ICE Awards GardaWorld $17.3M to Convert a San Antonio Building Into a Detention Facility — Bought Through the Navy Program DHS Said in June It Had Stopped Using

Opening

ICE awarded GardaWorld Federal Services a delivery order to renovate an ICE-owned building in San Antonio into an immigration “processing and detention facility.” Project Saltbox (Michael Wriston, 2026-08-28) reported the award; the conductor verified it independently against USAspending the same week.

The figure — verified, and with a near-miss worth recording

USAspending award 361831209: $17,333,698 · Department of Homeland Security · DELIVERY ORDER · 2026-08-27 → 2027-08-25. Every element matches the reporting: the signing date, the one-year term, the amount.

Per Saltbox, the price is FIXED and ICE has committed the full amount UP FRONT. That distinction matters on this beat — this is not a ceiling. A ceiling reported as spending is this corpus’s most repeated error, and here the opposite is true: the money is obligated. Confirm the obligated figure on the award record before publishing any dollar claim.

The near-miss: a GardaWorld search also returns $173,407,746 — a 2011 Department of Defense delivery order. $173.4M and $17.3M are one decimal place apart and both are real GardaWorld awards. Do not confuse them. GardaWorld holds 56 federal awards, including State Department contracts of $647M and $407M, and a $313,357,612 DHS delivery order (70CDCR26FR0000043, 2026-03-06 → 2027-03-05) that is a separate and much larger matter.

Why this is the finding — a documented contradiction

The order was placed through WEXMAC-TITUS, the Navy expeditionary-logistics supply program expanded in 2025 to cover domestic Homeland Security work.

On 2026-06-25, DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin told a House Appropriations subcommittee the department was NO LONGER USING the Navy program for detention services. That statement followed pressure from Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Jeanne Shaheen and a GAO review that found oversight failures at the Fort Bliss detention camp, procured the same way.

Two months later, the same vehicle carried a new detention-conversion award.

State the sequence; do not assert the Secretary was untruthful. Saltbox records the load-bearing qualifier: the San Antonio requirement was SOLICITED 2025-12-23 — before the June retreat. So a defensible reading is that a pre-existing requirement completed on its original vehicle. Whether “no longer using” was meant to cover awards on solicitations already in flight is exactly the question, and it is a question for the record, not an inference. See function-not-intent-the-analytical-rule-2026.

What the corpus can say without any inference: DHS told Congress in June it had stopped using this program for detention services, and in August an ICE detention-conversion award was placed through it.

The procurement-visibility detail

Per Saltbox: the solicitation ID field is blank and the contract-opportunities notice field reads “not applicable.” Read the award record directly to establish what that means — it may indicate the work was not competitively solicited on SAM.gov, which would make this a no-bid or limited-competition placement. Do not characterize it until the record is read.

Saltbox reports two comparable March orders for warehouses in Williamsport, Md. and Surprise, Ariz. — both already heavily documented in this corpus.

“ICE could not be immediately reached for comment” is Saltbox’s line, not ours.

Why This Event Matters

The corpus holds 227 files touching WEXMAC-TITUS and 100 touching GardaWorld — this is one of the most densely documented threads here, and 2026-06-21–ice-offloads-seven-noem-era-warehouses-mullin-retreat already records the June retreat. What is new is an award that postdates it on the same vehicle.

A stated policy change and a continued practice is an accountability-mechanism story — the same shape as the 2017 DHS OIG § 1509 findings that CBP agreed to fix and the practice recurring in 2025-26. The mechanism is that a commitment made to a committee has no enforcement attached to it.

Research Gaps

• Read the award record directly — obligated vs. potential value, competition status, the blank solicitation field, PSC/NAICS codes. PSC/NAICS are the contracting officer’s own classification and are the strongest evidence available on this beat.

• Mullin’s exact words on 2026-06-25. SEARCHED 2026-08-30 — NOT AVAILABLE. The transcript is not published, and this is a documented absence rather than a failed search.

  **Method**: govinfo's API is the authoritative source for congressional hearing transcripts
  (collection `CHRG`) and **it works from this environment with `DEMO_KEY`** — that is worth
  recording on its own, since several other government hosts are blocked here.
  - A `CHRG` search for `Mullin homeland security appropriations detention` returns **63 results**;
    the Mullin hits are his **2026-03-18 nomination hearing**, not an appropriations hearing.
  - A `CHRG` search for `"Homeland Security" appropriations 2027` returns **307 results** with **no
    June 2026 DHS appropriations hearing.**
  - **This is NOT merely publication lag.** The most recent 119th-Congress transcripts published
    include **2026-06-30, 2026-07-14, 2026-07-15, 2026-07-29 and 2026-09-30** — so transcripts
    from the same period and later ARE available. **A June 25 hearing transcript should be there
    and is not.**
  
  **What this means, stated precisely**: the transcript is **not in govinfo as of 2026-08-30.**
  Hearing transcripts are often published months after the hearing and appear unevenly, so this
  is **a not-yet-published finding, not evidence the hearing did not occur.**
  
  **CONSEQUENCE FOR ANY PIECE: *"no longer using"* remains SALTBOX'S CHARACTERIZATION and must be
  attributed to Saltbox — not quoted as Mullin's words.** The corpus has not seen him say it.
  **Do not put quotation marks around "no longer using" and attribute them to the Secretary.**
  

• Remaining routes to the exact words, in order of expected yield: 1. The subcommittee’s own video/webcast archive — appropriations.house.gov returned HTTP 200 from here and hosts hearing video; a witness statement PDF may also be posted. 2. Mullin’s prepared written testimony, usually posted the day of the hearing — but note a prepared statement is not the same as what he said in the exchange, and the “no longer using” line reads like an answer to a question, not prepared text. 3. The Warren/Shaheen correspondence that preceded it — senators’ letters are published on their own sites and often quote the testimony back. 4. A CQ/Politico Pro transcript if available.

• The GAO Fort Bliss review — report number and findings.

• Whether Warren or Shaheen has responded to the August award.

• The $313M DHS delivery order (70CDCR26FR0000043) — larger and separate; what is it?

Related Entries

• 2026-06-21–ice-offloads-seven-noem-era-warehouses-mullin-retreat