Trump's deportation program left on brink of collapse by scandal-plagued contractor

Internal financial documents reveal that the contractor running President Trump's flagship $1 billion self-deportation initiative, Project Homecoming, came within weeks of running out of money entirely.

A burn-rate dashboard dated May 7 and shared with the Department of Homeland Security projected that Salus Worldwide Solutions, the company managing the program, would hit "burnout" — the point of total fund depletion — by May 26, reported The Daily Beast's PunchUp.

At that point, the dashboard showed just 13 operational days remaining, $38.85 million left in reserves, and a daily spend rate of $2.7 million. By that stage, Salus had already invoiced $433.57 million over roughly a year of work, with an additional $58.78 million in accounts receivable and $25.29 million in pending, unbilled activity.

The near-collapse comes as Salus faces mounting scrutiny on multiple fronts. The company is named in a separate criminal corruption probe tied to contracts issued during Kristi Noem's tenure as DHS secretary, and is run by Trump associate William Walters III, a former State Department surgeon whose firm had never served as a lead federal contractor before being founded just two years ago.

Despite that lack of experience, Salus has been awarded $1.1 billion in federal contracts.

One marketing firm reportedly gave up its plans to pursue two DHS contracts after receiving requests from Salus to indirectly pay Corey Lewandowski, then a top aide to Noem, according to a source familiar with the discussions, and a Trump administration official confirmed that someone from that firm related that experience to them about two months later.

“We are guaranteed this contract, but we need to make sure we are properly thanking the person who gave it to us,” a Salus representative told officials with the firm, adding that Lewandowski deserved gratitude for securing the contract, the source said.

DHS issued Salus a $200 million, six-month lifeline in May to keep the program running, but that extension expires in November — far short of the optional multi-year renewal built into the original contract.

Sources say DHS, now under Secretary Markwayne Mullin, is preparing to open the contract to full and open competition rather than automatically renewing it, with one source describing the move as the department's only way to "save face" after the scandal.

Salus is considered unlikely to win the rebid.