No-Bid Contracts Mean Big Bucks for Migrant Services Provider

The federal authorities awarded a $530 million migrant companies contract to Endeavors, a Texas nonprofit that not too long ago employed a Biden transition staff official. Coincidence?

The no-bid contract — the second largest ever issued by the Administration for Kids and Households (ACF) and 12 occasions greater than Endeavors’ annual finances – comes on the heels of the nonprofit’s $87 million no-bid association with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to dealer lodge rooms for migrant households.

The San Antonio-based group landed the 2 profitable contracts lower than two months after it employed Andrew Lorenzen-Strait as senior director for migrant companies and federal affairs. He was beforehand an adviser to the Biden-Harris transition staff on Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) coverage.

Although
Endeavors had no historical past as an ICE contractor and by no means held a chief contract
with ACF’s father or mother company, the Division of Well being and Human Companies (HHS),
Lorenzen-Strait introduced D.C. connections to San Antonio. Earlier than his stint on
the Biden transition, he ran a consulting agency that suggested corporations on federal procurement
practices, with experience at ACF.

From
2008-2019, Lorenzen-Strait labored at ICE, the place he led “humanitarian programming in LGBTQ care” and different custody-related assignments. Throughout
the presidential transition, he additionally vetted HHS appointees.

Endeavors
characterised its new initiatives as “a continuation of companies we have now
delivered to the migrant inhabitants since 2012.” The group hasn’t
mentioned how a lot it expects to earn on both contract, however the mixed worth of
$617 million far exceeds its annual finances, final listed at $43 million in 2018.

In March, ACF paid Endeavors a primary installment of $255 million for “emergency consumption” and “wrap-around care” companies at a migrant facility in Pecos, Texas. But-to-be-specified further assignments will comply with.

Endeavors’ $87 million ICE contract pays the nonprofit to rearrange lodging for migrant households at accommodations in Texas and Arizona. As reported by the Washington Examiner, the contract requires 1,200 lodge beds meant for “brief time period [use], and customarily lower than 72 hours.”

After
particulars of the lodge contract surfaced, ICE cited “uncommon and compelling
urgency” as causes for not complying with federal aggressive bidding
guidelines. Not everyone seems to be shopping for that, and a few see at the least appearances of a
battle of curiosity.

“I discover it exhausting to imagine there have been no different distributors that would have been at the least thought-about,” Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., instructed the Examiner.