WASHINGTON — A Home Republican panel is demanding data from greater than 200 non-governmental organizations that nabbed billions of {dollars} in taxpayers’ cash to settle migrants within the US below ex-President Joe Biden.
One of many focused teams is amongst these embroiled within the anti-ICE protests in Los Angeles.
Home Homeland Safety Committee Chairman Mark Inexperienced (R-Tenn.) and Subcommittee Chairman Josh Breechen (R-Okla.) fired off letters to the 217 organizations Tuesday, accusing every of getting “helped fuel the worst border crisis in our nation’s history.”
The highly effective Republican chairman and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee chief stated the teams created a “pull factor” in offering taxpayer-funded transportation, translation, housing and different companies to migrants, most of whom had been launched into the nation after crossing the border illegally.
“The Committee remains deeply concerned that NGOs that receive U.S. taxpayer dollars benefitted from the border crisis created by the Biden Administration, and stand ready to do so under future Democrat administrations,” Inexperienced and Breechen wrote, citing a “near-total lack of accountability” for the way the cash was spent.
In addition they famous that they’re investigating how a lot the funding incentivized “human trafficking and smuggling” operations in addition to whether or not the “NGOs are now actively advising illegal aliens on how to avoid and impede law enforcement officials.”
One of many teams, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA), took almost $1 million in DHS grants to “offer both citizenship instruction and naturalization application services to lawful permanent residents” beginning in 2021. Its final tranche of funding was yanked by the Trump administration in March.
CHIRLA organized a rally Thursday to denounce the ICE arrests of unlawful immigrants in Los Angeles earlier than protests devolved into full-blown riots that destroyed property and led to the assaults of federal legislation enforcement.
“We have not participated, coordinated, or been part of the protests being registered in Los Angeles other than the press conference and rally,” a CHIRLA rep beforehand advised The Put up in a press release.
The group didn’t reply to a Put up request for remark Tuesday.
The ICE crackdown within the metropolis rounded up convicted sexual abusers, drug sellers and gang members to place into removing proceedings, DHS officers stated.
Southwest Key Packages, one other group being probed by Inexperienced’s panel, was the biggest housing nonprofit for unaccompanied migrant children who entered the US and took round $3 billion in taxpayer funding from Biden’s Well being and Human Companies — earlier than Trump officers pulled the plug in March.
Between 2021 and 2023, Southwest Key’s high 5 executives noticed their salaries inflated on common from $420,000 to $720,000 — even because the group outspent its income by thousands and thousands of {dollars}.
The Justice Division sued Southwest Key Packages in July 2024, alleging that some supervisors and staff had dedicated “severe” and “pervasive” rape and intercourse abuse in opposition to children between 2015 and 2023.
The civil swimsuit was dropped by the DOJ in March 2025, the identical month that Trump’s HHS minimize off federal funding for the group.
Southwest Key “strongly denied the claims relating to child sexual abuse in our shelters,” a rep beforehand stated. The group didn’t reply to a Put up request for remark Tuesday.
Of the greater than 550,000 migrant children who entered the nation between February 2021 and January 2025, a minimum of 291,000 had been launched from federal custody to home sponsors — hundreds of whom have since been flagged as intercourse abusers or gang members — and 32,000 went lacking totally, in line with an August 2024 report from DHS’s inspector basic.
On common, 2.4 million immigrants entered the US yearly between 2021 and 2024, in line with the Congressional Price range Workplace. Roughly 60% crossed the border illegally, a Goldman Sachs evaluation discovered.
DHS subagencies corresponding to ICE and the Federal Emergency Administration Company had been tapped to “coordinate with nonprofit organizations that provide services such as food, shelter, and transportation” for these non-citizens who had been launched, in line with a Authorities Accountability Workplace report in April 2023.
A March 2023 DHS Workplace of Inspector Common audit revealed that “more than half” of FEMA funding that went to NGOs couldn’t be accounted for, Inexperienced notes in his letter.
The GOP chief has beforehand referred to as out $81 million in presumably “illegal” funds that helped cowl migrant stays in luxurious New York Metropolis inns.
Conservative immigration teams have beforehand estimated that the inflow of migrants price New York Metropolis residents as a lot as $10 billion and bilked US taxpayers as much as $150 billion in 2023, the 12 months when unlawful border crossings reached their highest stage in recorded historical past.
Inexperienced led the GOP cost within the Home to question former Homeland Safety Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for allegedly failing to adjust to federal immigration legislation and mendacity to Congress that the border was “secure.”
The Republican missive requests the whole greenback quantity of federal grants, contracts or funds obtained by the NGOs between Jan. 19, 2021, and Jan. 20, 2025. It additionally calls for to know whether or not any group sued the feds and what companies it offered to migrants.
Influential left-leaning teams such because the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty Worldwide and the Southern Poverty Regulation Middle have all been requested to reply to the queries.