The Questions Facing Kristi Noem and ICE
By Rasha Elass and Peter Aldhous
March 16, 2026
Among the reasons that Kristi Noem was fired as head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on March 5 were her alleged mishandling of funds and apparent conflicts of interest relating to a series of contracts worth $220 million, awarded to a contractor under the government’s “urgency” stipulation, which limits competitive bidding.
The use of this “unusual and compelling urgency” justification has been a prominent feature of contracting by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which falls under DHS, during the first year of the second Donald Trump administration, an ongoing joint investigation between the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism (CCIJ) and New Lines has revealed. By Jan. 20, ICE had awarded around $241 million in such contracts (compared to $149 million during President Joe Biden’s four-year tenure). The funds include almost $89 million that ICE awarded to medical and pharmacy benefit claims processing firms, resulting from an emergency of the Trump administration’s own making.
Government contracting is supposed to be open and competitive, in accordance with the Competition in Contracting Act that Congress passed in 1984 to address a lack of competition that can lead to waste, fraud and abuse. The “urgency” stipulation that allows the government to sidestep the open bidding process is supposed to be applied only when an agency would be “seriously injured” if it didn’t limit the contractors allowed to submit a bid.
“We’ve seen it during times of war. We’ve seen it during hurricanes,” Scott Amey, general counsel with the Project on Government Oversight (POGO), told CCIJ and New Lines. But, he added, “You want to use the exceptions minimally, because if you’re not hiring competitively, you’re hurting the government from getting the best prices and you may not be getting the best services.”
Demonstrators hold signs as they protest outside the ICE headquarters in Washington DC, USA, on January 11, 2026. Protesters demanded justice for the murder of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photograph: Gent Shkullaku / Matrix Images / CCIJ
ICE has mostly used the urgency stipulation to ramp up the detention of immigrants. But in one instance, the Trump administration actively created an “emergency” when, on Oct. 3, it abruptly withdrew the Department of Veterans Affairs from its role in processing ICE detainees’ medical claims for reimbursement, a service it had been tasked with since the George W. Bush administration in 2002. That led to awards to Acentra Health ($67.5 million) and Ardent Group ($21.3 million) to provide medical and pharmacy claims processing.
As first reported by the independent journalist Judd Legum, ICE then posted partially redacted documents on Nov. 12 to the government contracting website SAM.gov, justifying its need to invoke the urgency clause and award contracts by bypassing the normal bidding process, stating, “It is an absolute emergency for ICE to immediately procure (a payment system) because lack of this support will delay critical prescriptions and life-saving medications.”
On March 2, Acentra Health began providing medical payment support to ICE, according to the websites of both the company and the agency. But ICE detention facilities have remained without any medical payment support since October, thus jeopardizing medical access to detainees in custody. It is not clear why this gap in service occurred or why it took five months for Acentra to begin its contracted service with ICE. Neither Acentra Health nor ICE has responded to requests for comment.
ICE detention centers rely heavily on outside medical providers and pharmacies, especially for specialized care and hospitalization. ICE’s failure to pay providers has already led to denial of service, according to numerous media reports, leaving detainees — including those with chronic disease, children and elderly people — without essential medical care.
At least 11 people have died while in ICE custody this year, following a two-decade high of 31 deaths in 2025, according to the agency’s own records.
Activists hold signs as they protested against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Washington, DC, USA, on January 26, 2026. The protest came in the wake of the fatal shooting of 37-year-old Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Photograph: Gent Shkullaku / Matrix Images / CCIJ
An investigation by Georgia’s Sen. Jon Ossoff found that even before the payment system collapsed, there were numerous reports of medical neglect at ICE detention centers last year, including for unmanaged diabetes, cardiac arrest and denial of, or failure to avail, medical services.
In general, detainees in ICE custody have fewer protections than prisoners who fall within the jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, who have a constitutional right to basic medical care.
ICE has also utilized the urgency stipulation to award contracts to create media content for its recruitment campaign — to the same companies that embroiled Noem in allegations of conflicts of interest — and for its detention operations. Our joint investigation has found that among the “urgent” contracts awarded since Trump took office last year is over $100 million for the private prison companies CoreCivic ($75 million) and Geo Group ($30 million). These companies spent significant sums lobbying in 2025 and donated half a million dollars each to the Trump election campaign in 2024, according to OpenSecrets, a government transparency group.
“The ostensible explanation from the administration is they’re in a hurry,” Charles Tiefer, an emeritus professor of government contracting at the University of Baltimore School of Law, told CCIJ and New Lines.
On Friday, the administration awarded at least $113 million in a new contract to defense contractor KVG LLC to convert a Maryland warehouse into a large ICE detention center, according to USASpending.gov. KVG has not been the recipient of previous federal contracts for immigration detention, according to government procurement records. The contract is part of the administration’s $38 billion plan to convert large-scale industrial warehouses into ICE holding centers across the country.
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