Funding the Invasion

How the State Department uses taxpayer dollars to fund the flow of illegal migrants into the US

Many people are unaware that large amounts of federal funds are being given to a wide variety of NGOs, most of them UN-related. Fewer are aware of just how large these amounts are - and what purposes they are being used for. We’re talking about taxpayer money that is being used to facilitate the entrance of illegals into our country. Much of this comes from the funding that we are paying to the United Nations - $4.1 billion slated for 2024 - up from $3.4 billion in 2023. But there’s another even larger element to the UN Funding that often goes unreported.

The US also provides voluntary contributions to UN entities through accounts tied to the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and other Related Programs. Congress generally appropriates overall funding to these accounts, but it’s the executive branch that determines how the funds are actually allocated. For example, according to USAID, the United States contributed more than $7.4 billion to U.N. entities through global humanitarian accounts in FY2022, including Migration and Refugee Assistance, International Disaster Assistance, and Food for Peace - an amount that’s more than double the official UN contributions for that year.

It's long been an open secret that the State Department was facilitating illegal immigration into the United States through humanitarian contributions - using the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration or PRM to do so.  According to their website, PRM’s mission is to “provide protection, ease suffering, and resolve the plight of persecuted and uprooted people around the world on behalf of the American people by working with other governments and international partners.” 

It all sounds very noble, but they go to some lengths to hide where their funding is actually going and what it's being used for. But now, according to a report from the Center for Immigration Studies, we have proof of these payments. It started with a January 24th report by Todd Bensman highlighting how the United Nations was budgeting hundreds of millions of dollars for US bound migrants in 2024. The amounts are enormous - including nearly $1.6 billion designated for 17 Latin American countries.

The UN and its advocacy partners are also “planning to spread $372 million in cash and voucher assistance to some 624,000 immigrants heading for the United States during 2024.” As the report noted, “that money is most often handed out as prepaid rechargeable debit cards but also sometimes includes hard cash bank transfers and mobile transfers” that can be used for whatever purposes the illegal immigrants want.

According to the UN Report, “some 57 international organizations would manage the handouts of $273 million, while 132 “national NGOs” and “civil service organizations” would handle $70 million in aid. Fifteen UN agencies would get the lion’s share at $1.2 billion. As Bensman notes, “The document makes clear in writing that the UN and these partners know their endeavor aids, abets, and makes possible the “onward movement” of immigrants who intend to illegally cross borders, especially to get into the United States.” But it was the UN’s use of the NGO’s and related organizations that got Bensman to investigate further. 

What he found was shocking. “The State Department’s PRM division, along with Samantha Power-run USAID, has given the UN’s International Organization of Migration “more than $1.4 billion in just the last 12 months, by far the most on record. PRM is also the biggest donor to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, which is among 15 different UN agencies that will spread money and aid all along the migrant trails of Latin America.”

In other words, in addition to the generalized funding that we already provide to the UN, Biden’s State Department has been providing enormous amounts of funding to the hundreds of NGOs that have been setting up way-stations all along the routes from Latin America into the US. As Bensman observed, “I have visited UN waystations featuring long lines of U.S.-bound immigrants applying for aid from clipboard-wielding workers handing out cash cards and other goodies, from Reynosa and Monterrey in the north of Mexico to Tapachula in the far south. But the waystations also appear everywhere along the trails much farther south.”

And all of this is being funded by you. Taxpayer money is being spent - more or less anonymously - by the US State Department and its affiliates to help facilitate the unprecedented stream of illegal immigrants that have been flooding across our borders and throughout the entire US. According to the 2023 fiscal year Congressional presentation from the State Department’s PRM, “U.S. contributions… helped the Mexican Commission for Refugee Assistance increase its asylum registration and processing capacity by 400 percent.” 

The report notes that “PRM plans to build out new NGO programming to augment its Mexico and Central America response.” The “response” created by this secret funding is already robust, as evidenced by the many waystations along the lengthy route to the US, but make no mistake, the State Department’s PRM is also working to ensure a steady flow of illegal migrants to the US. 

