$66 Mil, Federal Agents, National Guard Wasted on 2,500-Bed Camp

[IceWizard]

$66 Mil, Federal Agents, National Guard 
Wasted on 2,500-Bed Camp That 
Averaged 30 Immigrants

APRIL 22, 2020|JUDICIAL WATCH





Against the advice of frontline agents, the federal government 
opened a temporary immigration detention facility that was 
barely used and cost a ghastly $66 million to operate for just 
five months. During that time the tent encampment situated in 
a rural west Texas community near the Mexican border housed 
an average of just 30 detainees, according to a scathing
 federal audit that blasts the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) 
for the waste. Though it has a 2,500-person capacity, the facility 
never held more than 66 illegal aliens on any given day, 
investigators from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found.

Not only did Customs and Border Protection (CBP) pay a private 
contractor tens of millions of dollars in facility costs, it spent 
“about $5.3 million for food services—the preparation and delivery 
of meals and snacks—it did not need,” the congressional probe reveals. 
In an enraging example, investigators write that, during the 
first three months, the government paid for about 675,000 
meals despite ordering only 13,428 because there were not 
enough detainees. The U.S. also “leveraged significant 
federal personnel resources” that added up to an additional 
$6.7 million. This includes 75 unarmed guards to monitor the 
camp around the clock and officers from DHS agencies 
such as CBP, the Border Patrol (BP), Immigration and 
Customs Enforcement (ICE) as well as soldiers from the 
National Guard. Investigators did the math and figured that 
each illegal immigrant detainee that stayed at the camp was 
guarded by four soldiers, three security guards and at least 
one CBP agent. The resources “could have been allocated 
to other missions,” the GAO writes in its report.

Here is a breakdown of the federal officers wasted on this 
seldom-used immigrant detention camp in addition to the 
separately paid contract security guards. Twenty-one CBP 
agents responsible for facility operations, such as detainee 
intake, welfare checks and transportation, among other things. 
Eleven BP agents from the El Paso sector, one of the nation’s 
busiest, 10 CBP officers from the Office of Field Operations 
and five ICE agents to help coordinate on decisions made 
about individuals at the facility. On top of all that, 
116 Texas National Guard soldiers were deployed to the 
encampment for logistical support such as meal distribution 
and monitoring security cameras, among other duties.

The facility in the El Paso County town of Tornillo was once 
used to detain illegal immigrant minors and was briefly reopened 
for single adults around the beginning of August 2019. 
It finally closed at the start of 2020, but not without fleecing 
American taxpayers. It’s not like the government didn’t have 
opportunities to shut it down earlier. In fact, initially the camp 
was only supposed to open for three months at a cost of 
$47 million and could have been closed based on the numbers—less 
than 1% of capacity. Instead, the feds extended the deal for 
two months at a cost of $19 million. “Border Patrol officials in 
the El Paso sector told us that the sector recommended to 
Border Patrol headquarters that the facility be closed and 
resources reallocated elsewhere for other CBP missions, 
due to the consistently low numbers of individuals held at 
the facility and the personnel resource requirements to 
operate the facility,” the GAO report states.

But, as we regularly see in government, there is often little 
consensus—or cooperation—among agencies, even when 
they exist under the same umbrella. In this case the DHS, 
the gargantuan agency created after 9/11 to prevent another 
terrorist attack. Congressional investigators write that CBP 
pushed to keep the Tornillo camp open though it was hardly used. 
The 60,000-employee agency is charged with keeping terrorists 
and their weapons out of the U.S. while facilitating lawful 
international travel and trade and apparently it pulled more 
weight than the frontline BP agents. “In contrast, CBP 
headquarters officials told us, despite the consistently low 
numbers of detainees held in the Tornillo facility, they decided 
to continue operations for the 2,500-person facility because 
they were operating in an environment with considerable 
uncertainty related to migrant flow and wanted to prepare 
for the possibility of increased apprehensions,” 
the report says.

[Charon]

Idiots and fools run the gvt it would seem.