The Department of Homeland Security’s watchdog has launched a probe into a $38 billion warehouse-to-megajail scheme pushed by ousted Secretary Kristi Noem and her alleged lover Corey Lewandowski.
Noem, 54, was unceremoniously turfed out of her Cabinet job in late March after a string of catastrophic appearances on Capitol Hill and the unmasking of a $220 million taxpayer-funded vanity ad campaign featuring her on horseback that President Donald Trump, 79, publicly disavowed.
The DHS inspector general is now set to announce an “audit of ICE’s acquisition of detention space” on Wednesday—a sweeping review of every property purchase made under the so-called ICE Detention Reengineering Initiative, The Wall Street Journal reports. The program, a plan to snap up vacant industrial buildings across the country and retrofit them into vast immigration prisons holding up to 8,000 people at a time, was one of Noem and Lewandowski’s “signature” policies, the outlet said. The New York Post has subsequently confirmed the OIG action.
Of the $38 billion funded by Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, DHS has so far blown more than $1 billion on nine of the 11 warehouses it scooped up in just a couple of months over the winter, the Journal reported. ICE paid between 11 and 13 percent above the market rate for comparable properties, according to real-estate analytics firm CoStar, the newspaper said—and on several deals, it paid eye-watering sums far above that.
In Salt Lake City alone, DHS forked over $145 million for a warehouse appraised at just $97 million, The Atlantic reported last month, while a Roxbury, New Jersey site valued at $62 million was scooped up for $129 million. A property in Social Circle, Georgia, appraised last year at $26 million was bought for the same $129 million figure—a markup of nearly 400 percent.
Around 50 contractors have so far been paid $1.7 billion to acquire, renovate and service the warehouses, the Journal reported—including several firms with no prior history of federal work, never mind detention. They include defense contractor KVG LLC, which had previously supported Coast Guard ships and ports before being handed a three-year, $113 million deal in March.
Another firm, SK2, was formed in Puerto Rico in June 2024 by the CEO of a government-facilities contractor and reincorporated in Tennessee shortly after pocketing a $6 million ICE contract this January. Both companies declined to comment when approached by the newspaper.
Noem’s replacement, Markwayne Mullin, 48—the former Oklahoma senator sworn in on March 24—slammed the brakes on the buying binge almost as soon as he assumed control. None of the warehouses is currently holding a single detainee.
The new audit adds to a sprawling inquiry already engulfing Noem and Lewandowski, 52. The DHS inspector general has separately opened an investigation into the $220 million ad campaign and expanded its scope to take in a broader range of contracts.
They include allegations first reported by NBC News that Lewandowski demanded payments from private prison giant GEO Group and other DHS contractors in exchange for protecting their federal deals.
Lewandowski, who has told the Beast he has denied an affair with Noem “10,000 times,” denies all wrongdoing, with his attorney Adam Trigg threatening defamation litigation against NBC. It is unknown whether Lewandowski has followed through on his threat. The story remains online.
Three Democratic senators—Adam Schiff, Peter Welch, and Richard Blumenthal—have also demanded that DHS-linked firms preserve all communications with the former Trump campaign manager, while South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, 48, last month wrote to House Oversight Committee chair James Comer demanding a formal investigation into four potential federal criminal violations by Lewandowski.
For Noem, the watchdog blitz piles fresh agony onto an already excruciating run of personal humiliations. Her husband Bryon, 56, was unmasked in a Daily Mail exposé in late March as an active participant in the so-called “bimbofication” fetish scene, transferring at least $25,000 to surgically-enhanced models throughout the 14 months his wife led DHS.
The Daily Beast has contacted DHS, the DHS Office of Inspector General, and representatives for Noem and Lewandowski for comment.
