Interview transcript:
Terry Gerton We’re going to talk about a recent GAO report that’s certainly timely. The use of the Department of Homeland Security and Custom and Border Protection’s use of soft-sided facilities for joint processing centers. Tell us a little bit more about the situation and what motivated GAO’s assessment of how this process is going.
Travis Masters Well, Terry, as you probably are aware, most of our reviews are initiated at the request of Congress. And so in this case that was the case. The Homeland Security Committees in both the House and the Senate requested that we take a look at DHS’s contracting and use of soft-sided facilities at the southwest border for holding apprehended individuals and processing them. In the 2019 to 2024 time frame, the number of individuals at the border that were apprehended increased over that time frame from about 850,000 individuals in 2019 to a peak in 2022 of about 2 million individuals. That’s a lot of people. CBP’s facilities were dealing with overcrowding issues, and so they put these temporary, tent-like structures known as soft-sided facilities up to help alleviate that. There was a lot of money associated with that as well. The cost for the facilities went from $170 million in 2019 to $1.4 billion dollars in 2024. So given the numbers of individuals and the size of the cost, Congress was interested in having us take a look at how those contracts were being were being managed and the facilities were being run.
Terry Gerton In the course of this assessment, your team visited multiple sites. You went onsite to see what was happening. What were the most significant findings about how CBP planned for and provided oversight of these facilities?
Travis Masters We visited four facilities. At the time of our review, CBP had seven total soft-sided facilities along the southwest border. We visited four of those. And we looked at eight contracts out of the 69 they had for those. The primary takeaway for us in all of that was that there were areas where CBP could have done a little bit better with regard to analysis and planning for requirements for those facilities, with regard to numbers of personnel needed for certain functions. For instance — porters, who are folks that move individuals’ possessions around within the facility and other items within those facilities. As part of our review, we pointed out that they had, in some cases, too many individuals in a facility and in other cases, too few. And they didn’t really have a staffing model methodology for helping with those fluctuations. And in fact, during our review, our questions about that actually prompted CBP to go back and revisit that, which resulted in a real-time savings: $2.7 million per month between August 2024 to March of 2025, for about a savings of $18 million. So, you know, things of that nature. It was about doing better planning and having better analysis that was really kind of the broad takeaway for us.
Terry Gerton Simultaneous to your report, DHS received millions of dollars to construct additional hard-sided or permanent facilities. What did you find about the cost effectiveness of the temporary structures compared to permanent joint processing centers?
Travis Masters The permanent facilities don’t exist yet. DHS is in the process of building the first one in Laredo. They received just over $300 million from the Congress in 2022 to build this permanent facility. What we found was similar in that sense, that the analysis and planning up front for choosing where that facility might go, how big that facility might be, lacked in some areas regarding requirements and cost estimating. They made a decision to put the facility in Laredo; they didn’t really document clearly the rationale or the criteria for why that was the location selected versus other locations. And they didn’t have a comprehensive cost estimate in place before that. And so again, it really boils down for us to just doing good upfront homework to make sure that you understand that the investment you’re making is well-informed and that it’s the most efficient investment and effective one possible, which again requires you to understand the requirements and things of that nature. So in that sense they were similar. They both JPC and the soft-sided facilities needed some additional study up front.
Terry Gerton I’m speaking with Travis Masters, he’s a director for contracting and national security acquisitions at GAO. In the course of this assessment, GAO made six recommendations documenting lessons learned, focusing on those lifecycle cost estimates. Which of these do you see as the most important for DHS to act on right away?
Travis Masters I think the lessons learned aspect, conducting the analysis necessary to kind of inform future decisions, is probably the biggest. We made some other recommendations as well, regarding oversight of the contract and training of contract oversight officials, which are also important. But the lessons learned piece and the study and analysis piece regarding the joint processing center, I think are the keys. In March of 2025, CBP closed the soft-sided facilities that it had. The number of apprehensions went down, the soft-sided facility contracts were not extended. And so CBP kind of has an opportunity right now — now that there’s sort of a lull in the in the number of individuals being apprehended — to take some time to think forward about, how would they plan for and react when numbers increase again? Because history shows us that the numbers do increase and decrease over time, and it’s likely that the numbers will increase again at some point in the future. So we see that as really a target of opportunity for CBP to take some time to retrospectively look and document lessons learned so they can prepare for the future.
Terry Gerton That’s a great point. DHS did concur with all of the recommendations, but you bring up an important point about capacity. Do they have the capacity and the skill sets to do this cost analysis, to do this planning? What would it take for DHS and CBP to really fully implement your recommendations?
Travis Masters Well, just simply assigning the people to do the work, having an organization within DHS to take a look at the numbers historically, the contracts that were in place at the time, the data, very similar to the information that we collected and analyzed for our report. And then taking some time to sit down and look at — there are a number of best-practice documents. GAO has best practices, for instance, for analysis of alternatives that we cite in the report that could help DHS as it plans for its joint processing center investments, figuring out what’s the best alternative, cost-effective wise or requirements-wise. And so just taking some time to sit down and actually do the analysis, and then we’d like them to document that. I think it’s important to document those lessons, not just simply have them in some individual’s head or maybe in a collective group of heads, but have it on paper for you know, for the future individuals that will have to make those decisions as well, so that it’s memorialized.
Terry Gerton DHS has other detention functions across other portions of its organization. Do you see a cross-fertilization of this skill set and making sure that they’re considering the same factors as they’re planning for other detention facilities?
Travis Masters Absolutely. I mean I think these are just general, basic, good analysis, good informed decision-making kinds of things that would apply regardless of the organization. Our report was focused on CBP specifically, but as you know and others know, ICE also has detention facilities that it manages and contracts for, and I think that these same principles, these same ideas are applicable to them as well.
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