Introducing the DHS Contract Visualizer

A new tool to explore how DHS is spending its budget under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act

Last July, Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, providing the Department of Homeland Security with $190.6 billion in supplemental funding—an amount that effectively triples the agency’s annual discretionary budget. Budget analysts describe the measure as a structural reset, extending DHS funding across multiple fiscal years and establishing a long acquisition horizon for border enforcement, detention, and interior operations.

Understanding how that money is being spent is not straightforward. Federal procurement data is distributed across multiple systems, reported using technical classifications, and often released weeks or months after contracts are awarded. For most members of the public, the scale and direction of DHS’s expansion remain difficult to track.

Project Salt Box is releasing a DHS Contract Visualizer to make that data easier to examine. The tool aggregates federal procurement records and allows users to see how OBBBA funding is being obligated as contracts are awarded and modified. For best results, the visualizer is best viewed on a large screen or on a mobile device in landscape orientation.

What the Tool Allows Users to See

The DHS Contract Visualizer is designed for journalists, researchers, and advocates working with federal spending data:

• Spending by DHS Office: See how contract dollars are distributed across major DHS components—such as ICE, Customs and Border Protection, FEMA, and the Secret Service—and which agencies receive the largest share of funding.

• Who Is Getting the Money: Explore which private companies and organizations receive DHS contracts, how much funding flows to outside firms, and which contractors appear most often.

• Where the Money Is Going: View DHS spending by state to understand how federal contract dollars are distributed across the country, including payments to state and local governments.

• Size of Awards: Sort contracts by dollar amount to surface both large awards and smaller contracts that may draw little attention individually but represent significant spending when viewed together.

• Connected Views: Click any data point—such as a contractor, agency, or state—to automatically filter the entire report and reveal how individual awards connect to broader spending patterns across DHS.

Oversight in a Multi-Year Funding Environment

The OBBBA provided DHS with enough funding to maintain operations across multiple years, including during a potential lapse in annual appropriations. That structure reduces the role of yearly budget negotiations as a mechanism for oversight.

In this environment, procurement data becomes one of the few public records that shows how policy priorities are being implemented in practice. Contract awards often precede visible changes on the ground, from new detention capacity to expanded enforcement infrastructure.

The DHS Contract Visualizer is intended to support that form of scrutiny by making federal contracting data easier to access and analyze.