By Jose E. Navarro | The Navarro Report
SAN DIEGO, Oct. 28, 2026. In July, the federal government paid $739.2 million for the Otay Mesa Detention Center, which county records valued at about $168 million. Last month, the Government Accountability Office reported that the agency behind such purchases, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), has been expanding detention without a comprehensive strategic plan.
What GAO found
GAO’s September 24 audit reviewed six expansion efforts launched since January 2025 and concluded that ICE “pursued its detention expansion initiatives without developing a comprehensive strategic plan.” The costs are already measurable. ICE bought 11 warehouses for about $1.07 billion and now plans to sell seven of them, which cost $707 million. It has reported more than $20 million in costs it cannot recover on those seven, including zoning assessments, security and utilities. Marketing of the seven began in early October, and Project Salt Box reports that the asking prices are below what ICE paid.
The target also keeps moving. ICE’s daily detained population grew 71 percent, from 39,314 in January 2025 to 67,180 in July 2026. Its bed goal was 48,000 in January 2025, 92,600 in February 2026 warehouse documents, and 100,000 in remarks by officials in June. GAO says ICE has not weighed high-cost facilities against cheaper options. Florida’s soft-sided facility cost $249 per bed per day, 171 percent above ICE’s $92 median, and FEMA paid Florida $608.4 million for “Alligator Alcatraz,” which has since closed.
The money is large. Congress gave ICE $75 billion in last year’s reconciliation law, including $45 billion for detention. Smaller items show where planning gaps surface: $2.85 million spent on Guantanamo tents that were never used and $7.1 million paid for meals at Fort Bliss that were not needed. In Florida, ICE reached the state through a grant program in which Florida was the only eligible recipient, skipping typical contract negotiation.
DHS agreed with GAO’s recommendation to write a plan but says it will not be finished until August 31, 2027. GAO said a faster timeline may be warranted given the multi-year funding. DHS also told reporters the costs were appropriate and necessary and that ICE is moving quickly to find cost-effective options.
The California purchases
GAO’s report describes a July 2026 purchase of two existing facilities for about $1.5 billion. That matches ICE’s purchase from CoreCivic of Otay Mesa, with 1,994 beds, and California City in Kern County, with 2,560 beds. The arithmetic: $739.2 million for Otay Mesa is about $370,700 per bed, and $732.6 million for California City is about $286,200 per bed. County assessors valued the two sites at $164.9 million and $171.5 million, so the prices were roughly 4.5 and 4.3 times assessed value.
There are fair explanations. Proposition 13 limits annual assessment growth to 2 percent, so assessed values can lag the market, as CoreCivic notes. San Diego County Assessor Jordan Marks says that in a shortage of beds, prices go up. CoreCivic says the price followed the federal government’s required appraisal process, and DHS says ownership preserves West Coast capacity because California restricts private detention. But DHS has not released the appraisals, so the public cannot test those explanations. Marks’s office plans its own appraisal within 18 months.
The local bill
Federal ownership takes the property off the local tax rolls. The county expects to lose about $2.1 million a year in Otay Mesa property tax, roughly $800,000 of which would have supported local schools. Against about $8 billion in annual county property tax collections that is small, but it is recurring. Owning the building also did not end the operating bill. CoreCivic still runs both centers under ICE contracts, and its SEC filing projects $130 million a year in revenue from California City alone. For its part, CoreCivic expects about $1.1 billion in net proceeds after taxes and transaction costs and says it will use them for debt reduction and general corporate purposes.
What to watch
GAO also found that ICE forecast costs for only three years and did not plan how to pay for its new facilities once congressional funding, appropriated through 2029, runs out. Taxpayers can reasonably ask for three things: the appraisals behind the California purchases, a strategic plan well before August 2027, and the sale prices when the seven warehouses go. The DHS inspector general is separately auditing ICE’s acquisitions and may answer some of them.
The question does not depend on anyone’s view of immigration policy. Whether the goal is 48,000 beds or 100,000, a plan should come before the purchase orders, and the public is entitled to see the math.
Jose E. Navarro, MBA, is the founder of The Navarro Report, an independent outlet focused on fiscal accountability, and a finance professional with more than 20 years of experience.
Human-Directed AI Journalism: Jose E. Navarro selected the topic, directed the research and framing, and edited and approved this article. AI assisted with research and drafting.