ICE Solicits a $10–25M No-Bid Expansion of the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility at Batavia, NY

Opening

Reported 2026-08-28: ICE has solicited a no-bid expansion of the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia, New York, valued between $10 million and $25 million, in a manner the reporting describes as bypassing local review.

STATUS IS reported, NOT confirmed — and that is deliberate

Both sources are tier 2 and neither is a primary procurement record. The second is referenced by the first rather than captured directly. No SAM.gov solicitation number, no USAspending award, and no contracting-officer classification has been obtained.

Every figure here is unverified and must not be repeated as established:

• "$10–25 million" is a RANGE from secondary reporting. It is almost certainly a solicitation ceiling or an estimated value, not an obligation. A ceiling reported as spending is this corpus’s single most repeated error.
• “No-bid” is a characterization. The procurement record uses specific terms — sole-source, limited competition, an exception under FAR 6.302 — and which one applies is the finding.
• “Bypassing local review” needs the mechanism named: is the facility federally owned (in which case local land-use review may simply not apply), or is review being avoided? Those are very different stories and the corpus has documented both.

Why This Event Matters — with a caution

Batavia is already in this corpus: 2026-07-09–ice-batavia-hard-sided-expansion-after-new-york-jail documents a hard-sided expansion at the same facility in July. This is a SECOND reported expansion action at the same site seven weeks later — a sequence, not a duplicate. Confirm that reading against the procurement record before drafting; two reports of an expansion are not necessarily two expansions.

New York is also the state where this corpus tracks an active 287(g) termination fight — the August 25 compliance deadline, the AG’s subpoenas to four counties, and fifteen sheriffs suing via FAIR. A federal detention expansion in the same state and period is adjacent, not connected. Do not assert a relationship the record does not establish.

Research Gaps — all blocking

• The SAM.gov solicitation. Number, dates, competition status, set-aside. This answers the “no-bid” question directly.
• USAspending: any award, its obligated figure, and PSC/NAICS codes — the contracting officer’s own classification, the strongest evidence available on this beat.
• The Investigative Post article — locate and read the actual piece.
• The local-review question: federal ownership vs. avoided review.
• Relationship to the July 2026 hard-sided expansion — same project or distinct?

Related Entries

• 2026-07-09–ice-batavia-hard-sided-expansion-after-new-york-jail

RESOLVED against the primary record, 2026-08-31 — all three flagged questions answered

This entry deliberately held status: reported and named exactly what was missing: “No SAM.gov solicitation number, no USAspending award, and no contracting-officer classification has been obtained.” A research pass obtained all three. The caution was correct on every count.

The solicitation number in circulation is the wrong instrument. Secondary reporting attached this story to 70CMSW26R00000012. That is ICE’s nationwide, competitively-awarded SACC construction IDIQ (NAICS 236220); its current amendment names Port Isabel SHU and Ft. Benning, and its description never mentions Batavia or Akima.

The actual action is a Notice of Intent to sole-source a MODIFICATION to an existing IDIQ — parent PIID 70CDCR25D00000011, held by Akima Infrastructure Protection, LLC (UEI WGN2KJJD27Q3), published 2026-08-27, for a temporary structure housing up to 100 detainees at the Batavia SPC. NAICS 561612; PSC S206.

Answering this entry’s three cautions in order:

1. The “$10–25 million” figure has NO obligation record. USAspending shows zero awards to the recipient in the 2026-08-25–08-31 window; no modification has been executed. The range appears to be extrapolation from existing Batavia service task orders ($23.4M and $9.4M) that cover different scope — detention and transport services, not this structure. The caution against repeating it as spending was exactly right; it is not even an award value yet.

2. “No-bid” needs a qualifier. ICE’s notice cites “FAR 6.103-1” — but FAR 6.103 carries no such substantive content; the quoted language (“only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements”) is verbatim the title of FAR 6.302-1. Recorded as-written rather than silently corrected: a citation error in a sole-source notice is a fact about the notice. And the base IDIQ was itself 8(a)-competed (4 offers received) — Akima is an Alaska Native Corporation, but this action is an incumbent-continuity modification to an already-competed vehicle, not a fresh ANC unlimited-ceiling sole-source. Do not publish “no-bid” without that.

3. “Bypassing local review” — the SEQRA emergency-action bypass is an available mechanism (attributed to Genesee County planning director Oltramari), but no evidence was found that DHS has invoked it. Availability is not invocation.

Procedural posture as of 2026-08-31: the capability-statement window closed 2026-08-28 — that is not a GAO protest deadline, and since no modification has been executed, a protest of the eventual award remains structurally live. A GAO docket search was Akamai-blocked: an access block, not a verified absence of a filed protest.

Possible duplication with 2026-07-09–ice-batavia-hard-sided-expansion-after-new-york-jail-ban: both cite the same ~100-bed figure and may describe one project surfacing through two disclosure channels, not two expansions. Not resolved here; flagged so no downstream piece sums them.

Full working record: cascade-research/notes/procurement-batavia-akima-sole-source-70cmsw26r00000012.md.