If we’re all so fired up about eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse from government programs, we’d better defund Trump’s goon squad. The Government Accountability Office finds the Department of Homeland Security has wasted millions on its poorly planned expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement:
In the report, GAO found those detention expansion efforts wasted millions by using facilities that were high in cost or impractical, such as Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, which is so remote that water needs to be imported to the base, making it a costly operation.
Inspectors with the Department of Defense and Department of State estimated that DOD spent $2.85 million to assemble tents that were never used and that ICE obligated $43 million from the start of fiscal year 2025 to June 30, 2026 for a small population at the base. GAO found that 16 noncitizens were held on average daily at Guantanamo in fiscal year 2026.
Other efforts that lacked proper planning also included domestic military operations, such as the soft-sided facility, Camp East Montana, built on a military base in El Paso, Texas.
GAO previously reported that ICE wasted more than $11 million in taxpayer funds in operating Camp East Montana, such as paying for meals when detainees had not yet arrived at the facility. Investigators noted that ICE had awarded another contract in March for Camp East Montana and “as of August 2026 had not yet incorporated these cost saving measures into the contract and continued to pay for services that it did not need” [Ariana Figueroa, “Millions of Dollars of Waste Found in Trump Administration Push for Immigration Detention,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2026.09.24].
Trump and Stephen Miller’s white-supremacist crusade of fear and loathing will saddle us with more wasteful spending in the future:
Investigators also raised concerns that ICE has not made an assessment for the long-term cost of operating the expanded detention facilities.
“ICE has not projected the costs of these facilities beyond the first 3 years of operation, after which ICE will no longer have OBBBA and Secure America Act funds available for obligation because these funds are only available through fiscal year 2029,” according to the report [Figueroa, 2026.09.24].
Along with unnecessarily ruining human lives, ICE is wasting taxpayer dollars. Whether you’re an immigrant-loving liberal or a common-sense conservative budget hawk, tell your Congress critters to defund ICE now!