Lawmakers press GSA on DHS, ICE warehouse leases and lack of community notice

Ranking Member Stanton told the subcommittee that Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been purchasing commercial warehouses that local communities did not learn about through normal public-notice channels. "We're not talking about a handful of properties," Stanton said. "We're talking about facilities with a combined capacity of up to 80,000 detainees" and "dozens of properties." He said community members found out through journalists and advocates, not through government notice, and cited an Arizona warehouse purchase as an example.

Said Stanton: "No congressional oversight, no community input, no nothing from school districts, nothing from neighborhood associations." He asked whether GSA had been bypassed for these acquisitions and what authority DHS used to make such purchases.

Administrator Ed Forrest said GSA does not manage all federal real estate and that agencies have different authorities. On whether GSA withheld publication of leases, Forrest said the agency had received instruction on September 24 to not publish certain upcoming lease awards and acknowledged GSA had invoked national-security justifications for nondisclosure. "It is not" GSA's determination, he said, attributing the decision to the client agency under an executive-order directive. Forrest repeatedly declined to provide an on-the-spot count of leases GSA was executing for ICE and said he would respond in writing.

Members pressed whether the "ICE surge team" created to site new offices was common practice; Forrest said surge teams are deployed when a client has urgent needs. When members asked whether full and open competition or the Competition in Contracting Act had been bypassed, Forrest said he would provide written responses.

Lawmakers requested detailed written answers on how many leases GSA is executing for ICE, how many leases ICE has undertaken without GSA, why notices were withheld and whether national-security determinations were used to avoid public posting. The hearing yielded commitments from Forrest to provide written follow-up; no immediate formal action was taken.