DHS Scraps Seven Warehouse Conversions as GAO Finds Camp East Montana 'Wasted Millions'

A June 9 GAO report (GAO-26-108886) found that Camp East Montana — the nation’s largest ICE facility at Fort Bliss, a $1.3B build-out — “wasted millions” by paying full contract rates while holding zero detainees, opened without perimeter cameras or recreation space, and lost a loaded firearm on site. Days later, DHS scrapped seven of its recently purchased warehouse conversions, including the Social Circle, GA site, after community resistance exposed infrastructure limits the agency could not overcome.

The retreat and the waste finding are two faces of the same overreach: the $38B mega-jail program is simultaneously abandoning community-fought sites (see 2026-03-17–social-circle-ga-cuts-water-ice-mega-center) while pressing forward on 24 remaining acquisitions. Camp East Montana itself carries a documented history of operational and human-rights failure predating this report — a homicide ruling (2026-01-21–lunas-campos-el-paso-medical-examiner-rules-homicide-ice-camp-east-montana) and systematic torture allegations (2025-12-08–fort-bliss-detention-torture-abuse-allegations) — making the GAO’s operational-waste finding the fiscal-accountability complement to the facility’s human-rights record.