Making misery and money

The Homestead shelter for unaccompanied migrant children has been shrouded in secrecy and cloaked in controversy from the moment it was reactivated in February 2018. Lawmakers scornful of President Trump’s immigration policies have been blocked from visiting. Because it sits on federal land, Florida’s child welfare agency is barred from investigating allegations of abuse.

Rather than close it, as activists have demanded, the feds just gave the operator, Comprehensive Health Services, a brand new contract — one worth $341 million.

There was no competitive bidding and it happened under the radar.

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CHS’ new contract may have gone largely unnoticed in the government’s online contract summary database, usaspending.gov, because it was under a new name and identification number. Usually extensions to contracts fall under the previous ID numbers.

But the vendor changed last year from Community Health Services Inc. to Community Health Services LLC.

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Government officials said the Miami Herald would have to wait 30 days from when the contract was awarded to gain access to the details.

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By the time the contract — the latest in a series of short-term deals — runs out in November, CHS will have earned more than half a billion dollars for housing migrant children. [...] The dollar total could rise still higher since the payment escalates if the number of youths increases, as is expected.

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The Miami New Times reported on an employment ad placed by CHS stating that potential hires must at all times be “physically able to run, jump, lunge, twist, push, pull, apply approved restraint techniques and otherwise manage or coerce the full weight of an infant or adolescent.”

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The center, formally known as the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children and actually located outside the Homestead city limits, is the only facility for migrant children operated by a for-profit corporation.

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Records show some of the entities investing in DC Capital include the Baltimore police and fire departments, Missouri Department of Transportation and Highway Patrol, Prince George’s County, Police and Fire in Maryland, the University of Oklahoma Foundation and the Fresno City Retirement System in Texas.

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CHS is a subsidiary of Caliburn International, which itself is under the umbrella of the private equity firm DC Capital Partners, a firm whose advisory panel consists of a battery of top national security, diplomatic and military officials with strong government ties [... including] Richard L. Armitage, former U.S. deputy secretary of state; Michael Corbin; former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates; Michael V. Hayden, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and of the National Security Agency; Donald M. Kerr Jr., former deputy director of science and technology at the CIA; Anthony C. Zinni, former commander-in-chief of the U.S. Central Command and former U.S. Envoy to the Middle East; and Stephen F. Loftus, former director of the Office of the Budget for the United States Navy.

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Records show some of the entities investing in DC Capital include the Baltimore police and fire departments, Missouri Department of Transportation and Highway Patrol, Prince George’s County, Police and Fire in Maryland, the University of Oklahoma Foundation and the Fresno City Retirement System in Texas.

  Miami Herald