Warren and Shaheen Demand Hegseth End DoD WEXMAC-TITUS Agreement With DHS, Citing $65 Billion Ceiling Growth and Diversion of Navy Resources to Domestic ICE Detention

On March 22, 2026, U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), both members of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a formal five-page letter to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth demanding that the Pentagon end the agreement under which the Navy is administering WEXMAC 2.2 TITUS task orders on behalf of the Department of Homeland Security for the construction of ICE detention facilities. The senators posed 13 numbered questions and set a response deadline of April 13, 2026. The letter was publicly released via a Warren Senate office press release on March 23, 2026.

Signatories

• Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) — Senate Banking Committee Ranking Member; Senate Armed Services Committee
• Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) — Senate Armed Services Committee; Senate Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member

The letter is exclusively a two-senator inquiry — no additional Senate or House co-signers — and is jurisdictionally scoped to the Senate Armed Services Committee. This is distinct from (a) the March 29, 2026 Warren-Raskin letter to six detention contractors (52 lawmakers; House Judiciary + Senate Banking jurisdictional basis; see 2026-03-29–warren-raskin-letter-52-lawmakers-detention-contractors) and (b) the December 9, 2025 Warren-Garamendi letter to Hegseth on the $2 billion in DoD immigration-enforcement expenditures.

Core Factual Allegations in the Letter

The letter documents a six-fold growth in the WEXMAC contract ceiling across roughly six months:

Since September 2025, ICE has used the Navy’s WEXMAC system to award task orders to 120 companies, including a February 2026 award to GEO Group.

Additional factual anchors:

• WEXMAC was launched June 17, 2021 and originally scoped for “naval expeditionary forces on missions in austere and remote locations” (Afghanistan, Sudan, Russia-Ukraine support).
• In July 2025, the Navy renamed the vehicle WEXMAC 2.2 TITUS — adding “Territorial Integrity of the United States” — and inserted a performance work statement covering “infrastructure, staffing, services, and/or supplies necessary to provide safe and secure confinement for aliens in the administrative custody of [DHS] and [ICE].”
• One Big Beautiful Bill Act gave DHS $170 billion for immigration enforcement, including $45 billion for new migrant detention centers — yet DHS continues using DoD contracting authority rather than its own.
• DoD spent over $2 billion on immigration enforcement in 2025 (per the December 9, 2025 Warren-Garamendi investigation).
• A subsequent CBO analysis (January 28, 2026 letter from CBO Director Phillip Swagel to Senator Jeff Merkley) estimated domestic military deployments cost DoD at least $496 million through end of 2025 — more than double the $258 million originally reported.
• DoD has admitted it will not be reimbursed by DHS for any of these expenses (per February 26, 2026 Senate Armed Services nomination hearings for Ditlevson and Birdwell).

The 13 Questions Asked of Hegseth

1. What authority is DoD relying on to support DHS’s use of the WEXMAC contract?
2. How is the Navy receiving task order requests from DHS? (Sub: which DoD procurement officials approve these, and what is the process?)
3. List of all subcontractors being used for construction and maintenance of detention centers under WEXMAC.
4. What penalties will WEXMAC contractors face if they fail to construct/maintain facilities or uphold migrants’ human rights?
5. At detention centers paid for with DoD funds or established under WEXMAC, what training is required of employees and who certifies completion?
6. Is DoD involved in determining potential detention facility locations under WEXMAC? If so, process and executive approval authority.
7. The WEXMAC IDIQ authority has ballooned to $65 billion — what specific actions is the Navy taking to ensure the awarded contracts meet all federal acquisition requirements?
8. What specific actions are Navy officials taking to prevent waste of taxpayer funds?
9. How many Navy staff are overseeing WEXMAC 2.2 TITUS?
10. Accounting for how much DoD has spent (staff hours or otherwise) on DHS’s use of WEXMAC.
11. Is DHS reimbursing DoD? (Sub: provide the Memorandum of Agreement between DHS and DoD.)
12. What audits and oversight mechanisms are in place?
13. Under Section 1044 of the FY 2026 NDAA, DoD is required to report to Congress on support for immigration-enforcement operations. When will Congress receive this report? Will the full details of awarded WEXMAC 2.2 TITUS contracts be included?

Quoted Language From the Letter

“This contract vehicle uses Navy resources to provide domestic support to ICE, allowing DHS to sidestep the full federal acquisition process and fast-track the construction of migrant detention centers.”

“Diverting military resources to assist the development of ICE’s new detention facilities does not advance U.S. national security — nor the quality of life for our troops — and does nothing to improve the military’s readiness for conflict.”

“DoD should not be allowing DHS to use the WEXMAC 2.2 TITUS contract vehicle to bypass federal acquisition procedures and fast-track the construction of migrant detention facilities throughout the United States.”

