illegal immigration
UN Budgets Millions for U.S.-Bound Migrants in 2024
As this mural in Tapachula, Mexico, shows, UN agencies are well aware that their cash aid and assistance helps support illegal immigration over the U.S. southern border. January 2022 photo by Todd Bensman.
From the Center for Immigration Studies
By Todd Bensman
Public docs show cash handouts to help feed, transport, and house people headed for the U.S. border
Early on in America’s historic border crisis, now entering its fourth record-smashing year, some Republican lawmakers named a significant enabling culprit other than the usual Mexican cartel smugglers. They named the U.S. taxpayer-funded United Nations as essentially a co-smuggler after seeing my reports that the UN was handing out debit cards and cash vouchers to aspiring illegal border crossers on their way north.
One outraged group of 21 border-security-minded lawmakers even pitched a bill that would require the United States, the UN’s largest donor, to turn off the taxpayer money spigot. H.R. 6155 never caught fire, though, in no small part because “fact checks” claiming to debunk other reports like mine in the conservative press dissuaded broader media interest and left the American public in the dark.
But now the UN’s 2024 update to the “Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan” (RMRP for short), a planning and budget document for handing out nearly $1.6 billion in 17 Latin America countries, can cast a broad confirming light on the cash giveaways and much more aid for 2024 ahead — with the helping hands of 248 named non-governmental organizations. Despite the RMRP plan title naming Venezuelans as recipients of this aid operation, the document’s fine print (footnote on p. 14 and paragraph on p. 43, for instance) says the largesse goes to “all nationalities” and “multiple other nationalities”.
A Haitian shows his UN cash card outside a UN facility in Tapachula. He was there to complain the agency had not deposited money in the depleted card. January 2022 photo by Todd Bensman.
The documents clear up any mystery about what the UN and NGOs are doing on the migrant trails and leave no room for supposedly debunking “fact checks”.
In a nutshell, the UN and its advocacy partners are planning to spread $372 million in “Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA)”, and “Multipurpose Cash Assistance (MCA)” to some 624,000 immigrants in-transit to the United States during 2024. That money is most often handed out, other UN documents show, as pre-paid, rechargeable debit cards, but also hard “cash in envelopes”, bank transfers, and mobile transfers the U.S. border-bound travelers can use for whatever they want.
The $372 million in planned cash giveaways to the 624,000 immigrants moving north and illegally crossing national borders “represents a significantly greater share of the financial requirements” for 2024, the RMRP says, but it is still only one part of much broader UN hemisphere-wide vision that aims to spend $1.59 billion assisting about three million people in 17 countries who emigrated from their home nations. Most will be “in-destination” recipients already supposedly settled in third countries, albeit in declining numbers, but a rising share of cash will go to the spiking numbers of “in-transit” immigrants launching journeys from those accommodating countries north to the United States.
Cash cards going out to immigrants in long lines at a camp in Reynosa, Mexico, in September 2021, photos that first drew ostensibly debunking fact checks. Photos by Todd Bensman.
Without distinction, both populations get access to UN cash but also “humanitarian transportation”, shelter, food, legal advice, personal hygiene products, health care, and “protection” against threats like human smuggling, and much more besides cash in envelopes or debit cards.
The cash handouts will be in the mix during 2024 as the UN and its private partners incorporate an “increased use of CVA” in, for instance, the $184 million it plans to provide 1.2 million people, $122 million for rent support and also “temporary collective shelter” for 473,000 people, and $25.8 million for “humanitarian transportation” to 129,000 people crossing borders. There’ll also be “expanded use of multi-purpose cash” for those claiming “gender-based violence”.
The UN’s 2024 Game Plan
The 130-page UN-spearheaded RMRP 2024 update went public in December and is readily accessible online, as is the original 2023-2024 plan it revises — sharply upward. It is the latest since the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the UN’s International Organization for Migration started the program in 2018, originally for Venezuelans but now open to anyone in 17 nations of Latin America and the Caribbean. (For the complete list of involved groups, see p. 268, here, and explore their activities further with this handy interactive tool).
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.
The NGOs actively participated in crafting the RMRP 2024 Update, which amends a 2023-2024 plan released back in 2022 that at the time foresaw a decline in illegal immigration after 2023. It increased, instead.
A Nicaraguan on his way to the U.S. showed his UN cash card in Monterrey, Mexico. January 2022 photo by Todd Bensman.
“Country-level projections of in-transit movements for populations moving north through Central America and Mexico have been revised sharply upwards,” p. 44 explains in updating the 2024 RMRP update.
The reasons given include factors like “xenophobia” leading resettled migrants to leave for the United States. It does, finally, tag the real culprit: U.S. policies that created “newly established opportunities for regular pathways to move to the United States of America” for those who could make their way to northern Mexico.
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.
None of them care. Twenty new groups joined the UN endeavor for 2024 for a total of 248.
