I’ve written about the corruption behind Trump’s deportation scheme before – but there’s some new tea that is piping hot. When one of Trump’s own deportation contractors sues him, you know the rots gone deep. CSI Aviation has been flying deportation flights for ICE for twenty years – over $1.6 billion worth of flights. Theyre not some nave newcomer. They know how the deportation racket works. But when DHS dropped a nearly billion-dollar contract for self-deportation flights, CSI didn’t even get a shot to bid.
The winner? A company called Salus Worldwide Solutions – founded in 2023 by a guy named William Walters, a former State Department official with zero contracting experience. Salus has maybe a handful of employees, but one hell of a Rolodex. Walters got a Patriot Award at Mar-a-Lago right after Trump’s 2024 win, courtesy of the America First Policy Institute – a pro-Trump think tank staffed by his old administration buddies.
A DHS official who helped pick Salus used to work with Walters. Convenient. Here’s how the con went down. DHS spent months doing market research, but only contacted preselected vendors. Then they dropped the Request for Proposals on a Thursday and gave companies 48 hours to respond. CSI tried to apply – DHS ghosted them. When pressed on the absurd deadline, one DHS official admitted they didn’t know why it had to be done so fast.
Translation: they were told to make sure Salus got the deal. The urgency justification? An executive order Trump signed five months earlier. If it was such an emergency, why sit on it for five months and spend four of them handpicking your winner? The RFP was so sloppy it even listed the contract at $95 million instead of $915 million. When bureaucrats start typing like they’re panicking, its because they are.
The deal funds Project Homecoming – Trump’s plan to pay undocumented immigrants $1,000 and fly them home if they voluntarily deport themselves. The money came from funds Congress earmarked for refugee aid. That’s right – aid meant for refugees is now subsidizing deportations. CSIs lawsuit spells it out: DHS rigged the game, violated procurement laws, and foreclosed fair competition. And again, this isn’t some bleeding-heart NGO complaining – its one of Trump’s biggest deportation profiteers.
The same company that’s been sued for running flights where people were shackled for 23 hours and forced to urinate on themselves. Even they think this is too corrupt. This is what happens when you give ICE $28 billion a year and no oversight. Private prison companies and sketchy contractors are circling like vultures. CoreCivic and GEO Group are reopening facilities so bad judges once called them hell holes.
Deployed Resources landed a $3.8 billion contract that was canceled a week later – no one knows why. The whole operations a grift disguised as government. This isn’t incompetence. Its kleptocracy in motion. You invent fake emergencies to skip fair bidding, steer contracts to your cronies, and call it patriotism. Every deportation becomes a payday. Every urgent procurement becomes a backdoor favor. Every billion-dollar contract becomes an IOU for political loyalty.
The only real question left is whether anyone still in power gives a damn.