Conspiracy Nut Revealed to be Fronting Trump’s $2.3B Immigration Program Revamp

Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty Images A Donald Trump official who promoted birther lies has been made the public face of the Department of Homeland Security’s multibillion-dollar attempt to rebuild its flailing self-deportation program.

Frank Wuco, a senior adviser to the DHS undersecretary for management, Brian Cavanaugh , opened an August 12 briefing for companies seeking to replace the contractor behind Project Homecoming.

The self-proclaimed “cornerstone” of President Donald Trump’s mass-deportation drive offers migrants cash and free flights to leave the U.S.

In May 2025, DHS awarded the existing $915 million contract to Salus Worldwide Solutions—a company founded and led by Trump crony and former State Department surgeon William Walters III—despite its having existed for only two years and never having led a government contract.

PunchUp reported that DHS had been forced to add a $200 million six-month extension after Salus burned through its money in a year.

Departmental insiders have told the Daily Beast’s sister investigations Substack that Salus is “unlikely” to win the $2.34 billion recompetition.

Now PunchUp’s revelation of Wuco’s role in finding its replacement—having been labeled by New York Magazine one of “Trump’s Greatest Worst Hits” of his early first-term appointments—has added another bizarre twist to the ongoing saga.

After the retired Navy lieutenant commander and former conservative radio host joined Trump’s first administration as a White House adviser to DHS in 2017, a CNN KFile investigation found Wuco had questioned Barack Obama’s birthplace, derided LGBT people, and warned about what he called the “Zimbabwe-fication of America.” Wuco suggested that Obama’s memoir had been written by former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers.

He also wrongly claimed that former CIA Director John Brennan had converted to Islam and that former Attorney General Eric Holder had belonged to the Black Panthers.

Wuco also had an extreme answer to terrorism, and said during a 2016 radio appearance that, after the 9/11 attacks, America should have dropped “a couple of low-yield tactical nuclear weapons” on Afghanistan.

He also invented the persona of a fictional former jihadist, which he used to give presentations about Islamist extremism.

DHS defended him at the time.

Its then-acting press secretary, Tyler Houlton, dismissed the coverage as “years-old comments cherry picked from thousands of hours” of broadcasts.

Almost a decade later, Wuco is now representing DHS in yet another vast and hurried procurement, according to documents published alongside the contract opportunity and reviewed by PunchUp that highlight the compressed schedule.