A Senate Republican has launched an investigation into the Biden administration’s awards of two no-bid contracts for handling migrants, worth more than $600 million, to an organization whose senior director has ties to top Biden officials.
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin ordered Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Health and Human Services to turn over all emails related to the contracts, as well as “any communications” between and among ICE and HHS employees or representatives of Family Endeavors, the group that was given the two massive contracts.
Johnson, the ranking member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs’ Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, gave the government until April 28 to provide the internal documents.
The Washington Examiner reported late Tuesday that HHS awarded a $530 million contract to house unaccompanied migrant children in Pecos, Texas, after they are initially intercepted by the Border Patrol. The new contract is 12 times greater than the $43 million worth of work that Family Endeavors did in 2018, according to tax documents, calling into question whether the organization is capable of taking on such a significant project as the number of single children crossing the border has grown every month since President Joe Biden took office and stopped expelling Central American children south of the border.
HHS AWARDED GROUP WITH BIDEN TIES $530 MILLION NO-BID CONTRACT TO HOUSE MIGRANT CHILDREN
Last month, ICE gave Family Endeavors a separate $87 million no-bid contract to acquire and oversee an operation involving 1,239 hotel beds to house 80,000 migrant families in Arizona and Texas through September.
No-bid awards are not supposed to be made except in emergencies, such as disaster relief, according to Carol Thompson, a partner with the Washington-based Federal Practice Group law firm. ICE cited “unusual and compelling urgency” as the reason for not complying with federal contract law in a document provided to the Washington Examiner. HHS did not provide justification for the latest contract.
Family Endeavors had had contracts with several other federal agencies, including the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Federal Acquisition Service. However, the contracts were generally valued at less than $1 million. Despite its nonprofit status, its seven top executives made six-figure salaries in 2018, as much as $312,000 that year.
Johnson asked ICE for materials “that support the claim that unusual and compelling urgency” led to the ICE deal, as well as reasoning for why it did not solicit bids on the HHS contract.
“The required justification and approval document for this contract notes that ‘Family Endeavors, Inc. is the only known source that is presently capably of meeting the Government’s urgent requirement[s]’ on this matter. Please explain how ICE made this determination,” Johnson wrote.
The Family Endeavors official at the center of the deal is Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, who worked on the Biden-Harris transition team vetting and selecting political appointees for HHS, which awarded his organization the larger contract. He was also on the Biden-Harris transition team for DHS policy.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Lorenzen-Strait worked at ICE from 2008 through May 2019, where his last responsibility was overseeing the 45,000-person capacity detention facilities. His immediate boss at the time was Tae Johnson, who has since been promoted to become the acting director of ICE and would have the final say on the $87 million contract.
