$66 million on a temporary immigrant detention center that was hardly used

The Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), spent $66 million in five months on a temporary, 2,500-person immigration detention facility that housed an average of just 30 detainees a day, and never more than 66 at once.

According to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), CBP paid a private contractor $47 million to establish the detention center in El Paso, Texas and run the facility's support services, such as “meal services, guard services, toilets, and showers."

The report notes that CBP spent about $5.3 million on “the preparation and delivery of meals and snacks” that it did not need. Talk about abusing the corporate credit card — but in this case the credit card is the taxpayer’s wallet.

The facility was ordering food services (three meals a day) for the full capacity of the facility — 2,500 adults — when the center was only housing an average of 28 adults per day. According to the calculations in the report, that means the CBP paid for 675,000 meals in the first three months, when they only needed 13,428.

Another major unnecessary cost at the facility was the excessive number of personnel onsite. The report calculates that for each detainee being held at the facility, there were on average four members of the Texas National Guard, three contracted security guards, and one CBP enforcement officer.

DHS then had the opportunity to close the facility after three months of operating at just 1% capacity. Instead, the department decided to keep it open for another eight weeks, which cost the taxpayers an additional $19 million.million.