As the State Department report notes, “In Central America and Mexico, PRM support helps government officials and civil society to identify, screen, protect, and assist vulnerable migrants and to strengthen national asylum systems and other protection capacities.“ Notice what’s being said. Not only is humanitarian aid for existing streams of migrants being put into place, the underlying infrastructure to create these enormous floods of refugees is being funded by the PRM through huge donations to the UN. 

Many of the NGOs that are recipients of the taxpayer-funded money from the State Department are actually faith-based non-profit organizations. As Bensman notes, “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”. Indeed, a follow-up “examination of the more than 30 faith-based nonprofits among those UN NGO partners — representing Jewish, Lutheran, Seventh Day Adventist, Catholic [particularly the Jesuits], and nondenominational evangelical organizations — shows that the U.S. State Department’s PRM and USAID have been mainlining taxpayer funds to these groups.”

The Heritage Foundation's Mike Howell noted that these NGOs are also “involved in lobbying the Biden administration and our Congress to keep the border wide open. And so it's kind of this full scale operation where not only they're involved in the border, but they're involved in D.C. making sure the border stays open through policy and support to the Biden administration. A lot of their staffers and people connected in those NGO networks are in the Biden administration.” 

Howell singled out the Catholic Church, noting that “Catholic charities are a prime example. They're really the 800 pound gorilla when it comes to this. They are deeply involved in facilitating the travel of illegal aliens throughout the country.” To prove their assertion Heritage conducted a unique experiment in 2022, whereby they “obtained and analyzed movement patterns of anonymized mobile devices that were detected on the premises of over 30 NGO facilities at or near the border.”

What they found was shocking. One phase of their investigation involved the geofencing of 20 NGO facilities that were just inside the US border. During the month of January 2022, more than 22,000 unique mobile devices were detected at these NGO facilities. The devices were later traced to 431 separate U.S. congressional districts out of a total 435 congressional districts. Two other phases of their investigation, which included Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, tracked 8,400 unique mobile devices to 434 congressional districts out of a total of 435 congressional districts. 

The illegal migrants were being spread by these NGOs to every corner of the US. As Heritage noted, “The investigation confirmed that a host of NGOs are actively facilitating the Biden border crisis. Overflow from Customs and Border Protection is being transferred to these organizations so that Border Patrol avoids overcrowded facilities. These organizations apply for, and receive, taxpayer money to provide processing and transportation services and infrastructure to facilitate the migration of illegal aliens into the interior of the country.” 

Although the magnitude of the State Department funding was not fully known at the time, Representative Lance Gooden introduced legislation to cut this shadow funding and tried several times to obtain information from Homeland Security head Alejandro Mayorkas, most recently on May 15, 2023. 

As his letter noted, “NGOs receive hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars through federal grants to provide free food, lodging, and transportation for illegal aliens to be released anywhere they want in the United States. NGOs simply tell DHS how many illegal aliens they encounter, and funding can be awarded without any documentation or receipts. Federal funding for migration-related NGOs at the border has increased dramatically at a time when federal resources for border security and immigration enforcement and local resources for emergency response and medical care have been strained to the breaking point.” 

Gooden asked for “A list of all federal funding awards… to NGOs for food, lodging, or transportation of aliens encountered at the southwest border between January 20, 2021, to May 11, 2023.” He has yet to receive a response.

In light of all this we still face a looming question that needs to be answered. Just how many illegal immigrants are now in the country? An interesting 2005 study from Bear Stearns that was done for institutional clients found that “the number of illegal immigrants in the United States may be as high as 20 million people,” more than double the official Census Bureau figure at the time. A surprising Yale Study from 2018, found that there were as many as 29 million illegal immigrants living in the US in 2018.

Extrapolating between the 2005 Bear Stearns Study and the 2018 Yale Study it would seem reasonable to suggest that the illegal immigration population was ~30 million by 2020. According to the US Customs and Border protection, there has been at least 10 million illegals entering the US since Biden took office. Considering the source, we would view this estimate as extremely conservative. You can pick whatever number you like, but we would consider 40 million illegals to be the most likely estimation of all the numbers we've seen people put forth. And like it or not, you’re paying for them to come here.