OPINION: The DHS blank check: Sullivan and Begich owe Alaskans an accounting
OPINION: The DHS blank check: Sullivan and Begich owe Alaskans an accounting
Published 1:30 am Wednesday, September 2, 2026
Senator Dan Sullivan and Representative Nick Begich have given Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security billions of taxpayer dollars while demanding too few answers about how it is spent.
The spending trail is impossible to ignore.
DHS bought 11 warehouses for about $1.074 billion to expand detention capacity and is now considering selling or transferring seven, after acknowledging that some purchases may have lacked adequate due diligence. That is not simply an expensive mistake. It is what happens when Congress funds first and scrutinizes later.
DHS then spent $464 million through a no-bid contract for 10 used aircraft, including three luxury business jets and seven Boeing 737s, supposedly needed urgently for deportation flights. Most have sat idle for months, with an internal government document saying DHS lacked enough personnel to operate them. The administration found the urgency to sign the contract, but not the planning to use what it bought. One of those jets, a Boeing 737-8 MAX, comes configured with a queen-sized bed, a shower, a kitchen and a bar.
For Alaskans weighing groceries against mortgages, gasoline against heating bills, prescription costs against electric bills, the question is obvious: why does an immigration agency need luxury aircraft?
Then came the $220 million DHS advertising campaign featuring then-Secretary Kristi Noem. Reporting raised questions about politically connected contractors and emergency contracting procedures that bypassed normal competition, including a newly formed firm tied to Noem’s senior aides. The issue is not whether DHS should communicate with the public. It is whether taxpayers should finance an advertising campaign through emergency contracts that bypassed normal competitive scrutiny and benefited politically connected firms.
Now ICE wants to spend up to $2 million on robotic dogs for enforcement and security operations. It also awarded a $16.7 million no-bid contract for 6,000 electric-shock gloves, each capable of delivering a painful shock to the skin. That purchase demands more than a press release when ICE’s use of force is already under intense public scrutiny.
What training will officers receive? What rules govern use? What medical safeguards apply? What records will be kept, and who investigates misuse?
Warehouses bought and discarded. Aircraft bought and parked. Advertising tied to political insiders. Technology purchased without clear accountability.
That pattern demands congressional oversight: who approved each purchase, whether competitive bidding was bypassed, whether political relationships shaped the contracting, and whether taxpayers received fair value.
Sullivan and Begich have real tools for this: requesting Government Accountability Office reviews, questioning contracting officials under oath, and holding public hearings that put DHS answers on the record instead of in a press statement.
Congress should also ask whether these expenditures reflect a coherent strategy or a rush to spend before anyone defined the mission. A warehouse is not a detention system without trained staff and legal safeguards. An aircraft is not deportation capacity if no one can fly it. A technology purchase is not public safety if officers and the public do not know the rules governing its use.
Waste can come from incompetence. Secrecy, weak competition and unexplained purchases produce something more dangerous: an environment where accountability disappears.
This is not an argument against border security, disaster response, the Coast Guard or the federal employees who do difficult public work. It is an argument for Congress to determine whether public money is spent lawfully, intelligently and honestly.
Begich voted in March for legislation providing DHS with $64.4 billion in discretionary funding, saying Congress must ensure the department can perform its mission without disruption. Sullivan likewise backed substantial DHS funding, voting in June for an additional $70 billion for DHS immigration enforcement.
They must demand accountability for the money they approve, and they have not demanded enough. They can investigate the agency they have repeatedly helped fund: pull the warehouse records, examine the aircraft contract, question the advertising campaign, and require DHS to justify the proposed robotic dogs and the purchase of the shock gloves. Examine the contracts, review staffing analyses and inspector-general reports, take sworn testimony, then publish what they find.
Alaskans should not have to rely on scattered reports, leaked documents or agency talking points to learn how billions are spent in their name. A public accounting would give Congress a basis for correcting waste, recovering funds where possible, and preventing the next failure.
Congress has the power to write the checks. It also has the duty to inspect what those checks bought.
Sullivan and Begich helped give DHS the blank check. Now they owe Alaskans an accounting.
Van Abbott is a 36-year resident of Alaska having worked in Ketchikan, Fairbanks and Anchorage as a municipal, financial and utility manager. He resides in Ketchikan and is currently a freelance writer. He served as a Peace Corps teacher in the 1960s. See his website: politicalwinds.org.