A Biden-Harris transition team official who worked on border issues was simultaneously advising the organization that ended up getting hundreds of millions of dollars in immigration contracts from the government.
This week, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general launched an investigation examining how its agency, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, selected a small Texas-based nonprofit organization known as Family Endeavors to house migrant families in hotels.
New information obtained exclusively by the Washington Examiner revealed that the Family Endeavors employee believed to have brokered the deal, a former ICE official, was advising Family Endeavors while he was on the Biden-Harris transition team, where he may have had knowledge of the government’s plans to change border policies and known what housing needs would arise. Lawyers familiar with the situation said it raises more red flags beyond the existing conflicts of interest that members of Congress have urged to investigate.
Andrew Lorenzen-Strait was named Family Endeavors’s senior director for migrant services and federal affairs on the day President Joe Biden was inaugurated. As such, he acquired government contracts for Endeavors, which up until this point had received no more than $2 million contracts for tasks unrelated to the border or immigration.
“In the totality of the circumstances that happen then, you know, being a consultant for Endeavors and then these very large contracts being awarded to that company, with limited experience, and without any competition does certainly raise, you know, red flags that you know there might have been some cozy dealings taking place,” said Scott Amey, a general counsel for the Project On Government Oversight, a nonpartisan organization in Washington that investigates government corruption.
Lorenzen-Strait joined Family Endeavors in January after working on the transition team, “conducting interviews and vetting for political appointees” at the Department of Health and Human Services, which in March gave his organization a $530 million contract to house migrant children. Other organizations and companies were not allowed to compete for this contract and did not know the government was planning to house tens of thousands of children in emergency facilities until it had already written the check to Family Endeavors in March.
That same month, DHS’s ICE gave the organization $87 million to put migrant families in hotels instead of vacant family residential centers run by ICE that are meant to hold families while they navigate court proceedings. Lorenzen-Strait had worked on Biden’s DHS policy team, where he may have learned of the incoming administration’s plans to begin admitting migrants at the border and avoid using ICE family facilities that were operated by for-profit companies, making the hotels an idea that Family Endeavors could pitch, even though the hotels are for-profit.
While on the transition team, Lorenzen-Strait was the managing director of Lorenzen-Strait Consulting Services, which he launched after leaving ICE in 2019. The firm is described on his LinkedIn page as providing clients “with seasoned consulting services and government relations in the practices areas of homeland security, health and human services, and federal procurement.” Family Endeavors was a client during Lorenzen-Strait’s time on the transition team, which began in September 2020 and went into January.
“Was he doing some lobbying, and was he passing out cards rather than really working on on the transition work?” Amey said. “Was he, was he trying to, even at that point, seize business opportunities rather than doing the true work that the transition teams … are organized to do?”
Lorenzen-Strait worked at ICE through May 2019, and his last responsibility was overseeing detention facilities, including all of the family holding centers that had gone unused since Biden took office, even as ICE paid to operate the facilities.
At ICE, Lorenzen-Strait reported to Tae Johnson, the acting director of the agency who would have the final say on the $87 million contract. Another ICE official, Claire Trickler-McNulty, worked under Lorenzen-Strait before he left ICE in 2019. Trickler-McNulty was given full authority over acquisitions and contracts despite working outside that office, a move that a source familiar with the change told the Washington Examiner in April was “extremely unusual.”
“Is this the case where Family Endeavors had friends in high places that hope you know that provide them a hookup … a very large contract, you know, based on who they know, not necessarily what they know or what services they can provide?” Amey asked. “They [DHS and HHS] need to answer for the decisions that they made.”
The investigation by DHS’s inspector general will focus on the $87 million contract that ICE gave Family Endeavors and how the federal agency came to its conclusion that it not be competed. Amey said all correspondences between Lorenzen-Strait, Endeavors, ICE, the DHS, and transition team officials ought to be examined to see if the private sector entities were tipped off in any way as to how the Biden administration would handle migrants and secretly planned the contract in a way to profit from knowing policy plans or making personal connections that contributed to locking the contracts down. Another scenario, if the White House or the DHS pressured ICE to award the contract to Family Endeavors, also needs to be answered, he said.
“At the end of the day, someone within these agencies awarded these contracts and awarded them without competition,” said Amey. “That’s why a review is essential to figure out, you know, what information he had access to when he was on the transition team.”
Lorenzen-Strait has weaved in and out of government service for more than a decade, gaining significant contracting and procurement experience. Jeff Hauser, an executive director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research’s Revolving Door Project, said this latest development is an example of the government should build more capacity to hold migrants rather than relying on contractors.
“It’s kind of inevitable that when you rely on government contractors that there’s going to be corruption concerns,” said Hauser. “We’ve been urging the Biden administration to rebuild government capacity across the board, and that includes just bringing some of these practices in-house so that they’re not reliant on contracting because the thing about these revolving-door contracting people is that they understand the contracting process better than third parties.
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“I think bigger picture, you’re trying to structure the government to minimize the opportunity and likelihood of this sort of misconduct,” he said.
HHS, DHS, and Family Endeavors did not respond to requests for comment.
