According to the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a Washington-based watchdog group, “President Joe Biden is directly footing the bill for at least part of facilitating the most voluminous mass migration crisis in U.S. history.”
Illegal migrants are being handed more than $1 billion in the form of money cards, envelopes stuffed with cash, and other “free” benefits at the expense of American taxpayers.
“In funds provided by the State Department and U.S.-backed United Nations outlets, religious-based and other humanitarian groups are paving ‘migration trails’ with cold cash and free ‘loans’ to help ease the hardships immigrants face as they head to the border, like over 300,000 did in December,” the Washington Examiner reports.
“A follow-up CIS examination of the more than 30 faith-based nonprofits among those UN NGO partners — representing Jewish, Lutheran, Seventh Day Adventist, Catholic, and nondenominational evangelical organizations — shows that the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) have been mainlining taxpayer funds to these groups, which then distribute them to keep hundreds of thousands of migrants comfortably moving toward illegal U.S. southern border crossings,” CIS senior national security fellow Todd Bensman writes in his report.
According to Bensman, “the State Department and USAID also sent historic volumes of cash to the Latin America project’s main United Nations overseers, which also pass that aid straight to migrants: the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization of Migration (IOM).”
“The State Department’s PRM and USAID have given IOM $1.4 billion in just the last 12 months, by far the most on record, according to USAspending.gov, a database that tracks federal spending,” he continues. “PRM is also the biggest donor to UNHCR, which is among 15 different UN agencies that will spread money and aid all along the migrant trails of Latin America.”
It is “part and parcel of a State Department agreement to a ‘2023-2025 Framework for Cooperation’ with the UNHCR to pay into the effort and to politically support its goals,” Bensman explains. “The State Department openly acknowledges issuing guidance to field staff on budget and planning coordination for the Latin American effort, and it has turned over operation of major U.S. government policy initiatives in Latin America, such as an expansion of ‘refugee’ centers and management of a no-interest ‘international travel loan’ programs.”
The State Department’s PRM website claims that “PRM promotes U.S. interests by providing protection, easing suffering, and resolving the plight of persecuted and forcibly displaced people around the world.”
“But a more critical interpretation of such direct Biden government infusions of taxpayer money — and operational closeness with the UN agency recipients — is that it hurts the country by easing the northward path for mainly economic immigrants who voluntarily make the journey knowing in advance that all of their basic needs will be provided for and that border policies virtually guarantee their entry and long-term stay,” Bensman writes. “The funding intervention raises the specter that Biden administration appointees in these government agencies, many hailing from NGOs like HIAS, engineered the catch-and-release policies that initially triggered the mass migration crisis in 2021, then arranged for taxpayer money to support the flows.”
According to Bensman, “The UN has entrusted faith-based establishment NGOs with handling a lot of the $372 million in ‘Cash and Voucher Assistance’ and ‘Multipurpose Cash Assistance’ the broader endeavor will hand out to an estimated 624,000 migrants ‘in-transit’ to the United States during 2024.”
“That money is most often handed out, other UN documents show, as pre-paid, rechargeable debit cards, but also hard ‘cash in envelopes’, bank transfers, and mobile transfers that the U.S. border-bound travelers can use for whatever they want,” he reveals.
“This examination of some of the religion-oriented NGOs indicates probable Biden government taxpayer support for many more of the others,” he adds. “But pending further research, the extent of tax money diversion to them is not publicly known.”
“Language in the UN plan for Latin America in 2024 leaves no doubt that its architects in both the UN and U.S. agencies are in lockstep about one thing: aggressively expanding the ranks of NGOs working on the migration trails,” the CIS report concludes, “which if logic follows, would portend even greater diversions of U.S. taxpayer money to support them.”
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
Comment
We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.