Blackstone-backed company cuts ties with Servpro franchise that allegedly neglected child migrants

(MarketWatch) When a Blackstone-backed company in March sold $260 million in bonds under its Servpro Industries banner, a franchise specializing in fire- and water-damage cleanups, the financing went off without much notice.

But three months later, a whistleblower complaint from two former workers at Fort Bliss, Texas, one of the nation’s largest emergency migrant youth facilities, claimed gross mismanagement. Servpro contractors who usually are paid to clean up damaged buildings, were instead overseeing thousands of youth in an alleged state of distress and filth at the desert encampment on the outskirts of El Paso, according to the complaint.