ICE Posts $10B In-House Detention Construction Solicitation, Moving Off the Navy WEXMAC Vehicle After Senate Pressure

ICE posted a pre-solicitation on SAM.gov on July 9, 2026 for a single-award construction contract covering new construction and renovation at ICE-owned Service Processing Centers — the warehouse-conversion facilities of the Detention Reengineering Initiative. The replacement vehicle carries a $10 billion maximum ordering limit over five years and requires $300 million in minimum bonding from bidders, with a formal request for bids to follow by July 17 and award expected by the end of September 2026, the close of the fiscal year. The move follows Senators Elizabeth Warren and Jeanne Shaheen pressing the Pentagon to end the arrangement under which DHS was buying and retrofitting detention facilities through the Navy’s WEXMAC/TITUS vehicle, and ICE Director Markwayne Mullin’s statement that ICE was no longer using the Navy contract for detention services.

The significance is what the WEXMAC route was doing and why abandoning it matters less than it appears. Running detention construction through a pre-approved military vendor roster let DHS award retrofit work without the public comment and procurement scrutiny that ordinarily attaches — the mechanism that allowed a $102 million Maryland warehouse purchase, a $113 million retrofit award, and nearly $650 million in add-on work to proceed unseen until the end (2026-04-20–wypr-exposes-williamsport-wexmac-contracting-method, 2026-03-22–warren-shaheen-dod-letter-wexmac-navy-procurement-bypass). Bringing construction in-house on a $10B single-award vehicle substitutes one concentration for another; it does not restore the notice-and-comment posture. And the abandonment was not clean: ICE awarded GardaWorld $17.3 million for the San Antonio warehouse conversion through WEXMAC/TITUS on August 27, after the stated retreat (2026-08-27–ice-awards-gardaworld-17-3m-san-antonio-warehouse-conversion-via-wexmac-titus-after-retreat). The solicitation sits inside the DRI’s fiscal-year-end push (2026-06-23–ice-detention-reengineering-initiative-100k-warehouse-network) and the 14-site RFEI signaling the shift from renting to owning (2026-07-20–ice-private-prison-acquisition-14-sites-rfei-2026); the program stalled program-wide by August with 11 purchased sites and $1.074B spent (2026-08-19–ice-detention-reengineering-initiative-stalls-program-wide-11-purchased-sites).