Homeland Chief Mayorkas Spent Nearly Half a Billion on a Fleet of Jets That Have Barely Left the Hangar

WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security under Secretary Mayorkas spent close to half a billion dollars acquiring roughly a dozen aircraft, including two luxury Gulfstream jets — one of them designated for the secretary's own travel — most of which have since sat parked and unused while the department looked for enough personnel to operate them.

The purchases, made in part with money appropriated for deportation flights, produced a fleet that has spent more time in hangars than in the air, a return on investment The Press's ledger desk describes as 'stationary.' Democratic appropriators, led by their ranking member, demanded the department account for the spending, one of them writing that the secretary appeared to be 'routinely prioritizing yourself and those closest to you over the needs of the servicemembers who protect this nation' — a sentence that lands differently depending on which party's letterhead it arrives on.

The Press notes that a Gulfstream reserved for a cabinet secretary's personal travel occupies a special place in the American political imagination: it is a scandal, an outrage, and a symptom of a bloated ruling class, right up until it belongs to one's own secretary, at which point it becomes a security necessity and a routine tool of the modern executive. No jet has ever changed altitude as fast as one that switches parties.

Aides defended the fleet as an investment in enforcement capacity, a description complicated chiefly by the fleet's refusal to fly. The aircraft, purchased to move people, have instead moved almost no one, a fact the department presents as an unfortunate staffing gap and everyone else presents as a parking lot with wings.

Reaction followed the standing choreography. Supporters saw a secretary equipping a mission the other party had starved; opponents saw a public servant buying herself a jet with deportation money. The Press archives confirm both parties own the vocabulary — 'operational readiness' and 'swamp on a runway' — and swap it, wheels-up, whenever the other side is the one holding the boarding pass.

The jets, reached for comment, were idling.