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.
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.
The claims surfaced in a lawsuit brought against SLSCO over alleged “human and weapons smuggling” across the southern border. That case was brought by two of the company’s security contractors, unnamed in the court documents but described as a former FBI Special Agent and an ex-deputy with the San Diego Sheriff’s office.
The pair began working for SLSCO in 2019, and quickly discovered what they said were migrants working illegally at Trump border wall sites run by the company in southern California. During audits of the sites, they claim to have also seen armed Mexican nationals working as security guards.
Those guards allegedly exchanged fire with another group of migrants who snuck into the country allegedly to steal from the company’s construction sites in July of that year. The security contractors said they raised the incident with upper management, who apparently did nothing about it.
The former FBI agent later told their contacts at the bureau about the company’s alleged hiring of illegal migrants and the shootout. The firm then fired both of them, which they said was a retaliation for having raised the alarm.
The case never went to court because the two people who brought it dismissed it voluntarily. SLSCO, who the Daily Beast has contacted for comment on this story, does not appear to have ever publicly addressed the claims.
Noem signed off personally on SLSCO’s new contracts, as she has done with all DHS contracts over $100,000.
SLSCO was founded in Galveston, Texas by brothers John, Todd and William Sullivan in 1995. The group, which specializes in construction and disaster response, first came under fire during the first Trump administration, when it won bids worth almost $2 billion to build the president’s border wall in Texas, New Mexico, and California.
The Sullivan brothers have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican causes, including Texas Governor Gregg Abbot and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ campaigns.
Trump fired Noem, who has otherwise led his nationwide immigration crackdown, last week over intense backlash to a run of scandals that dogged her 13-month stint as secretary.
This included outcry over nearly $143 million paid to a company run by the husband of Noem’s press secretary to produce a $220 million ad campaign featuring Noem riding horseback at Mount Rushmore and urging migrants to self-deport.
Trump, who has said he “wasn’t thrilled” with the campaign and hadn’t known about it, canned Noem two days after she told Congress under oath that he had.
The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment on this story.
