Page T2From§Eachthe early evening edition — 25 September 2026
As it ran on the front
The Government Accountability Office says Immigration and Customs Enforcement has poured billions into six detention-expansion initiatives since January 2025 without the planning to know whether any of it was needed, and that the rush produced millions of dollars in waste — money spent on facilities and services that were never used, were abandoned almost as fast as they opened, or cost far more than they should have. The agency did not run the numbers first; it built anyway.
Eleven days before the GAO published that finding, the Department of Homeland Security's own inspector general had already found what one of those rush jobs produced. At the Florida detention center known as "Alligator Alcatraz," the watchdog cited cramped conditions, describing "small metal enclosures." The facility has since closed. That is the case the GAO's number is describing: capacity expanded first, conditions checked after, if at all.…
…(cont) Then came the ledger entry the editor asked me to reconcile. The same week the audit ran, the White House canceled $810 million in congressionally appropriated funding — the second "pocket rescission" in 49 years — with large sums earmarked for programs serving illegal immigrants and race-focused initiatives among the targets.
Here is the reconciliation. The $810 million came out of programs that appear nowhere in the GAO's audit. The waste finding and the waste cut did not land on the same line item.
This is not the only accounting problem on the books this month. A Joint Economic Committee report put the taxpayer cost of the administration's other projects at $1.8 billion, ballroom renovations among them at $927 million. A separate plan to relocate roughly 18,000 white South African migrants carries a projected taxpayer cost of $500 million. Set those figures beside the $810 million rescinded from immigrant and race-focused programs and the shape of the ledger holds steady: the money that gets called waste and the money that gets called necessary keep landing in different columns, hon, and the column that gapped by millions this month is not the column that got smaller.
“They caught ICE burning millions on jail cells nobody checked they'd need — cramped little metal boxes in Florida, audited eleven days later by the government's own watchdog. Then they turned around and used the word "waste" to cut $810 million from immigrant and race programs that never touched that budget line. That's the con: the guy who left the water running gets to decide whose faucet gets shut off.”
“Look, the GAO report is about planning rigor, it's not — I mean, it's not a spending scandal, it's a management memo. And the rescission, that's just the administration finally exercising fiscal discipline on programs that, frankly, shouldn't have been appropriated in the first place. Two separate — why would you even connect a jail-capacity audit to a rescission package, that's not — okay, they did happen the same week. Coincidence.</chip> </invoke>”
The receipts
Secret Service diverted $1.17 billion in appropriated funds toward the ballroom project Sen. Blumenthal, official release
Trump cancels nearly $1B in funding for illegal immigrants and race-focused programs in new ‘pocket’ rescissionPresident Trump on Friday ordered the cancellation of $810 million in congressionally appropriated funding, including large sums meant for illegal immigrants and race-focused programs, in the second "pocket" rescission in 49 years, The Post has learned.
The Trump administration's deadly immigration crackdown has not only resulted in widespread abuse of detained immigrants, it has also wasted millions of dollars on facilities and services that were never used, were quickly abandoned, or were far more expensive than necessary, according to an audit published Thursday by the Government…
Republicans' reconciliation package puts $70 billion into ICE's department NBC News, May 2026
ICE wasted millions in taxpayer dollars in rush to expand detention capacity, watchdog saysThe Government Accountability Office reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement wasted millions of taxpayer dollars in a rush to expand its detention capacity. CBS News data journalist Julia Ingram has the details.
Democrats on the congressional Joint Economic Committee on Wednesday released a report calculating that taxpayer funding for President Donald Trump's vanity projects has soared to more than $1.8 billion. Renovations made to the White House—including the president's luxury ballroom—are the biggest projected expenses, as the analysis cites…
President Trump's plan to bring nearly 18,000 White Afrikaners to the U.S. is projected to cost taxpayers $500 million. Camilo Montoya-Galvez reports.
With an unprecedented budget, ICE spent billions in a rush to expand its detention network, wasting millions in the process, the Government Accountability Office found.
· Alligator Alcatraz had cramped conditions, "small metal enclosures," watchdog finds from the morgue, 14 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.