ON THIN ICE

ICE Barbie’s Scandal-Hit $1 Billion Failure Faces the Ax

PunchUp reports that Salus burned through its cash and now faces the prospect of a bidding war to keep running troubled Project Homecoming.

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The scandal-hit contractor running Donald Trump’s flagship $1 billion self-deportation program blew through nearly all its cash with poor results and may now be stripped of the work entirely, PunchUp reports.

Salus Worldwide Solutions—the firm named in a wider criminal corruption probe into contracts issued under Kristi Noem’s disaster-hit tenure as Homeland Security secretary—was handed a $200 million, six-month lifeline in May to keep Project Homecoming flying, as the Daily Beast’s sister investigations Substack outlet revealed last Friday.

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The extension, it reported, runs only through November, even though Salus had been contracted on a one-year base deal with two further option years.

Now DHS—under Noem’s replacement, Markwayne Mullin, 48—is on the verge of throwing the contract open to full and open competition, sources told PunchUp, adding that Salus is “unlikely” to win it back.

The aim, one person with intimate knowledge of the process told the Daily Beast’s new investigative Substack outlet, is “finding a way to un-f*** the entire mess.” They added: “The full and open competition is the only way for DHS to save face.”

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Run by Trump crony William Walters III, a former State Department surgeon, Salus has scooped up $1.1 billion in federal contracts despite being founded just two years earlier and never having served as a lead government contractor.

Internal Salus planning documents shared with DHS before the extension and reviewed by PunchUp reveal how close to the edge the program was run. A burn-rate dashboard dated May 7 projected the operation would hit “burnout”—running out of money—on May 26, with just 13 operational days left and $38.85 million remaining against daily spending of $2.7 million.

By then, the company had invoiced $433.57 million in roughly a year, with another $58.78 million in receivables and $25.29 million pending. The documents show Salus had nearly 19,500 stipends worth a total of almost $51 million sitting uncollected.

Insiders told PunchUp the stipends go uncollected because “there is a definite mistrust of the federal government and the idea that the stipend payments are actually real.” Some migrants reportedly believe that signing up might help their cases if they are detained, even if they haven’t taken the money and left.

The results don’t match the cost. Salus’ own documents, revealed during an April court hearing, projected 276,000 removals in year one. A December court declaration from a company executive put the real figure far lower. Of nearly 35,000 stipends authorized by December 1, just 17,406 had been completed. A Salus spokesman claimed the number was now higher but provided no evidence. DHS did not, either.

The re-competition is designed to clean up a mess DHS created itself, sources told PunchUp. Rival CSI Aviation, which lost out when Salus won the work, sued over the award, arguing it was rushed through without proper competition.

Court records show DHS personnel shared non-public budget details with Salus before the bid, and that the work was opened for just two business days—a window CSI called “impossibly short.”

Mother Jones has reported that Christopher Pratt, the DHS official who oversaw the award and a former State Department colleague of Walters, held off-site meetings at Salus’ offices beforehand and personally congratulated Walters once it landed. Pratt didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A May court opinion revealed DHS’s own contracting officer and general counsel concluded the dealings had “created an appearance of impropriety.” The judge tossed the suit only because CSI couldn’t prove its eligibility to bid. He never ruled on whether the deal was clean—writing he’d seen no evidence of “bad faith,” even as he flagged “concerns” about how DHS appeared to have run it.

Salus is now caught up in multiple congressional investigations, with House Oversight Democrats and Senators Richard Blumenthal and Peter Welch both seeking records on the role of former secretary Kristi Noem’s chief adviser and rumored lover, Corey Lewandowski, 52.

Separately, the DHS Inspector General is investigating how contracts were handled under Noem, 54, and Lewandowski, though it won’t confirm which are in scope.

According to congressional letters and NBC News reporting, a Salus representative allegedly told a marketing firm it needed to “make sure we are properly thanking the person who gave it to us” to win a $20 million DHS contract—understood to mean Lewandowski. Salus and Lewandowski have both denied wrongdoing.

The signs of DHS souring run deeper. Salus has already lost control of a $108 million Boeing 737 MAX business jet, fitted with a queen-sized bed, that Noem leased before she was fired and that Trump has since made available to first lady Melania Trump. As PunchUp previously revealed, DHS handed operational control of the jet to arch-rival CSI in May.

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A Salus spokesperson insisted the process was “fair, legal, without political interference, and competitive,” and that the firm saved taxpayers “over $2 billion.” A DHS spokesman said it “has not sunset its contract with Salus” but “regularly reviews contracts to identify waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Lewandowski’s representative did not respond to a request for comment.

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Tom LatchemLead Global Correspondent

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