SHAMELESS

Migrant Children Shelter Operator Cancels Holiday Party Set for Trump Golf Club

Caliburn, where John Kelly is now a board member, called off its Dec. 6 event at president’s golf course amid attention to the unaccompanied migrant children in its unit’s custody.

Caliburn International, the government contractor whose operations have included the largest U.S. shelter holding unaccompanied migrant children, has canceled its plans to host its holiday party at the Trump National Golf Club in Virginia, according to an internal company email sent Monday. CBS News first reported on the plans. Caliburn’s decision to hold the event on Dec. 6 at the Trump Organization site raised ethical questions, particularly after the Trump White House’s “zero-tolerance” policy resulted in thousands of children being separated from their parents and placed in government care, including Caliburn’s Homestead, Florida, site. “Is it normal in this administration? Yes, but obviously for a contractor that has hundreds of millions of dollars in business before the federal government, I don’t think it’s any small coincidence that they’re patronizing a Trump business,” Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel at nonprofit watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told CBS News.

In May, Caliburn made headlines when former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly joined its board of directors. The widely criticized Homestead site, which once held as many as 3,000 children, is set to close this month after once being one of two detention sites in the nation exempt from child-welfare inspections.