Former White House chief of staff John Kelly has joined the board of a company that operates the largest U.S. shelter for unaccompanied migrant children, according to a CBS News report.
Kelly joined the board of Caliburn International, the company confirmed to CBS on Friday. Caliburn is the parent company of Comprehensive Health Services, which operates a shelter for migrant children in Florida and three others in Texas.
CBS points out that Kelly had already been on the board of advisers of the company that now owns Caliburn, DC Capital Partners. Other high-ranking military officials, including retired Gen. Anthony Zinni, are also on the board. The company primarily does work in the defense sector, according to the publication.
Kelly helped implement President Donald Trump’s restrictionist immigration policies, first as head of the Department of Homeland Security and then as White House chief of staff, before his departure at the start of this year. In May 2018, he told NPR that immigrants who come to the U.S. illegally are “not people that would easily assimilate into the United States, into our modern society.”
A year prior to that, in a March 2017 interview with CNN, Kelly suggested separating families to deter illegal immigration. The Trump administration later implemented such a policy but had to abandon mass family separations after a court order and public outcry.
The facilities Comprehensive Health Services operates primarily house minors who came to the U.S. without their parents, who are arriving at the border in large numbers. In March, Border Patrol apprehended 8,975 unaccompanied minors at the U.S.’s southwest border. Those children remain in government custody until they are released to sponsors.
Kelly is hardly the first Trump official to make a questionable job move. Many current and former members of the Trump administration, which is filled with the president’s family members and former business associates, have been accused of corruption and abuses of power.
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