Feds paid for room service, laundry and babysitters for illegal immigrants kept at hotels

Homeland Security not only put illegal immigrant families up in hotels at taxpayer expense but the contract it signed insisted they be given five-star treatment with laundry service, their choice of mattresses and guards — not to keep them in, but to keep others out.

Some of those contracting details were revealed by America First Legal, a conservative outfit run by former top Trump aides, which obtained documents through an open-records request and called some of the accommodations for illegal immigrants “astounding.”

Immigrants were given the option of meat at every meal, 24-hour access to drinks and snacks, babysitters to watch their children, television with programming in English and Spanish and a choice of mattresses for their beds.

The hotels were part of the Biden administration’s response to the unprecedented surge of illegal immigrants that swamped Homeland Security’s resources in early 2021.

The department used the hotels to house migrant families it was still trying to process.

Family Endeavors Inc. won no-bid contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars from ICE and Health and Human Services despite not having any experience with that size contract.

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The awards came after the firm hired Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, who had previously served as a senior ICE official overseeing treatment and then worked as a member of the incoming Biden administration’s transition team after the 2020 election.

“We thought that it was important to make this information public so that the average citizen can see what the government is up to,” said Reed D. Rubinstein, senior counselor and director of investigations at American First Legal. “That’s where this contract is really helpful because it gives you a. window — a small window, but a window nonetheless — into how the Biden administration is conducting itself.”

Hotels were used in El Paso, Pecos and Cotulla, Texas, and Chandler and Phoenix in Arizona.

Among the things Family Endeavors promised ICE in the contract was that it would never refer to the illegal immigrants it was detaining as “detainees” or “aliens” — even though they were, legally, both of those. The contracting document even uses those legal terms repeatedly to refer to the immigrants.

The Times reached out to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment for this story.

AFL said the illegal immigrants seemed to get more consideration than Americans, including veterans. The organization pointed out that Texas and Arizona, where the hotels were commandeered, have nearly 40,000 homeless residents — including 3,000 veterans.