Homeland Security Paid $464 Million for Airplanes. Then It Parked Them.

The Department of Homeland Security spent $464 million through a no-bid contract on 10 used jets it said were urgently needed for deportation flights, but the fleet has largely sat idle for months at an airport in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Seven are older Boeing 737s that seat about 200 people each and are not flying because the department does not have the staff to operate them. The other three are luxury business jets — two Gulfstream G650s and a Boeing 737-8 MAX fitted with flat-screen televisions, a bar, a kitchen, showers and a queen-sized bed. The contract went to Daedalus, a northern Virginia firm whose chairman, William Walters, had donated $10,000 to a political committee tied to then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. DHS says the idle 737s were undergoing maintenance and that two were expected to begin deportation flights later in August; senators have pressed the department for answers.