(The Lion) — As ordinary taxpaying Americans struggled with the effects of inflation during the Biden administration, his Health and Human Services (HHS) department spent $23 billion on immigrants for everything from homes to cars to college.
More shocking, however, is how the money enabled child trafficking to flourish in the U.S. with the help of nonprofits, which were ideologically co-opted by the Biden administration.
The reckless spending, which started in 2020, was first reported by the New York Post from data developed by Open the Books (OTB), a nonprofit devoted to government transparency.
Two of the biggest beneficiaries were former employers of an HHS employee who was in charge of making funding decisions, said OTB.
When asked about the potential conflict of interest, HHS said that the employee, Robin Dunn Marcos, the director at HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), had “recused” herself from cases involving her former employers.
The report on HHS comes after the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was caught in an $8 billion shortfall for disaster relief during an active hurricane season. The deficit happened in part because FEMA sent over $1 billion in funding for shelter and food to illegal immigrants who have been streaming through the southern border.
“The current (Biden) Administration needs to stop diverting taxpayer money to initiatives that encourage illegal immigration and instead focus on supporting the American people and their immediate needs during natural disasters,” said Rep. Jake Ellzey, R-Texas.
In 2023 alone, the Biden administration spent over $10 billion from the HHS program to support illegal immigrants, reported OTB, as the numbers of lawless border crossers set records.
“ORR has spent over $22.6 BILLION since 2020 on grants to nonprofits providing everything from help accessing Medicaid to help building credit, help with home and auto loans, and cash assistance,” said OTB. “Yes, cold hard cash.”
The majority of the money went to the controversial unaccompanied migrant children program, reported the New York Post, where Biden let in kids without their parents, enabling the parents to later apply for asylum.
An audit undertaken by the Department of Homeland Security under Biden found that the agency had lost track of tens of thousands of children who entered the country illegally, reported the Catholic News Agency.
But the CEO of OTB told the New York Post the number of lost children is closer to 300,000.
The Child Welfare League of America reports forced labor and sex traffickers running gangs in countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras exploit the promise of a better life in America to get parents to allow children to make the journey to the U.S. alone.
Biden’s funding helped prop up that scheme.
“ORR is part of a troubling trend of using nonprofit groups as ideological proxies,” Hart told the Post. “Vast sums are being outsourced to evade accountability and prop up an immoral, exploitive system that is hurtful to both American citizens and people in other countries who are longing for a better life.”
Two of the top groups receiving funds in the last four fiscal years were Church World Services, which opposed a joint agreement between Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau closing an asylum loophole on the northern border, and the International Rescue Committee, wrote the New York Post.
Church World Services and the International Rescue Committee were both employers of ORR director Dunn Marcos for 27 years prior to her employment at HHS, according to OTB.
Combined, the two nonprofits got close to $1 billion in funding from HHS since 2020, said the watchdog group.
Other Christian groups to gain from the spending were Catholic Charities and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Some of the money spent by HHS on unaccompanied minors went from nonprofits to sponsors who then exploited the kids using labor, drugs or sex trafficking schemes, although there is no evidence tying the Christian nonprofits to those schemes.
In 2023, a New York Times reporter traveled to Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, South Dakota and Virginia and spoke to more than 100 migrant child workers in 20 states, documenting the exploitation.
In one case, a ledger handwritten in Spanish of debts owed to his sponsor, including money for tacos and clothes, was provided by the child to the New York Times. The child owed more than $4,000 plus interest, the sponsor claimed, despite the sponsor getting paid by the U.S. government.
The child was forced to take a job at a “trendy Mexican restaurant near Palm Beach to make the payments,” said the Times.
The sponsor was eventually found guilty of smuggling a child into the United States for financial gain. But in the past decade only 30 such cases have been brought, said the newspaper.
