Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal sent a series of questions to the CEO of Caliburn International “in order to help inform (anti-corruption legislation) and better understand how General Kelly was appointed to the board of your company.” The letter repeatedly cites a May 3 CBS News report that revealed John Kelly’s position with the company, which operates a massive government-funded shelter in Homestead, Florida, as well as three others in Texas. The lawmakers, who said in a press release that they intend to investigate Kelly and Caliburn, set a June 20 deadline for responses to their questions.
News of Kelly’s position at Caliburn ignited widespread recriminations among Democrats. In another letter to the company, on May 3, Warren accused it of profiting off White House policies that led during Kelly’s tenure to a spike in the amount of time children were kept in government custody.Caliburn did not reply to a request for comment.”General Kelly … was at the center of the inhumane and poorly planned immigration policies that put children in cages while separating thousands of families and that benefitted your company,” the lawmakers wrote in their letter. “In fact, those policies helped a subsidiary of your company, which operates the ‘nation’s largest facility for unaccompanied migrant children’ rake in hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts.”The letter to Caliburn CEO Jim Van Dusen cites Kelly’s role in the White House during the short-lived “zero-tolerance” policy that led to the separation of thousands of migrant children from their parents. Kelly was also in the White House when another policy leading to longer detainments of children was implemented. In June 2018, the government began requiring fingerprint background checks of all household members of a relative seeking to sponsor a child in U.S. custody. Prior to that time, only the sponsor was required to be fingerprinted. The policy was abandoned in December, and officials with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services have since said they did not believe it added value to their system of safety checks for sponsors.”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.”Warren and Jayapal note in their letter that they are sponsors of ethics legislation proposed in November 2018. The Anti-Corruption and Public Integrity Act “would make it illegal for Calibum or any DHS contractor to pay General Kelly or any other former senior DHS official a dime for at least four years after they leave office,” the pair wrote in their letter.