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The Biden administration is desperate to find shelter for all the illegal immigrants caught and released into the U.S.
Perhaps they could stay in federal office buildings.
The Department of Homeland Security’s palatial headquarters in Washington’s southeast quadrant sits nearly 70% vacant, according to data released this week by Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development, whose mission is to put Americans into homes, is even worse. Its headquarters is 93% vacant. So is the Social Security Administration’s main building outside Baltimore.
The Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources agency, is a ghost town with 88% of its space unoccupied. The General Services Administration, the government’s chief landlord agency, can’t fill its own headquarters, with an 89% vacancy rate.
Across two dozen departments and agencies, not a single one was at 50% capacity in the first three months of this year, according to Ms. Ernst’s figures.
“While it’s not the night before Christmas yet, there’s not a creature stirring, not even a mouse, in the halls across this city,” Ms. Ernst said in releasing the occupancy figures.
She said the Biden administration gave the numbers to her but didn’t want them released publicly. She defied that demand, saying the public needs to know how bad things have become in the federal workforce.
“COVID’s been over for years. Where are the workers?” she said.
The Washington Times reached out to the worst-performing agencies to ask about the vacancies and their plans to rectify matters.
None of the agencies provided a comment, though in response to federal officials, HUD and the Small Business Administration said their spaces were undergoing renovations during the test period, which contributed to a decrease in attendance.
The GSA controls more than 90 million square feet of office space in the Washington region alone, and the government holds about 511 million square feet nationally. GSA figures on 150 to 180 square feet of usable space per employee.
The 24 headquarters buildings for which Ms. Ernst released data were operating at about 20% of full use.
Occupancy is based on a building’s capacity and the amount of use of its space. The data was based on average attendance during sample days in a three-month period from January through March and was derived from sign-ins, logins and badge swipes.
While offices sit empty, many American communities are overwhelmed by the surge of illegal immigrants whom the Biden administration has caught and released.
Ms. Ernst suggested a meeting of the minds.
“So-called sanctuary cities have run out of space to shelter the influx of immigrants that the Biden administration is allowing to enter the country illegally. With two-thirds of the Department of Homeland Security headquarters going unused, maybe the agency causing the problem can solve it by opening their doors,” she told The Times.
Homeland Security, which has a use rate of 31%, did not respond to a request for comment on the idea.
Exact numbers are a closely held secret, but outside estimates say Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has paroled 2 million illegal immigrants into the U.S., in addition to others caught and released or who sneaked in altogether.
The administration has moved to stick thousands of them at a National Park Service property in New York. It signed a lease with the city for the Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn.
That location lacks many amenities, and the tent city erected to house the migrants sits in a flood plain, critics charged.
House Republicans, joined by a smattering of Democrats, voted last week to cancel the lease and to prevent migrants from being placed on other property held by federal land management agencies. That legislation, which is unlikely to make it through the Democratic-controlled Senate, does not appear to block migrants from being placed in buildings run by non-land-management agencies.
Meanwhile, vacancy at federal buildings is an increasingly touchy issue for the Biden administration, which has declared the pandemic emergency over and ordered employees back to work in person but has been met with resistance by those workers.
The comptroller general, in a report earlier this year, prodded agencies about the matter.
They offered a host of excuses for why they weren’t filling space, including preparing for a possible surge of returning employees.
Some excuses seemed more territorial.
The audit said some agencies seemed to worry that giving up their buildings or sharing space with others would make them seem less powerful than other agencies.
Even within departments and agencies, divisions were reluctant to share space such as conference rooms, the Government Accountability Office said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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