On April 9, 2026, Human Rights Watch published "Another Disturbing Surprise From ICE," documenting the pattern of abuses, opacity, and oversight gaps in ICE's rapidly expanding warehouse-to-detention pipeline — with particular focus on the March 6 award of a $313M contract to GardaWorld Federal Services for the Surprise, Arizona warehouse-detention site. The report connects the Surprise deal to the broader WEXMAC-TITUS-linked procurement structure that has moved approximately $1.074 billion for eleven warehouse acquisitions in the program to date, noting that contractors are being selected without detention-operational track records and communities are being informed only after deeds are recorded.
This builds on the American Immigration Council's parallel April 2026 analysis describing the network as "expanding and increasingly unaccountable." ICE personnel have more than doubled from roughly 10,000 to over 22,000 officers and agents since January 2025; approximately 73,000 immigrants are currently held in ICE custody — the highest figure ever recorded and an 84% increase from January 2025 — with over 70% having no criminal record. As of early 2026, fourteen ICE detainees had died in custody year-to-date, putting the detention system on track for its deadliest year since 2004.