By AZ Family
CE purchased 11 large warehouses across the country for $1.07 billion as part of a plan backed by former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. But that idea was scrapped amid public opposition before any detainees were housed in them because the department didn’t conduct “appropriate due diligence and planning,” according to the GAO report. DHS is now planning to sell seven of the facilities, although the Surprise facility is not one of those.
ICE has spent $20 million on costs and services related to those seven warehouses that it will not recover, including zoning assessments, title insurance, utilities and security, and will need to sell them for the total purchase price of $707 million to avoid more waste, the report said.
“We knew that this was coming,” Rose Law Group immigration chair Darius Amiri said. “I’m also not someone who thinks that you can’t have a strong and secure border. But at the same time, there’s a way to treat immigrant communities and people, give them their due process that doesn’t involve indefinite or mass detention.”