Their plan frequently acknowledges the illegality, saying for instance, that one in three of the Venezuelan migrants the UN aims to help are in “irregular situations”, including those “who have crossed international borders without complying with all the legal and administrative requirements for entry and may not have the required documentation to do so”, as well as visa overstayers. The original 2023-2024 plan even spelled out that “special attention will be given to the use of [cash and voucher assistance] for in-transit populations, including the need for comprehensive solutions throughout the journey”.
The only expression of apparent concern about supporting people clearly intending to break U.S. law shows up on a page depicting a map with the thin red line of a migration route leading to the U.S. border at about El Paso. Someone took the trouble to add a footnote on that page noting that the map “does not imply official endorsement or acceptance by the UN”.
UN workers help long lines of immigrants apply for aid in Tapachula, Mexico. Photos by Todd Bensman.
Why hand out hundreds of millions of dollars as cash and services to hundreds of thousands planning to illegally follow that red line through UN member states, to include crossing the US border, when those nations don’t like or want it and must bear the political controversies of it?
“To support access to asylum procedures, migratory regularization activities, and socio-economic integration”, the plan says.
The money handout program “has taken on increasing importance”, it explains elsewhere, because it gives growing numbers of immigrants “the flexibility to cover their expenses and needs they deem most urgent, increasing their dignity and autonomy”.
Where It’ll Be Doled Out
Over the past three years, 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.
The RMRP plan calls for distributing most of the cash, cash equivalents, and vouchers to migrants in Colombia and Ecuador, which are launch pads that sent 450,000 people through the Darian Gap jungle passage in Panama. The plan calls for 24 NGO partners to give money to 95,000 in Colombia and 59,000 in Mexico.
Some of the so-called transportation assistance is for local cab rides to stores or doctor appointments. But the UN agencies also know that aid will facilitate “increased onward movements” between countries of the “in-transit population” for 105,000 immigrants in Colombia, 25,000 in Brazil, 13,000 in Panama, and 3,700 in Mexico, to name a few places.
Likewise for “shelter”, $27.5 million is earmarked for 161,000 travelers in Colombia, $22.5 million for 179,000 in Ecuador, $18 million for 165,000 in Peru, and $4.3 million to help 33,000 in Mexico.
Political Fight or Flight
In years one and two of the historic mass migration crisis that President Biden’s let-them-all-in policies triggered, Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives spoiled for a political fight over UN and NGO activity along the migrant routes because it was funded largely and ironically by the United States. And not just them. In December 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wrote Attorney General Ken Paxton asking him to investigate whether non-governmental organizations unlawfully assisted mass border crossings that overwhelmed the El Paso region.
Recent Congressional Research Service reporting reminds us that they had some legitimate grounds to complain; the United States has been the largest financial contributor to UN entities since the UN was established in 1945. Congress and the executive branch play key roles; Congress appropriates U.S. funding, while the executive branch shapes where the money will go through the State Department and the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in New York City.
Complaints, questions, and proposed legislation about the UN’s role in all of this may have gone cold, but as the latest RMRP plan reveals, the world body is as hot on the trail as ever.
Prior to his government experience, Bensman worked on staff for The Dallas Morning News, CBS, and Hearst Newspapers, covering the FBI, federal law enforcement and serving on investigative teams. He reported extensively on national security issues after 9/11 and worked from more than 25 countries in Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa. In Texas, he authored long-form investigative stories with emphases on border security related to illegal immigration and Mexico’s drug war. His reporting on human smuggling from Muslim-majority countries, Mexico’s drug war, and cross-border gun smuggling to cartels earned two National Press Club awards and an Inter-American Press Association award, among others.
From Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies as published by The Daily Mail
US law enforcement sources tell me the rumour is patently absurd
There were no signs of human life, just railroad tracks and a rough dirt road, six miles west of a small Mexican mountain town.
But this was definitely the place described to me.
On a recent trip to Mexico City’s sprawling migrant encampments, I heard again and again stories about groups of immigrants who were breaking away from these urban bases and disappearing into the vast highland wilderness outside the city.
Now, I’d gone to find them.
As my translator and I picked our way through the mountain landscape dotted with pines, prickly pear cacti and brambles 40 miles northeast of Mexico City, the high desert looked empty.
Then we spotted someone watching us from behind a cluster of rocks.
‘Not immigration!’ I shouted in Spanish. ‘Friendly journalists. Please show yourselves.’
With that, some two dozen bleary-eyed men, women and children emerged from their hidey holes.
On a recent trip to Mexico City’s sprawling migrant encampments, I heard again and again stories about groups of immigrants who were breaking away from these urban bases and disappearing into the vast highland wilderness outside the city.
They were in rough condition, having just weathered a night on bare ground, too frightened of roaming Mexican immigration officers to build fires and too cold to sleep.
They’d brought water jugs but no food, blankets or even the most rudimentary camping gear. All of them repeatedly begged me for something to eat. Unfortunately, I hadn’t brought anything.
‘We haven’t eaten since yesterday. We don’t have that much money,’ a Venezuelan man named Jesus told me.
Another young Venezuelan, who lost a leg in a motorcycle accident back home, navigated the rough terrain on crutches, an empty pant leg flapping wildly. They told me that other groups were camped in the area.
