How a New Firm With DHS Ties Won a $915 Million Contract to Help Immigrants “Self-Deport”

For our November+December issue, we investigated the brutal rollout of President Donald Trump’s immigration police state: the surge in funding and manpower, the troubling arrests by masked agents, the increasing use of problematic tech, the incessant cruelty of the messaging, and the shadowy profiteers cashing in on the administration’s anti-immigrant crackdown. Read the whole package here^[3].^[2]

Earlier this year, the Department of Homeland Security handed a massive aviation contract, potentially worth nearly $1 billion, to a relatively new company with no federal contracting experience, following an opaque and seemingly hurried process.

The deal has sparked criticism from a rival contractor in a scathing lawsuit, and records obtained by Mother Jones reveal the extensive involvement of a senior DHS official who formerly worked with the winning company’s CEO. The lawsuit alleges the contract was “unlawful, rushed, and noncompetitive.” As the Trump administration pours billions of dollars into DHS for its crackdown on undocumented immigrants, the contract adds to a growing^[4] number^[5] of deals^[6] that have prompted questions^[7] about the integrity of DHS contracting.

The three-year deal to fly migrants back to their home countries went to Salus Worldwide Solutions, a company founded by a former State Department official named William Walters. Until early September^[8], the DHS division overseeing the contract was run by Christopher Pratt, a former State Department colleague of Walters. The White House had nominated Pratt for a high-level position to serve as the State Department’s main liaison with the Pentagon, but pulled his nomination on September 29^[9].

Internal DHS records seen by Mother Jones show that Pratt was involved in the contract award to Salus. In April, before the contract was awarded, Pratt scheduled DHS offsite meetings at Salus’s office, and he personally congratulated Walters after his company won the contract.

Neither Pratt nor Walters responded to questions about the contract and their relationship.

The contract, worth up to $915 million, is for air operations to support the administration’s effort to persuade millions of undocumented immigrants to “self-deport,” a key plank in the Trump administration’s immigration policy. The White House call^[10]s the program “Project Homecoming.” Under it, immigrants who use a Customs and Border Protection app to self-deport are being offered a $1,000 “exit bonus” and free travel. This program is at least partially funded by money that Congress earmarked to provide foreign aid to help refugees, but which the Trump administration has repurposed for “self-deportations,” as Reuters previously reported^[11].

It is hard to know how many people have so far accepted the offer. But if the plan takes off, this program could prove extremely lucrative for Salus, a firm that appears to have only a handful of employees and was launched in 2023 by Walters^[12], a former Army medical officer. A federal contracting website describes Salus as a “Women Owned Business^[13].” The company did not respond to questions about the basis for that claim, but on October 2^[14], days after Mother Jones asked about it, Salus’ federal contractor registration was updated to remove that description^[15].

Walters previously led a State Department unit called the Bureau of Medical Services, which helped to evacuate department personnel in emergencies. Several former Bureau of Medical Services staffers have followed him to Salus Worldwide.

Formed during the Obama administration, this State Department outfit gained attention helping the department deal with the pandemic in 2020. Walters was lionized^[16] in a Vanity Fair profile for his unit’s “daring and often dangerous operations to rescue Americans from peril abroad.” And then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reportedly^[17] okayed the unit’s upgrade from a directorate to a bureau in 2020. But that move was blocked in 2021 by his Biden administration successor Antony Blinken. Walters resigned from the State Department shortly thereafter.

During the 2024 campaign, Walters criticized Vice President Kamala Harris and bashed^[18] the Biden administration for failing to help Afghans who had aided American forces immigrate to the United States. 

In an October 2024 Washington Times op-ed with the headline “Biden-Harris admin abandons our allies in Afghanistan^[19],” he argued Biden had “left behind” over 130,000 Afghans who supported US efforts there, while making it easy for “people from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Haiti” to enter the US. Walters then asked if the Biden administration was “prioritizing the creation of a new voting bloc,” by making it easy for “likely Democratic voters” to immigrate—a suggestion reminiscent of aspects of the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory popular on the far right. 

In April, DHS said^[20] it would not renew temporary protections for around 12,000 Afghans who were able to immigrate to the US under Biden, setting them up for potential deportation to Afghanistan, where many could face reprisals from the Taliban. Walters does not appear to have publicly commented on that decision.