On the legal-authority question, the letter cites Section 1059 of the FY 2016 NDAA (authorizes DoD assistance to CBP at the southern land border, subject to DHS concurrence) and observes that “broader actions from DoD to administer contracts that construct detention centers throughout the United States — to detain individuals who may or may not have crossed the southern border — may exceed the scope of this statute.”

The IDIQ Structure Challenge

A central procedural-capture argument the letter makes: WEXMAC 2.2 TITUS is structured as an Indefinite Delivery, Indefinite Quantity (IDIQ) contract. Per the senators:

“IDIQ contracts allow for the approval of a small set of contractors under one large contract and then let DoD officials quickly approve work by any of these contractors through task or delivery orders without further competition, increasing risks of taxpayer waste.”

The letter notes DHS already manages its own department-wide “Facilities & Construction” IDIQ vehicle — meaning no legitimate necessity forces DHS to route procurement through DoD. The senators frame this as deliberate procedural bypass rather than administrative convenience.

Response Deadline

April 13, 2026 — the same date as the Warren-Raskin contractor-letter response deadline, a coincidence that creates a consolidated congressional-oversight inflection point.

As of April 23, 2026 (ten days post-deadline), no publicly documented Hegseth response to the Warren-Shaheen letter has surfaced. This is consistent with the standard pattern for voluntary-inquiry letters: Pentagon responses to minority-party Armed Services Committee members are typically delivered privately, with public implications surfacing later via hearings, defense-authorization markup, or committee reports.

Why This Event Matters

Four structural implications:

1. Establishes Senate Armed Services Committee jurisdiction over WEXMAC-TITUS. Prior oversight activity (Warren-Raskin, December 2025 Warren-Garamendi) was routed through Banking, Judiciary, or appropriations frames. This letter explicitly invokes Armed Services authority — a potential basis for hearings, nomination holds, or NDAA amendment pressure in the FY 2027 authorization cycle.

2. Names the $65 billion ceiling and the 120-company award count. Prior public reporting had fixed the ceiling at $10-20 billion. The $65 billion figure (effective January 16, 2026, per contract modification) is the first congressionally-endorsed quantification of the scale and had not previously appeared in tier-1 news coverage. The letter effectively creates the $65B figure as a citable congressional-record number.

3. Forces the legal-authority question into public record. By specifically challenging whether Section 1059 of the FY 2016 NDAA extends to interior detention-center construction, the senators create a framework for potential appropriations riders, litigation-standing arguments, or GAO opinions on ultra vires contracting.

4. Documents DoD’s admission that it will not be reimbursed. The letter cites the February 26, 2026 Ditlevson/Birdwell nomination hearings as the formal record of this admission. Combined with the CBO’s $496M cost estimate, this establishes that WEXMAC-TITUS operates as a hidden DHS subsidy from the DoD budget — a mechanism that would not survive transparent appropriations scrutiny.

Relationship to Parallel Congressional Oversight

The two March letters are parallel but distinct: Warren-Shaheen targets the Navy-side contracting authority (how DHS can use WEXMAC at all); Warren-Raskin targets the contractor-side participation (why the 6 recipient firms are taking task orders). Together they form a pincer — if either side of the IDIQ arrangement collapses under scrutiny, the procurement vehicle becomes unusable.

Research Gaps

• Any Hegseth response (public or private) after April 13, 2026 deadline
• Whether the Section 1044 FY 2026 NDAA report (question 13) has been submitted
• Full list of the 120 companies awarded WEXMAC task orders since September 2025 (question 3)
• Text of the DHS-DoD Memorandum of Agreement (question 11.a)
• Whether Senate Armed Services Committee will pursue formal hearings or subpoenas on non-response
• Any follow-up from Senator Jack Reed (SASC Ranking Member) on the jurisdictional basis

Related Entries

• warren-elizabeth
• shaheen-jeanne
• hegseth-pete
• 2025-07-08–wexmac-titus-navy-detention-contract-activation — original activation of WEXMAC 2.2 TITUS
• 2026-03-29–warren-raskin-letter-52-lawmakers-detention-contractors — parallel contractor-side inquiry
• 2026-04-15–judge-halts-williamsport-ice-construction-nepa — judicial pause on WEXMAC-funded Williamsport site
• 2026-04-17–stateline-dhs-compromises-warehouse-detention-centers — first documented WEXMAC-TITUS rollback
• 2026-04-20–wypr-exposes-williamsport-wexmac-contracting-method — WYPR coverage citing this letter
• 2026-02-24–trammell-crow-merrimack-ice-deal-scuttled-ayotte — first successful community block
• 2026-01-29–dhs-purchases-blue-owl-tremont-warehouse — parallel WEXMAC-TITUS transaction
• 2026-01-09–pnk-social-circle-dhs-detention-sale — parallel WEXMAC-TITUS transaction
• wexmac-titus-military-procurement-bypass — mechanism profile (detention-industrial KB)
• warehouse-fungibility-and-the-detention-hedge
• investigation-map-april-2026