ATLANTA (NewsNation) — From local to state to federal levels, Americans are paying a high price for the humanitarian crisis at the southern border, and in some ways the federal government is able to hide the true cost of the border crisis from the public through NGOs.
Most migrants who arrive in cities like New York or smaller towns across the United States do so with the help of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), such as religiously affiliated charities or nonprofits.
Over the past two years, Border Patrol holding stations have been consistently overcrowded to deal with the massive influx of migrants crossing illegally into the U.S. When this happens, Border Patrol releases processed migrants to NGOs to house, feed, and coordinate the migrants’ travel to their final destination.
“Once they are received, whether it’s the adult population or families, the sites work with them and the general term we use is that we go through ‘processing,’” said John Martin, deputy director of the Center for Opportunities for the Homeless. “That processing is intended to facilitate the journey to the destination of their choice.”
NGOs receive billions in taxpayer funding through several federal departments, including the Department of Homeland Security and Health and Human Services.
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According ForbesCatholic Charities USA received $1.4 billion in government support compared to $1 billion in private donations. Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service reported more than $93.1 million in U.S. government grants in its 2021 financial statement, making taxpayer-funded grants more than 80% of its total support.
And that number would only increase, as Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service would receive $182.6 million in grants in fiscal year 2022 from the Department of Health and Human Services.
Another NGO, Church World Services, reported more than $20.5 million in grant funding in its 2022 financial report, with more than 40% of its assets coming from contributors.
NewsNation’s Ali Bradley spoke to Robert, a migrant from Togo who crossed into Yuma, Arizona, and was released. He said he stayed at a local hotel for a couple of nights and took a bus from Yuma to Washington, D.C., with his trip paid for by a local NGO.
From there, a different NGO in Washington purchased Robert’s plane ticket to his final destination in Indiana.
“In Washington, I stayed in the hotel again. Afterwards, they bought me a plane ticket and an Uber to take me to the airport,” Robert said. “At the airport, everything was fine.”
Robert’s entire journey to the United States, like that of hundreds of thousands of other migrants, was funded by U.S. taxpayers.
Earlier this year, NGOs faced scrutiny when the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General found that some of the $110 million American Rescue Plan funding for migrants encountered at the southern border had been misspent — in some cases, given to illegal immigrants who evaded Border Patrol.
Charles Marino, a former DHS adviser under former President Barack Obama, said it is nearly impossible to track how many NGOs there are along the southwest border.
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“The problem here is that NGOs have taken over the role of official travel agency for the Department of Homeland Security,” Marino said. “So now they have handed over to NGOs the responsibility of not only coordinating lodging and food, but also travel. Ultimately, we are going to see billions of dollars of taxpayer money wasted through fraud and abuse because there is no oversight from FEMA.”
But Marino said defunding NGOs would worsen the humanitarian crisis at the border by taking away additional resources needed to move migrants to sanctuary cities.
“Let’s face it, they (NGOs) are going to help whoever they find. And that includes those who are escaping, who there is no record of at CBP. But they are going to put them on planes, they are going to send them all over the country, they are going to send them mainly to sanctuary cities, because of the protections that these cities offer to migrants,” he said.
NGOs help keep the flow at the borders efficient, Marino said. But the biggest problem is that they make it difficult to track the funds the government gives them when NGOs help anyone they encounter.
He said the missing funds and the question of where all the money goes have now caught the attention of Congress. The DHS inspector general found that records were not being kept and that these NGOs could not explain how many migrants they were helping.
“Unfortunately, we’re going to see a lot of fraud,” Marino said. “But, as you know, this administration has made bad decisions and this is being dumped at the feet of every city in America, which is not going to have the resources to deal with this.”
The misuse of funds will hurt cities like New York and Chicago, which have welcomed thousands of migrants over the past year but now have little funding to help house them.
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