The Salus contract has an unusual history. A person familiar with the process said the department originally planned on awarding the deal to the company without competition, but DHS eventually opened it up to bidding for two business days, which a competitor’s lawsuit called “an impossibly short” period.

The Salus contract award is in support of DHS’s Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans. The office is closer on the DHS organization chart to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem than to ICE itself, which normally runs deportation flights. 

Pratt oversaw that office until September. It is now run by Robert Law, who previously held^[21] a top immigration-focused job at the America First Policy Institute, a pro-Trump think tank launched in 2021 by top officials from his first administration. In November, a few weeks after Trump’s election victory, the organization gave Walters an “AFPI Patriot Award” at a gala event^[22] held at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club. AFPI did not respond to an inquiry about that award.

In a legal protest^[23] filed in August in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, CSI Aviation, a longtime federal contractor that missed out on the large contract, charged that DHS had “foreclosed fair competition by secretly inviting only hand-picked vendors” in a process that excluded CSI. 

CSI already had an ICE deportation flight contract worth up to $586 million^[24], and one of its subcontractors provided planes that the agency used back in March to transport people to a notoriously brutal El Salvadoran prison, whom the Trump administration unpersuasively claimed^[25] were all members of the Venezuelan-based Tren de Aragua gang, despite a court order^[26] blocking the flights.  

But CSI maintains it was shut out of the bidding for the self-deportation deal. DHS gave a predetermined list of contractors just two days to submit proposals, the complaint alleges, justifying the tight timeline by claiming it had an “unusual and compelling” need to remove migrants due to an executive order^[27] issued by President Trump. But Trump’s order had been issued nearly five months earlier, CSI noted. “For five months, the Agency withheld notice from the public and kept the procurement behind closed doors—contradicting its own claim of ‘urgency,’” CSI alleged. “DHS ensured only a select few were aware of and able to compete for the contract, and affirmatively barred others—including CSI—from participating.” 

The department’s request for proposals from potential contractors showed clear signs of haste, according to CSI. It was full of typos and other errors, “including listing the value of the procurement at $95 million instead of $915 million,” the company’s filing said.

CSI also said that DHS “inexplicably removed” an online contracting notice in May after CSI asked about submitting a proposal, and that DHS never responded to the company.

CSI and an attorney representing the company did not respond to requests for comment.

As the lawsuit over its contract continues, Salus appears to be gearing up. The company is currently hiring^[29] for more than 20 positions, including aviation security jobs.

Questions about the Salus award come amid a broader criticism^[30] of the department’s contracting process under Noem. In June, she issued a new policy requiring that she personally approve any spending worth more than $100,000, which has created large backlogs of unapproved contracts, according to multiple^[31] reports^[32].

Noem and her adviser Corey Lewandowski, who is working as a special government employee, have also reportedly involved themselves in DHS contracts awarded as part of the self-deportation program. In February, the department, on an expedited basis, doled out contracts to two GOP-connected firms to craft ads encouraging undocumented immigrants to self-deport, part of a $200 million^[33] TV ad blitz featuring Noem. One of those firms is owned^[34] by a Louisiana-based political consultant who has previously worked with Lewandowski.

After Noem and Lewandowski visited a Palantir facility in March, “Lewandowski told officials at the Department of Homeland Security to give the firm additional work,” the Wall Street Journal reported^[35]. DHS expanded Palantir’s contract to assist the administration in tracking self-deportations. (Lewandowski denied he played a role.)

Noem claimed^[36] in August that “hundreds of thousands of people have left on their own” outside of the DHS program encouraging them to leave. Government data released through Freedom of Information Act requests suggests^[37] the number was around 4,200 in July.

A DHS spokesperson told Mother Jones that “tens of thousands of illegal aliens have utilized the CBP Home app,” and said the effort is part of a successful policy. “The results speak for themselves: 2 million illegal immigrants have left the United States population since January 20,” the spokesperson said via email. 

The department declined to address questions about the Salus contract.

“DHS will not comment on pre-decisional procurement matters, nor will the Department speculate on contractor motivations or individual political views,” the spokesperson said. “All DHS acquisitions are subject to applicable federal procurement laws and oversight, which ensure transparency, competition, and the prudent use of taxpayer funds.”

This story was reported with the Project on Government Oversight.^[38]