ICE paid millions to leave detention beds empty: inspector general

Homeland Security’s migrant detention agency paid more than $8 million for detention beds that went unused in a Louisiana facility, the department’s inspector general said in a new report that also blasted the jail for filthy conditions and overly strict rules.

Investigators made a surprise visit to the Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana, and found rust and dust in bedroom cells, slime and grime in the communal showers and deep burn marks on the clothing issued to detainees.

The facility, which U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts to hold migrants, also lacked a proper grievance process to report complaints, set too-strict limits on visitation and restricted access to lawyers without identifying any good reason, the inspector general said.

ICE also overpaid for the poor conditions.

The agency guaranteed payment for 677 beds a day at $95 per person and $55 a day for any detainees over the minimum.

But in some months last year, it filled less than 200 of those beds, and never once met the minimum from September 2021 to June 2022, investigators said.

“We determined ICE paid more than $8.5 million for unused bed space under the guaranteed minimum for a 1-year period,” the inspector general concluded.

At one point last spring, ICE changed its rules on the detainee-to-toilet ratio, meaning that Richwood’s actual capacity was reduced to 660 detainees.

“Consequently, Richwood’s capacity is 17 detainees below the contractual guaranteed minimum, resulting in ICE spending money on bed space that is not available,” the inspector general said.

In its official response, ICE said it’s working to resolve the toilet-to-detainee ratio issue, including updating the contract “on an ongoing basis.” ICE said it will make other contract adjustments by the end of this year.

The agency also promised to get the Louisiana facility to comply with ICE’s rules on giving detainees access to grievance forms, allow unrestricted legal visits when possible and clean up the facilities by the end of this year.

The facility also has a new cleaning schedule, Deborah Fleischaker, ICE’s acting chief of staff, said.

Investigators included photos in their report showing decrepit showers and rusty places in a cell. One photo showed a detainee holding up dirty and torn socks, while another showed a detainee holding a shirt with a large scorch mark where it was burned in the facility’s laundry dryers.

The laundry supervisor blamed the detainees, telling investigators that they fill the laundry bags too full. He said he’d tried to “educate” them but they wouldn’t listen, leaving the clothing damaged.

Investigators reviewed requests made to the laundry facility and found none had been responded to for 39 consecutive days before the auditors made their surprise visit. The laundry supervisor then failed to respond to investigators’ follow-up questions, the audit said.

“Detainees need bedding and clothing that meet the standard in order to have suitable living conditions during their stay at Richwood,” the audit concluded.

It’s not just the Louisiana facility that’s leaving beds empty.

ICE contracts out for most of its detention space and the agency pays mandatory minimums to many of those facilities — and often falls short.

A Government Accountability Office report in 2021 found that ICE spent nearly $21 million in May 2020 for roughly 12,000 beds a day that it left empty.

That was, of course, during the early days of the pandemic, when the agency was under pressure from policymakers and judges to reduce its numbers to halt the spread of the coronavirus.

But in the year leading up to that, GAO investigators found five facilities that didn’t meet the guaranteed minimum for a single month.

The inspector general’s report makes clear the issue has continued even as pandemic crowding policies have dissipated.

Indeed, the Biden administration began this year with fewer than 21,000 beds filled, despite being funded for an average of 34,000 beds a day. As of the start of this week, ICE had 27,426 people in custody.