ICE Barbie Gives Giant Border Contract to Accused People Smugglers

[Nevilledog]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/ice-barbie-gives-giant-border-contract-to-accused-people-smugglers-slsco-ltd/

No paywall link
https://archive.li/8sF7a

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has awarded $1 billion in contracts to build the Mexican border wall to a company accused of smuggling illegal immigrants into the country, giving them guns, and allowing them to take part in a wild shootout.

The massive building deal was signed off by Noem—nicknamed ICE Barbie for her endless publicity-seeking costume changes—before she leaves office at the end of the month. Noem’s Department of Homeland Security has been quietly pushing ahead with building more of President Donald Trump’s border wall, at the same time as its more high-profile mass deportation campaign.

Under the deal, a Texas company called SLSCO Ltd. has been given two separate contracts, together worth $1 billion, to build the wall in Del Rio and Laredo, Texas. It already has a deal to build so-called Alligator Alcatraz, the detention center in Florida Noem visited dressed in a cream waistcoat, blue suit pants, gleaming white-and-gold MAGA cap and $50k Rolex—having ditched her adopted flak-jacket in the company of President Trump.

CBP has thus far completed 29.5 miles of border wall during Trump's second term, the Washington Examiner reported.

But the Daily Beast can reveal that SLSCO—a massive donor to Republican causes—is accused of having its own history with illegal immigration. In fact, it was accused of smuggling people from Mexico into the country to work for it—then arming them to act as its guards.
The eye-popping claim was made in court papers, which allege that the illegally employed guards even got into a shootout while working for SLSCO.

*snip*