By Staff Reporter
BATAVIA — On Sept. 29, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin signed a letter telling Rep. Tim Kennedy that construction of a new 100-bed detention structure at the federal immigration jail in Batavia had not begun, and describing it as a “hard-sided” building that would hold women.
That same day, according to federal spending records, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement obligated $7,181,962.80 on its Batavia detention contract “for the establishment of a soft-sided tent facility for housing female aliens.”
The two documents, one released by Mr. Kennedy and one posted on USAspending.gov, describe the same project in different terms. Together with an ICE approval memo, a 2025 inspector general report and the contract history, they show how fast the expansion is moving, how much of it the public still can’t see, and how many of the questions Western New York’s congressman asked in July remain unanswered heading into winter.
What DHS told Congress
Mr. Kennedy, a Buffalo Democrat who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, wrote to DHS on July 8 asking about the expansion at the Buffalo Service Processing Center, the ICE-owned jail in Genesee County. The department answered on Sept. 29, which Mr. Kennedy’s office said was 76 days past the deadline he set.
The response opens with a political argument rather than a public-safety one.
“The American people voted overwhelmingly in 2024 for mass deportations, and that is what this Department, under my leadership, is going to deliver, in part due to increased ICE detention capacity,” Mr. Mullin wrote.
The enclosed answers say 653 people were held at Batavia as of July 8, and that 28 percent of them had criminal records. By the department’s own percentage, that means roughly 470 people were being held with no criminal record, all of them on civil immigration grounds.
DHS did not treat that as a problem. “Known criminal history is not a prerequisite for immigration enforcement action and never has been,” the department wrote.
The answers also say the expansion will be paid for with money from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the 2025 budget law, and that standing up and running the facility for its first year will cost an estimated $8,779,275. No children will be held there. ICE plans to house women, the department wrote, but “if the needs of the service dictate, males could also be housed there.”
Asked whether construction had begun, the department answered with one word: “No.”
What the contract records show
The only decision record DHS turned over was a June 15 memo titled “Contract Approval: Batavia Service Processing Center Soft Sided Facility,” sent from Ralph Ferguson, an assistant director in ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, to ICE Deputy Director Charles Wall.
The memo puts the total value at $16,703,366.80 over two years, including what appears in the scanned copy to be $5 million for contingencies, and names the funding source as the One Big Beautiful Bill. It lists the procurement as sole source, with no other offers received. It describes a vendor that would build, operate, maintain and eventually take down “a complete self-sustaining soft sided temporary detention facility adjacent to the Batavia Service Processing Center.”
“While this approach may be more expensive, it is necessary to meet the immediate and urgent bedspace requirements in the Buffalo area of responsibility,” the memo says.
The line-item prices and the planned number of beds are blacked out.
The memo also lists a period of performance of June 1, 2026, to July 31, 2027, about 14 months, even as it describes a six-month base period plus three six-month option periods, or 24 months of support. It does not explain the difference.
Federal spending data fill in some of what the memo leaves out. The contract number it cites, 70CDCR25D00000011, is an ICE detention-services contract held by Akima Infrastructure Protection LLC, the company DHS says staffs the Batavia facility. (The memo names the vendor as Akima Global Services, the affiliate that held the Batavia contract in earlier years.)
Two task orders have been issued under that contract, according to USAspending:
- 70CDCR25FR0000094, covering Aug. 1, 2025, through July 31, 2026, with $23.4 million obligated for detention and transportation services at Batavia.
- 70CDCR26FR0000106, which began Aug. 1, 2026, with $17.1 million obligated so far: $9.45 million at issuance on July 29, $500,000 for “detainee welfare supply items” on Sept. 4, and the $7.18 million tent modification on Sept. 29.
That is $40.5 million obligated through Akima’s Batavia task orders in 14 months. The current task order’s listed end date is Oct. 31, nine days from now, which suggests more money will be added soon.
WXXI News first reported the Sept. 29 tent modification earlier this month, noting that it came the same day as Mr. Mullin’s letter. Mr. Kennedy has since put the discrepancy to DHS directly.
“DHS records provided to my office refer to the new planned structure at Batavia as both ‘hard-sided’ and ‘soft-sided,’” he wrote in an Oct. 20 follow-up letter, asking what will be built and how DHS will make sure it can withstand “sub-zero Western New York winter temperatures.”
The same letter says construction began Oct. 5.
The unannounced visit
Mr. Kennedy made an unannounced oversight visit to Batavia on Oct. 15. Under Section 527 of the 2024 DHS appropriations law, members of Congress may inspect ICE detention facilities without notice, a provision Mr. Kennedy’s office notes was upheld in federal court in Neguse v. ICE.
“Conducting oversight of federal agencies is one of my fundamental responsibilities in Congress, and I will not allow a nearly $17 million expansion of a federal detention facility to move forward without demanding answers,” Mr. Kennedy said in a statement released Wednesday. “When questions about medical care, the treatment of detainees, and access to legal representation remain, DHS has a responsibility to provide clear answers.”
