ICE Issues RFP for Detention at 14 More Sites as July Spending Hits Year-High $2.5B

Government documents obtained by TIME show that ICE issued a request for proposals on or before July 20, 2026 to expand or establish detention facilities at 14 additional sites, including Guantanamo Bay, Miami, Honolulu, Florence (AZ), Batavia (NY), Broadview (IL), Oakdale (LA), El Paso and Huntsville (TX), and Aguadilla (PR). Each uses a standard one-story design with 26 detention cells. The RFP coincided with a July 2026 ICE spending surge to a year-high $2.5 billion, driven by detention buildout, per contractor tracking by Project Saltbox.

The significance is that this sits outside the Detention Reengineering Initiative already documented here on June 23 — the plan targeting 100,000 beds by September 30 through 24 warehouse conversions. A separate 14-site RFP running in parallel indicates the buildout was expanding beyond its own announced program while that program was still in progress. Read against the August 19 entry recording the Reengineering Initiative stalling program-wide at 11 purchased sites and $1.074 billion spent, the July RFP marks the high-water mark of the expansion before it hit its constraint.

Litigation was already tracking the buildout at this point: a federal judge halted the Williamsport, Maryland facility in April over sewage concerns, with additional suits ongoing in Arizona, New Jersey, and Michigan. The standardized 26-cell design across fourteen geographically scattered sites is the detail worth holding — it describes a replicable unit rather than a set of site-specific responses, which is what distinguishes an infrastructure program from a procurement.

Update (2026-09-12). A SAM.gov pull found that the notice numbered 70CDCR26R00000026 (“Turn-key Detention Facilities”) is a DIFFERENT procurement from the one TIME described here: it is a services acquisition for four contractor-owned, contractor-operated facilities in the Denver, Miami, Philadelphia and Seattle AORs, carries no dollar figure and names none of the 14 sites. See 2026-09-11–ice-turnkey-detention-solicitation-four-aors-deadline-extended, which records that correction.

The $10 billion government-owned-land construction program described in the ledger capture for July 17 — eight Secure Housing Unit projects totalling 208 cells at roughly $24-42M each, plus 14 reserved locations, with the winning contractor directed to scout acquisition sites and draft feasibility packages — is a real and separate thread, but it has not been matched to a SAM.gov notice number. Project Saltbox and TIME are the sourcing. Do not attach 70CDCR26R00000026 to it. Finding the actual notice number for the construction program is an open task.