WASHINGTON — Congress set the money aside so that asylum seekers released from federal custody would have a place to sleep. It became the payment plan for Alligator Alcatraz.
That detail is buried in footnote 35 of a Government Accountability Office report released Sept. 24. The report found that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement started six new detention initiatives after January 2025 without a plan to guide any of them, and has since scaled back four.
The footnotes hold a harder story than the headline finding. They show shelter dollars redirected to detention, federal lockups operating without federal paperwork, a contract still paying for meals nobody eats, and a bed target that exists only in conversation. Meanwhile, ICE’s daily detained population rose 71%, from 39,314 on Jan. 20, 2025, to 67,180 on July 30, 2026.
The Associated Press’s Ryan J. Foley broke the report last week. His story centered on the unused tents at Guantánamo Bay, the empty warehouses and the rate Florida charges to hold detainees. What follows comes from the rest of the report’s 18 pages.
The shelter money
FEMA reimburses Florida through a Detention Support Grant Program, which it built in April 2025 with ICE. Florida was the only eligible recipient. According to FEMA officials, the program was assembled from money appropriated for shelter facilities and services.
That money has a paper trail. In fiscal 2023, Congress required a transfer of $800 million from Customs and Border Protection to FEMA to support sheltering by non-federal groups. FEMA used it to create the Shelter and Services Program. Another $650 million followed in fiscal 2024. Congress’s explanatory statement for that year said the money was to provide temporary shelter to people released from DHS custody and to “facilitate the safe, orderly, and humane release of asylum seekers and families.”
On Sept. 30, 2025, FEMA awarded Florida $608.4 million under the detention program. The grant authorizes $249 per detainee per day, 171% above ICE’s median of $92. FEMA disbursed $58.2 million in May 2026. The facility closed in June. Florida can keep submitting costs through July 31, 2027, and the eligible window begins June 1, 2025, a month before the facility opened.