Daniel Wolfram
MAGA loyalists are rushing to see who can blame each other first.
The Department of Homeland Security spent $464 million on a no-bid contract for ten used airplanes, citing an urgent need for deportation flights for ICE.
Yet months later, the expensive planes have been stored away in hangars.
Seven commercial jets sit parked at a Louisiana airport. Internal records reviewed by The New York Times show the agency lacked the proper crew to fly them, while CNN reported they still have not left the tarmac once.
Former ICE acting director John Sandweg questioned the purchase. “If you asked me to write a list of the things ICE needed to increase the number of deportations, buying its own fleet of airplanes would absolutely not make the top ten,” he said.
Blaming each other
Officials have traded blame over the deal. DHS states the contract was approved before Secretary Markwayne Mullin was sworn in and blames his predecessor Kristi Noem.
The agency claims in a statement that “the contract for Daedalus was made and approved by department leadership before Secretary Mullin was sworn in,” though records show the price jumped by $303 million on Mullin’s first day.
A spokeswoman for Ms. Noem puts the blame back on Mullin, saying the purchase of the ten aircraft was “finalized” under his leadership.
Former Secretary Kristi Noem was fired from her position in part for giving no-bid contracts out to corporations that previously had donated to political committees closely connected to Noem.
Suspicious use of the planes
Three luxury jets were also acquired along with the seven commercial airplanes. Instead of handling deportations, officials tried leasing them out to other agencies, including one provided to Kash Patel, the director of the FBI.
Patel has come under heavy accusations of using the taxpayer-funded airplane to jet around the world to see his girlfriend perform in Nashville and to watch the Winter Olympics in Italy, among other things.
Senate Democrats Patty Murray and Christopher Murphy demand answers. “The American people deserve a full accounting of this gross misuse of their tax dollars,” they write in a letter obtained by The New York Times.
Bypassing rules
Federal rules usually require open competition. Still, DHS has relied heavily on emergency waivers to circumvent these rules during Trump’s second term.
The Times reported that emergency waivers covered nearly two-thirds of department contract spending in 2026, up sharply from prior years.
Tracking data from Human Rights First reveals that ICE already charters thousands of flights annually through existing vendors, rendering the ten purchased jets obsolete.
For now, the costly investment made using nearly half a billion American tax dollars remains grounded and locked away in hangars behind tarmac runways.
