Ninety-two dollars a day. That's what it cost to hold an illegal immigrant in a traditional private detention bed before Joe Biden decided the arrangement was too politically uncomfortable to continue. The replacement system he built — government-run, ideologically approved, and stripped of every cost control that made the old one work — now runs $250 a day in some facilities. The Government Accountability Office just did the math Biden never wanted anyone to see.
The bill came to $1.1 billion in fiscal year 2023 alone. Up from $935 million in fiscal year 2021. A 17 percent spike in two years — not because we were detaining more people, but because Biden made detention more expensive on purpose.
In January 2021, Biden signed an executive order directing the Attorney General to stop renewing contracts with privately operated detention facilities — framing it explicitly as part of his racial equity agenda. Private facilities had historically delivered a 22 to 35 percent cost reduction over government-operated ones. Biden eliminated that savings by executive fiat.
The GAO's July 2026 assessment found that the Bureau of Prisons' cost of incarcerating noncitizens jumped from $935 million in fiscal year 2021 to $1.1 billion by fiscal year 2023. Adjusted to fiscal year 2025 dollars, that figure climbs to $1.15 billion. ICE separately spent $1.07 billion purchasing warehouse-style facilities to replace the private beds Biden banned. Of that, $20 million turned out to be nonrecoverable — money spent on facilities that couldn't be used or repurposed. By fiscal year 2023, 48 percent of noncitizens held by BOP were sitting in low-security facilities, the kind of minimum-oversight setup that private operators had been running for a fraction of the cost.
The GAO found that ICE never conducted a cost comparison between its new government-run approach and the private system it replaced. Not before the switch. Not during. Not after. The agency spent the money and moved on.
RJ Hauman, President of the National Immigration Center for Enforcement, put the core absurdity plainly: "Traditional custodial detention runs a median of $92 a day, and GAO found ICE never even weighed its experiments against it. Mass deportation doesn't happen without permanent beds at scale."
Private detention facilities had documented problems — oversight gaps and conditions that drew lawsuits. So do government-run facilities, which have their own inspector general reports documenting overcrowding, inadequate medical care, and staffing shortages. The difference: when a private facility underperforms, you can cancel the contract. When a government facility underperforms, it gets a bigger budget.
Mark Morgan at the National Immigration Center for Enforcement had warned at the time that the $250-per-day beds and side deals with states were designed to look like action while burning through taxpayer money at a rate no honest cost-benefit analysis could justify. The GAO report is the confirmation nobody in the Biden administration wanted to arrive.
The outcomes were what they were. The migrants didn't end up in better conditions. The communities absorbing them didn't get more resources. The enforcement system didn't get stronger. The goal was applause from the right advocacy groups at the right conferences.
The taxpayer funded the standing ovation.