Earlier this month, after the DHS response arrived, he was blunter.
“This administration told the American people it was going after the worst of the worst. Now they’ve admitted in writing that it isn’t true,” Mr. Kennedy said in an Oct. 2 statement. “It took them more than two months to answer, and they still can’t keep their story straight about what they’re building.”
His follow-up letter asks DHS to answer eight questions by Nov. 2, including the current population and share with criminal records, the architecture and floor plans, how men and women would be kept apart if both are held in the new unit, when it will open, and whether Batavia has filled its vacant physician job.
A medical unit that was already short-staffed
That last question has a paper trail.
The DHS Office of Inspector General inspected Batavia, unannounced, from Sept. 10 to 12, 2024, when it held 535 men. Its final report, issued in June 2025, found the medical staff ran “a well-organized health care program,” but that the facility did not employ an on-site, full-time dentist or physician.
Without a dentist, inspectors found, an ICE regional dentist visited about every three to four months. As of Sept. 10, 2024, 21 detainees were waiting for general dental care, some for up to five months. The physician vacancy pushed more medical needs to off-site referrals.
Inspectors also documented one inappropriate use of force by a detention officer, two incidents where staff used immediate force when they should have used planned force, late responses to detainee requests and grievances, and a case in which low-custody detainees were held in the same locked area as a high-custody detainee. ICE agreed with all 10 recommendations and told the inspector general it was “actively recruiting for a physician and dentist.”
The population has grown by more than 100 people since that inspection. The DHS answers to Mr. Kennedy list the medical rooms ICE wants for the expansion, including four exam rooms, three behavioral health rooms, two suicide-watch rooms and two airborne infection isolation rooms, and 32 ICE Health Service Corps positions, among them 12 registered nurses, five social workers and one dentist.
The list does not include a physician. It names three “advanced practice providers,” a category that typically covers nurse practitioners and physician assistants. Overall staffing for the guard force, DHS wrote, is “still being discussed.”
Why women, and why now
DHS links the expansion to Albany. ICE plans to hold women in the new structure, the department wrote, “due to the recently enacted laws by New York State limiting cooperation with ICE and not permitting county jails to enter into contracts with ICE to house illegal aliens.”
That law was signed in May and took effect in August, WXXI reported, and 15 county sheriffs are suing the state over it. Batavia has held only men; before the law, ICE held women from the region in county jails or moved them out of state.
The arrests feeding the jail are reaching into the region’s workplaces and campuses. On Oct. 13, ICE agents detained German Machado Guillen, a SUNY Brockport IT technician from Venezuela, outside his Batavia home. His family told WXXI that he entered on a visitor visa in 2016, was listed on his wife’s asylum application filed days later, and holds a work permit valid through 2029. ICE says he overstayed his authorized stay, which ended in February 2017.
“To be clear, work authorization or a pending application does not confer legal status in the U.S.,” an ICE statement read.
“We are not criminals. We are paying taxes. We are working,” his wife, Maria Velázquez, told the station.
Mr. Kennedy’s letter asks whether Mr. Machado Guillen is still held at Batavia. It also raises a complaint from constituents that the facility has stopped letting lawyers, paralegals and social workers park in its lot, which he says makes it harder to reach detained clients.
Who is accountable
The decision chain is on paper. Mr. Ferguson’s office asked for approval; Mr. Wall, ICE’s deputy director, was asked to sign; Mr. Mullin answers to Congress for it. The money comes from a law Congress passed in 2025, and the contractor is chosen without competition.
What the public still doesn’t know is just as clear:
- How many beds. DHS calls it a 100-bed facility, but the approval memo’s bed count is redacted.
- What it costs, line by line. Every unit price in the memo is blacked out, though the total and the funding source are not.
- What is being built. “Hard-sided” in the secretary’s letter; “soft-sided” and “tent” in ICE’s own contract records.
- Who provides medical care. A 2025 inspection found no full-time physician or dentist; the expansion staffing list adds a dentist but no physician.
- When it opens, and whether men will be housed there too.
Fixes are within reach of the people involved. DHS could release the unredacted bed count and floor plans Mr. Kennedy requested, as well as a winterization plan for a structure ICE’s own records call a tent. The inspector general could return to Batavia once the new unit opens, as it did unannounced in 2024. And Congress, which wrote the unannounced-visit law and funded the expansion, could require ICE to publish facility-level population, criminal-history and medical staffing data, rather than leaving members to pry it loose one letter at a time.
ICE did not respond to questions from WXXI about the discrepancy this month after re-releasing a statement from the summer describing a hard-sided facility. The Buffalo Chronicle is asking DHS and ICE to explain the difference, the redactions and the medical staffing plan, and will update this story with any response.
Documents referenced in this story: DHS response and ICE approval memo (Sept. 29, 2026); Rep. Kennedy’s follow-up letter (Oct. 20, 2026); DHS OIG report OIG-25-24; USAspending records for task orders 70CDCR25FR0000094 and 70CDCR26FR0000106.
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