DHS Spent Half a Billion Dollars (No Bid) on a Fleet of Jets That Now Sit Unused in Hangars
Naturally, both Markwayne Mullin and Kristi Noem are blaming each other for spending $464 million on 10 jets that DHS isn't using.
Photo via Unsplash, Haci Splinter
Democratic members of the Senate Appropriations Committee would really like to know why exactly the Department of Homeland Security decided and argued that it “urgently” needed to spend nearly half a billion dollars on a fleet of 10 jets of varying size and model … that it has almost entirely declined to use (or already gotten rid of) since purchasing.
This week, top Democrats on the aforementioned committee sent a letter to DHS demanding details and accounting of what the hell these $464 million in jets were even intended for in the first place, if not the supposed deportation flights that DHS mouthpieces bragged about the department directly facilitating back in 2025 when the jets began being purchased. And wouldn’t you know it: Both current DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin and prior Secretary Kristi Noem seem to be blaming each other for the apparent, vast waste in expenditure, in classic Trump administration fashion. It seems that no one can quite say with clarity why exactly the planes were purchased at all, but the way they were purchased, via a no-bid “emergency” contract, has become a favored method for the administration’s underlings to shield themselves from assessment of their graft and waste.
The 10 jets in question are split between small, luxury business jets and older, larger Boeing 737 passenger jets. Just months after having acquired them, some have already left DHS hands–one, for instance, is now reportedly being used by FBI Director Kash Patel according to the Senate Appropriations Committee, no doubt assisting in his trips to Kentucky to source new barrels of KA$H-branded vanity bourbon. Why did DHS purchase new Gulfstreams, just to lease them to other agencies? The department isn’t saying. The 737s, meanwhile, have mostly seen prior service in active airliner fleets and low-cost carriers, and would theoretically be used for deportation flights … except for the fact that DHS has simply left them parked at an airport in Charles, Louisiana for months upon months, where they continue to undergo “maintenance checks” according to the department. A document obtained by The New York Times suggested that DHS didn’t have staff to operate those planes, which again begs the question: Why did we buy them again?
Noem spent $464M on 10 jets for deportations before she was fired. They are shuttling Trump officials around instead
— The Independent (@the-independent.com) 11:43 AM · Aug 13, 2026
The answer may be as simple as graft and political cronyism, particularly in the Noem era of DHS. Back in 2025, DHS was arguing that it needed the planes specifically for deportation flights despite the network of charter flights already in place, and that having their own fleet would allow “ICE to operate more efficiently, including by using more efficient flight patterns,” in the words of former spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin, perhaps the single most enthusiastic liar the second Trump administration has produced to date. The contract was subsequently awarded without any bidding process to Daedalus Aviation Corporation, which is led by a chairman named William Walters, a man who previously donated $10,000 to a PAC connected to Kristi Noem. After that donation, Noem’s DHS awarded another contract of $700 million to a business owned by Walters, “to encourage immigrants to leave the U.S. voluntarily.” But don’t worry about how that looks, because a Daedalus spokesperson clarified that “Mr. Walters was unaware that the political committee was tied to Ms. Noem,” to NYT.
Generally speaking, federal law requires government agencies that are about to spend vast amounts of money to gather competing bids before awarding a contract, in order to cut down on corruption and taxpayer expense. DHS, on the other hand, has more or less declared war on this expectation during the second Trump administration, realizing that it can get away with practically any expenditure by simply invoking a specific exemption that allows no-bid contracts to be issued if a case is of “unusual and compelling urgency.” The definition of whether a case is “urgent” is theoretically supposed to come down solely to instances where delaying a contract would result in “serious injury, financial or other,” to the government and taxpayers. It’s the kind of rule that is obviously meant to help the government move faster and cut through red tape in extraordinary circumstances such as during war, disasters or the COVID-19 pandemic. When the agency DOES use the urgency exemption, it is supposed to publish its explanation for doing so.
New internal documents reveal that Trump’s DHS paid a no-bid contract of $464,000,000 for 10 deportation planes, but have rarely used 3 of the luxury jets, and parked the 7 passenger jets at an airport for months.
— Headquarters (@headquartersnews.bsky.social) 10:12 AM · Aug 13, 2026
DHS, on the other hand, has just taken to using the urgency exemption not just for many contracts, but for the majority of its expenditures in 2026, while flatly refusing to explain or justify why an expenditure like the $464 million in jets was “urgent,” under vague national security grounds, saying that explaining its reasoning could “compromise national security of create other security risks.” This “urgency” exemption has gone from being used on less than 1% of total DHS expenditures in 2024, to roughly a quarter of expenditures in 2025 (consider that a test run), to almost TWO THIRDS OF ALL CONTRACT DOLLARS awarded by DHS in 2026. All of that stuff is “urgent.” None of it involves bidding. Most of it is unexplained. It doesn’t take a financial whiz to see how easily this scenario lends itself to abuse and corruption.
“The American people deserve a full accounting of this gross misuse of their tax dollars,” reads the letter from the feckless Senate Dems (Washington’s Patty Murray and Connecticut’s Christopher Murphy) on the Appropriations Committee. Cool, that ought to take care of it.
As always, however, it is at least fleetingly fun to watch blame thrown back and forth by two Trump flunkies. In its written statement response to the Senate Appropriations Committee letter, DHS unsurprisingly decided to throw Noem under the bus for the purchase of the fleet of now unused jets. As the department put it: “The contract for Daedalus was made and approved by department leadership before Secretary Mullin was sworn in.” The department likewise said it “reserves the right to adjust course in an environment with evolving requirements and demands.” A spokesperson for Noem, on the other hand, instead threw the blame back at Mullin, saying that the purchase was “finalized” under his tenure at DHS. According to NYT, “contracting records show that the size of the contract increased by $303 million on the day that Mr. Mullin was sworn in as secretary.” Kids, kids, maybe you can share some blame together?
Last fall DHS bought 10 used aircraft for $464 million, via a no-bid contract invoking an “unusual & compelling urgency” that they were needed immediately for deportation flights.
Today most of the fleet sits idle, mostly due to a lack of staff to fly them.
www.rawstory.com/homeland-sec…
— Mar-a-Hell-No! (@mara-hell-no.bsky.social) 9:09 AM · Aug 13, 2026
One wonders how far the likes of Mullin are willing to go in continuing to spite the previous DHS tenure and initiatives of Noem, particularly when both of them want to remain in the good graces of Donald Trump and at least theoretically would not want to attract any more unnecessary attention for fractious squabbling than they already have. Noem’s tenure has already been the subject of investigation from DHS’ own Office of Inspector General, looking into everything from the $220 million in TV advertising she claimed to have Trump’s sign-off on, only to later get the President’s cold shoulder, to the aborted DHS push to buy billions of dollars in massive warehouses around the U.S. to be converted into mega ICE detention camps. That fantastically wasteful plan was walked back and more or less abandoned by Mullin when he took over as DHS Secretary, but rest assured that those “urgent” purchases still represent just an unthinkable level of waste that the department is still looking to move on from, whether it’s now selling those warehouses to others for pennies on the dollar, or transferring ownership to other federal agencies. At present, he too appears to be on thinning ice with the president.
Hey, maybe you could just stick the unneeded jets in the warehouses, and kill two birds with one stone? I’m sure we all look forward to seeing what DHS will urgently need next.
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