[DUPLICATE — see canonical] ICE Offloads Seven Noem-Era Warehouses Under Mullin, Exposing Overpriced Detention Buildout — But $45B Mandate Holds

Correction, 2026-08-27 — DUPLICATE, MERGED. This entry covers the same June 21, 2026 offload announcement as the canonical 2026-06-21–ice-offloads-seven-of-eleven-warehouses-detention-reengineering, which now carries the merged, labeled writeup (including this entry’s Philadelphia Inquirer source). "$336M-plus" is a subset-of-sites acquisition figure, not the program total — it is closer to (though does not exactly match) the combined purchase price of the specific Pennsylvania/New Jersey sites named in the June 19 Inquirer reporting this figure derives from (Tremont $119.5M + Upper Bern $87.4M + Roxbury $129.3M ≈ $336.2M), not all seven sites ultimately offloaded. The corpus-verified total acquisition cost across all 11 WEXMAC-TITUS warehouses is $1.074 billion (see wexmac-titus-warehouse-census). This entry’s distinct analytical content (the “$45B mandate holds” framing, the 152-facilities context, and its related-events links below) is preserved here rather than discarded, but the canonical entry should be cited for the primary writeup and for the two dollar figures’ scope.

On June 21, 2026, reporting confirmed that DHS under new Secretary Markwayne Mullin is offloading seven warehouses purchased under predecessor Kristi Noem — including properties in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and elsewhere. The Philadelphia Inquirer’s June 19 reporting on the Pennsylvania/New Jersey sites specifically cited a combined acquisition cost of $336M-plus for those sites — not the full seven-site or program-wide total — many above appraised value. The agency plans to sell or transfer them to other federal agencies while continuing warehouse acquisitions in Texas, Arizona, and Maryland. The reversal exposes how the Noem-era detention expansion was built on overpriced, operationally unusable sites.

It is a procurement-waste reversal, not a retreat from mass detention overall: the Big Beautiful Bill’s $45B detention mandate remains in force, and ICE has already opened 152 new facilities nationwide. A property transfer to another federal agency (e.g. Army Corps or CBP) is not a cancellation. This continues the Mullin-era walk-back of the WEXMAC-TITUS warehouse buildout Mullin paused on taking office (2026-03-24), and lands amid the municipal lawsuits challenging individual conversions (Salt Lake City/County, Romulus MI, Roxbury NJ).

Related events: 2026-03-24–mullin-sworn-dhs-secretary-pauses-wexmac-titus-warehouse-buildout, 2026-06-08–salt-lake-city-county-sue-dhs-ice-warehouse-detention-conversion, 2026-03-24–michigan-romulus-sue-ice-dhs-detention-warehouse, 2026-05-07–ice-custody-deaths-reach-17-152-new-detention-facilities-39-states-2026-record-pace.