This story was produced by WUSF as part of a statewide journalism initiative funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.