How 'urgency' produced a $464 million DHS fleet of grounded planes

The Department of Homeland Security paid $464 million last fall for 10 used airplanes, in a no-bid contract to a northern Virginia firm. Seven of them are now parked at an airport in Lake Charles, Louisiana, because, according to an internal government document obtained by The New York Times, the agency did not have the staff necessary to operate them.

The contract, awarded to Daedalus Aviation Corp. starting in fall 2025, is the subject of a Wednesday letter from the top Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee, who are asking why two of the remaining luxury business jets are being routed to shuttle Trump officials, including FBI Director Kash Patel and border czar Tom Homan, before DHS has even flown the bulk of the fleet it bought for deportations.

Three of the aircraft are luxury business jets; the other seven are older Boeing 737 passenger planes. The 737s have sat unused in Louisiana for months at a time, the Times reported, while DHS quickly sought to loan or lease at least two of the luxury jets to other agencies, including for Patel's use.

John Sandweg, who served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under President Obama, told the Times: "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 10."

ICE has historically outsourced deportation flights to private charters and relied on military and Coast Guard aircraft, the Times reported. Former immigration officials interviewed by the paper said there was little apparent need for DHS to own a fleet at all. The internal document makes the same point in operational form: the planes were bought, but the pilots, mechanics, and cabin crew to run them were not.

The contract fits a pattern the Times has documented across DHS procurement: invoking "urgency" to bypass regular contracting procedures and awarding no-bid contracts to vendors with connections to President Trump or his Cabinet secretaries. Daedalus Aviation Corp. is led by a chair who donated to a political committee supporting the previous homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, the Times reported.

The Murray-Murphy letter, sent Wednesday to DHS Secretary Troy Mullin, opens the first formal Hill review of the deal. The Senate Appropriations Democrats want answers on how the newly acquired jets came to shuttle Patel and Homan while the 737s remain grounded in Lake Charles, and on whether the contract was structured to invite that kind of lateral use from the start.

DHS, in a written statement reported by the Times, defended the purchase as a step toward an "expanded fleet" to support enforcement operations. The agency did not address the staffing gap or the Senate letter. The department has not yet made public any operational plan that would put the 737s in the air on a defined timeline.

The 737s remain parked in Lake Charles. The luxury jets have passengers, but not the ones the contract said they were bought for.