Tang's DW

Here's another conservative conspiracy theory, but one that appears to have substantially more behind it than most. The Department of Homeland Security sought tenders for a $350 million contract to handle 65,000 unaccompanied minors illegally crossing the Mexican border well before such a number of minors crossed the border. The core claims are:

1. The government was expecting up to 65k unaccompanied children to show up. (seems solid)
2. The contract was for "transporting these juveniles to Office of Refugee Resettlement" (seems solid) for permanent resettlement in the US (justified speculation)
3. Circa 65k children did show up. (The Washington Times claims 60,000.)
4. No more than 5k unaccompanied children had shown up in a previous year. (Not quite true: 10,000 were found in 2007). ([Edit Jul 2]: the count was almost 25,000 last year)
5. Large numbers of children don't just show up like this. This has to be organized. (a matter of speculation at this point)

The resulting conspiracy theory is that the government was planning to import a large number children to to pressure the public for immigration reform For The Children™. While everyone is speculating, I will add my own CT: this could be an intelligence operation. Cuba once once emptied its jails and mental institutions and sent everyone to the Florida Keys accompanied by several teams of intelligence officers, and presented them all as refugees fleeing Communism to fool the Cuban anti-communist movement into demanding that they be welcomed into the United States. It's possible that some of these children are members of politicized "youth" groups seeking to meet up with contacts inside the States. Even if they're not, stressing the target's economy and moving your population onto the target's land are classic strategies. Also, organized crime has the opportunity to make money from all sides: moving the children in, moving them around, moving them out, and moving contraband with them. Causing the problem and then billing the government to handle it is the sort of thing the mafia would do.

The points of contact on the federal contract are Tony Ross and Rachel Ali of DHS.

[Edit Jul 2] The feds are pushing through an extra $2 billion for the services that the government has already sought a contract for, which implied that they had already allocated the money. So some group of contractors is about to be $2 billion richer. This is over $30,000 per child, far more than is needed to feed, clothe, and house them.

Todd Starnes at Fox News claims that A security force from the Baptist Child and Family Services Emergency Management Division calling themselves the "Brown Shirts" had ordered the staff at the refugee camp at Lackland Air Force Base not to talk about what they saw there. Quote: "Anyone caught with a phone was immediately fired." This comes from the political side of Fox News, so take it with a grain of salt.

The BFCS EMD is a "non-profit" security firm getting government contracts across the country and around the world, claiming operations in Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Their website was registered in November 2012 and was not noticed by Internet Archive until 2014. Here's the boss's CorpWiki page. A former treasurer of BCFS retired from Arthur Anderson, moved from Texas to be self-employed in Richmond, Virginia, and now works for the Send Out Cards greeting card (and multi-level marketing) company with offices in Richmond and Salt Lake City.

The Emergency Management Division was involved in the seizure of the Mormons' Yearning for Zion Ranch (wikipedia background).

Edit #2: The private security contractors denied a Congressman entry to one of the holding camps, which is ringed by recently erected barriers to prevent anyone from looking inside. They have offered to let him come back in a few weeks on the condition that he ask no questions and talk to no one. WTF is this about? Our nuclear weapons research facilities are less secure.

[Edit Jul 12] Some of the kids are showing up wearing Obama shoes, assuming the pictures aren't Photoshopped. The same source published an alleged border patrol memo the day before. Both shoes look like the Nike Air Force One.

A little bit of Googling shows that a limited edition of Obama Air Force One shoes looking just like those two was produced in 2008, designed by the artist Van Taylor Monroe.