Between 2020 and 2024, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) reportedly spent $22.6 billion on illegal immigrants, including cash payments for cars and home loans.
HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) was found to have also provided assistance in building up credit to start businesses, the New York Post reported, citing a watchdog organization that provided its report exclusively to the outlet.
OpenTheBooks reported that “ORR has spent over $22.6 BILLION since 2020 on grants to nonprofits providing everything from help accessing Medicaid to help building [sic] credit, help with home and auto loans, and cash assistance.”
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The organization noted that the grants “acted as giant magnets for those seeking to cross the border and claim asylum.” ORR also expanded its criteria to allow more people to receive its funding, OpenTheBooks found. In ORR’s 2023 Congressional Budget Justification, the agency suggested expanding its mandate to include:
- “Special Immigrant Juvenile Minors” within the “Unaccompanied Refugee Minor” (URM) program have access to the same benefits as refugees, including Medicaid and foster care services.
- Ukrainian and Afghan children and other URM-designated youth so that they could gain access to legal assistance, which would ensure permanent residency
- Cash assistance to full-time college or technical school students designated as refugees.
- Removal of the requirement that refugees obtain economic self-sufficiency “as quickly as possible.”
OpenTheBooks also detailed the amount of money ORR spent on its illegal immigrant services each year between 2020 and 2024:
- In 2020, ORR spent $2,682,493,224.22
- In 2021, it spent $2,352,120,351.54
- In 2022, it spent $3,378,055,499.50
- In 2023, it spent $10,035,487,466.68
- In 2024, it spent $4,207,541,746.00
That’s a total of $22.655,698,287.94.
ORR came under fire last year after it was revealed that HHS had lost track of nearly 300,000 unaccompanied children who entered the United States illegally, The Daily Wire reported. An inspector general report found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had transferred 448,820 unaccompanied migrant children to HHS between fiscal year 2019 and fiscal year 2023. ICE is supposed to keep track of the children and serve them with a “notice to appear” for their immigration case, but the report found it had not done so and had failed to locate around 291,000 children that had been handed over to HHS.
“ICE must take immediate action to ensure the safety of UCs residing in the United States,” the inspector general said in the report. “Without an ability to monitor the location and status of UCs, ICE has no assurance UCs are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.”
