How ‘charities,' funded by your tax dollars, helped break immigration law
Far-left non-governmental organizations, including the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), helped provide transportation and services to those going to the protests in support of illegal immigration, many of which quickly devolved into brutal attacks on Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
As it turns out, CHIRLA received nearly $34 million in California state grants from June 2022 to June 2023.
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From October 2021 to September 2024, under the Biden-Harris administration, the group also received $450,000 in grants from the Department of Homeland Security.
But this pattern of incentivizing lawless behavior at taxpayers' expense isn't an isolated case — it is an example of the extensive partnership of open-borders activists and their allies in the Biden-Harris administration, and Americans are still paying the cost.
On Wednesday, my Committee will examine this pattern and its impacts in a hearing featuring testimony from Mike Howell of the Oversight Project, human trafficking expert Ali Hopper, and veteran border and riot correspondent Julio Rosas.
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Every one of these witnesses has seen up close how these organizations work with Democrat officials and open-borders policies to advance a pro-illegal immigration agenda — from how NGOs help incentivize cartel human smuggling across our borders and participate in the final mile of this illicit activity, to how they work with far-left rioters opposing ICE enforcement in our streets today.
Over the last four years, the Biden-Harris administration's catch-and-release policies allowed more than 13 million to cross our borders, including gang members, criminals and suspected terrorists.
From the early days of the historic border crisis, Biden and Harris' DHS released these inadmissible aliens to a vast network of NGOs, particularly those operating at the border.
These groups received billions of taxpayer dollars from DHS and the Department of Health and Human Services to provide all manner of services to illegal aliens once they were released from U.S. Customs and Border Protection or ICE custody including legal services, lodging, and transportation to the destination of their choice.
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These NGOs not only incentivized illegal entry, however — they actively participated in completing the human smuggling chain begun by the cartels outside our borders.
The evidence of this NGO industrial complex is incontrovertible.
A groundbreaking 2022 study using mobile-device data showed that NGOs were serving as a launching pad for illegal aliens to disperse throughout the country.
In a 2023 transcribed interview with the Committee, then-Chief Patrol Agent for the Del Rio Sector Jason Owens described how NGOs were complicit in funneling millions of inadmissible aliens into the country, saying, 'A large portion of [the aliens] were being given parole and … ICE would then turn them over to NGOs for them to travel to wherever they were going to go while they await their hearing.'
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In March, the Committee opened an investigation into the mayors of Los Angeles, New York City, and Chicago — sanctuary cities that helped funnel funding to numerous far-left NGOs during the border crisis.
Last month, the Committee expanded its probe to more than 200 NGOs across the country that are suspected of using taxpayer funds to support or benefit from illegal immigration.
NGOs like CHIRLA, Catholic Charities USA, Make the Road New York, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Haitian Bridge Alliance, Global Refuge, Southwest Key Programs, and Endeavors all received letters requesting information on how they spent government funds during the crisis and how they may have used those dollars to encourage and facilitate illegal immigration.
The near-total lack of accountability for how the taxpayer dollars given to NGOs were spent under the Biden-Harris administration is unacceptable.
In March 2023, the DHS Office of Inspector General reported that an audit could not account for more than half of the DHS funding that the OIG reviewed, due to lack of proper documentation by these groups.
The overall funding to these NGOs was immense.
The Biden border crisis was good for business, as many NGOs saw their annual revenues rise significantly during the Biden-Harris administration.
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For example, it was reported that three prominent NGOs that assisted illegal aliens went from making a combined $597 million in revenue in 2019 to $3 billion just three years later in 2022 — an increase of 400%.
One NGO, Southwest Key Programs, received more than $2 billion under the previous administration to provide services for unaccompanied alien children.
However, an HHS OIG report found that Southwest Key leadership may have improperly benefited from the deal, with one top employee receiving a 280% increase in salary by Fiscal Year 2023 to $1.2 million.
Last summer, the federal government sued Southwest Key, alleging that employees engaged in a pattern of sexual abuse and harassment against the children in its shelters and failed to take sufficient action to protect the children in its care.
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Under the Trump administration, HHS has stopped all placement of unaccompanied alien children in Southwest Key facilities.
Another NGO, Endeavors, received sole-source, no-bid ICE contracts under Biden and Harris, despite having no experience as a lead contractor for shelter services.
The non-profit received more than $2 billion in federal contracts under the Biden-Harris administration.
In 2023, Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, a senior director at Endeavors and former ICE employee under the Biden administration, admitted in an undercover video that he used his previous connections with Biden's 2020 transition team to help facilitate the contacts.
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While the Trump administration has successfully re-secured our borders and is working to put the abuse of taxpayer dollars under the Biden-Harris administration behind us, a lot of damage has already been done — and the money has already been spent.
American taxpayer dollars were laundered through Biden and Harris' DHS to these 'non-profits,' who then used those dollars to undermine the laws of the same government giving them funding.
Congress must ensure the NGOs and far-left officials that benefited from and contributed to the worst border crisis in American history are held accountable.
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As many of these same NGOs fight the Trump administration's efforts to restore law and order, we must be vigilant that they never again receive a business opportunity like the Biden border crisis.
Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-OK), is the chairman of the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability.
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