President Donald Trump’s administration has spurred an outcry from critics who fear a new policy proposal would effectively result in the human trafficking of children.
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The Trump administration is seeking approval for up to $2.3 billion for a follow-on contract to its self-deportation program, one that would include stipends for unaccompanied migrant children who “choose” to leave the country and mobile “rover” teams recruiting detainees nationwide, according to an investigation by PunchUp.
“It looks and feels a lot like human trafficking,” said immigration lawyer Rekha Sharma-Crawford. “That might sound controversial, but if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s probably not a car horn.”
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), a ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, added that the contract going after children is “gross and un-American,” and that the wider scheme’s “ballooning cost” is “extremely concerning.”
DHS posted a 52-page draft contract dated Aug. 7 on the federal procurement portal, more than double the $915 million ceiling of the program’s earlier iteration.
The draft contains only one reference to children, instructing contractors to issue stipends “only to Government-designated adult recipients,” with no additional safeguards or standards specified for minors anywhere in the document.
This formalizes a practice DHS began last October, offering unaccompanied children as young as 14 a $2,500 payment to abandon legal claims to remain in the country. Unlike the earlier version, which required judicial sign-off and delivered payment directly to the child upon return home, the new contract routes funds to an unspecified adult designee instead.
PunchUp’s earlier reporting found that roughly half of the program’s “voluntary” participants agreed to leave only after being detained.
The new contract would expand that approach, deploying two-person enrollment teams to 35 detention facilities tasked with signing up 36 detainees per site daily, backed by roaming units dispatched wherever demand arises.
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Thompson said the plan appears designed to pressure people held in “terrible conditions” into forfeiting due process rights to boost deportation statistics, and Sharma-Crawford again raised alarm about the well-being of children targeted for deportation.
“The cavalier way with which this administration peddles in human life for money is pretty shocking,” Sharma-Crawford told PunchUp. “That the document does not contain any child-centered safeguards protecting children is not and has never been a priority for this administration.”
The contract is the second installment of Project Homecoming, whose original $915 million deal went to Salus Worldwide Solutions, a two-year-old company with no prior experience as a lead federal contractor, under then-Secretary Kristi Noem.
That award has since become entangled in a wider scandal involving Noem’s ouster, allegations that contractors were asked to pay kickbacks to adviser Corey Lewandowski, and an active DHS Inspector General criminal investigation.
Salus has reportedly burned through nearly all its funding, including a $200 million extension issued in May.
The new contract introduces stipend tiers up to $4,000 per person, a 1 percent tax on payouts, and requires winning bidders to use commercial tracing tools to locate migrants who don’t respond to outreach, alongside a taxpayer-funded advertising campaign in ten cities.
Bids are due Sept. 2. Sources told PunchUp that Salus is considered unlikely to win the new contract, which drew interest from Palantir, GEO Group and CSI Aviation at a closed briefing last week.
DHS and Salus did not answer questions about the roughly 70,000 migrants still awaiting departure or how many are children.
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