Warren and Jayapal Launch Probe into 'Rapid, Cynical, and Unethical' Profiteering Off Trump Child Detention Policy by Former Top Aide John Kelly

Two Democratic lawmakers on Thursday morning launched an investigation into a former top Trump administration official who is profiting off the White House's policy of family separation and child detention.

"General Kelly's role in promoting and helping execute these cruel immigration policies remains a stain on his decades of public service."
--Sen. Elizabeth Warrn and Rep. Pramila Jayapal

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) sent an open letter (pdf) to the head of Jim Van Dusen, the CEO of Caliburn International, which recently hired former Gen. John Kelly, who ran President Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security until January 2, 2019, and later became White House chief of staff.

Caliburn manages Comprehensive Health Services, Inc. (CHSi). CHSi runs the Homestead Temporary Shelter for Unaccompanied Children in Florida as well as three facilities in Texas. All four CHSi-run shelters are used to house child victims of President Donald Trump's zero tolerance policy on migration. According to Warren and Jayapal, the Florida facility could receive $340 million in federal funding in just six months.

In their letter to Van Dusen, Warren and Jayapal delivered a blistering assessment of Kelly's time in the administration and questioned his role in the company.

"General Kelly's role in promoting and helping execute these cruel immigration policies remains a stain on his decades of public service," the lawmakers wrote. "It is outrageous that he now appears to be cashing in on those same policies as a board member for the company that benefitted from his actions as a government official."

As Common Dreams reported last month, Kelly joined Caliburn in early May, a move that was described at the time by Ned Price, a former advisor to President Barack Obama, as "a new degree of cruelty and awfulness" in the revolving door between government and the private sector.

Kelly, according to reporting in May from CBS News, is specifically advising the company on child detention.

While Kelly's new position is particularly galling, Warren and Jayapal took care to frame it as part of the bigger problem of the public-private intersect in Washington. In the letter, the two lawmakers touted their Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act, a bill that would ban former DHS officials like Kelly from being paid by public contractors for four years after leaving office.

"We intend to keep working to make that plan law so that actions like General Kelly's rapid, cynical, and unethical shift from the government payroll to the contractor's payroll are no longer allowed," wrote Warren and Jayapal.