Why?
Most of the migrants I met in Mexico City said they were giving up on their plans to sneak into America. As I reported last week, these people were either returning to their home countries or settling in Mexico.
Clearly, threats from the incoming Trump administration to close the border and deport all illegals are having the desired deterrent effect.
Other migrants said they’d make up their minds before the President-elect’s January 20 inauguration, to see if the Biden administration would approve their applications for ‘humanitarian parole’.
Using the Biden-created ‘CBP One’ mobile app to lodge such claims, some 771,000 migrants have entered into the US since January 2023. Trump has said he’ll end the program on Day One.
But there is a contingent of migrants who are refusing to be turned away. These are the ones escaping from urban encampments into the woods, in a race against time to illegally cross the border before Trump’s swearing-in.
They’d brought water jugs but no food, blankets or even the most rudimentary camping gear. All of them repeatedly begged me for something to eat. Unfortunately, I hadn’t brought anything.
It’s hard not to conclude that these migrants were drawn here, in large part, by President Biden’s disastrous immigration policies, resulting in more than 10 million migrants entering the US during his term. The message that has been sent to the world the past four years is that, if you make it to the border, you’ll likely find a way to cross.
And indeed, as I soon learned, this group had been convinced by a particularly delusional rumor sweeping Mexico City’s migrant camps.
It’s their firm belief that on Wednesday, December 18, the US and Mexican governments are going to withdraw all troops and border guards, giving tens of thousands of migrants one last chance to cross the border before the coming Trump crackdown.
December 18 is ‘International Migrants Day’, declared by the United Nations in 2000, as a time to recognize the plight of migrants worldwide.
‘On International Migrant’s Day, they’re going to open the border gates,’ a young Ecuadorian man named Jason confidently explained to me.
Six men sitting around him nodded in agreement.
My US law enforcement sources tell me this is patently absurd, suggesting that Mexican cartels had concocted the rumor as a way to wring migrants for cash one last time before the era of Biden’s mass migration ends.
Nonetheless, I embedded myself for the day with this group of true believers – hailing from Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Guatemala and Honduras – as they waited at a junction in the middle of the desert, where trains are known to stop for five to 10 minutes as the tracks are switched.
My US law enforcement sources tell me this is patently absurd, suggesting that Mexican cartels had concocted the rumor as a way to wring migrants for cash one last time before the era of Biden’s mass migration ends. (Above) Mexican immigration on patrol
The migrants’ plan was to hitch a ride on top of a freight train for a dangerous three or four-day trip north. The ultimate destination: The border crossing at Eagle Pass, Texas.
Word was the next train was due at noon.
There were three mothers with six young children among the group of 25; only one of the kids was accompanied by a father.
The rest were single young men in their 20s, including several who admitted they’d illegally crossed the border before and made their way to Denver and Houston, only to be deported after serving time for crimes.
One of these men refused to allow me to record him on either audio or video. Another told me he had been arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol during his time in Denver.
Everyone was on edge – and for good reason.
Trump has threatened Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, with 25 percent trade tariffs if she does not do what she can to halt illegal migration.
In response, she has enhanced tough nationwide immigration enforcement operations. Mexican National Guard and immigration officers are patrolling rail lines with orders to capture every immigrant and ship them a thousand miles south to Mexican cities on the border with Guatemala.
The migrants fear that and more.
‘Mexican immigration takes your money away, whatever you have, they take it away,’ said Alexander, a 30-something Colombian. ‘We’re running away from them.’
Two young men anointed themselves lookouts to warn the others when strange vehicles approached. They asked me to hide my rental car in the brush.
As we waited for the noon train, a motorbike carrying a man and a woman pulled up on the dirt road running parallel to the train tracks.
‘Immigration knows you are all here,’ the man warned in Spanish. ‘They’ll take all of your cell phones and money and send you to Tapachula. Hide in the landfill.’
At this, the entire group bolted over the tracks to a mammoth fenced-off garbage dump and squeezed through holes in the chain link. The pile stunk terribly. In the refuse, the children found a feral dog nursing newborn puppies in a hole she’d dug.
Here we waited for several hours until a train horn sounded in the distance. Everyone rushed back through the fence, but were quickly disappointed. This train wasn’t going to work. The cars were cylindrical oil tanks – far too hazardous to ride on top of.
At this, the entire group bolted over the tracks to a mammoth fenced-off garbage dump and squeezed through holes in the chain link. The pile stunk terribly. In the refuse, the children found a feral dog nursing newborn puppies in a hole she’d dug.
Here we waited for several hours until a train horn sounded in the distance. Everyone rushed back through the fence, but were quickly disappointed. This train wasn’t going to work. The cars were cylindrical oil tanks – far too hazardous to ride on top of.
‘There’s no way they can get on,’ one of the lookouts said. ‘It’s going to be slippery. It’s very dangerous for the children on top.’
The wait continued.
More hours later, another train horn sounded. The migrants ran for it. The legless Venezuelan man on crutches somehow managing to keep up.
I followed close behind as the train stopped and the migrants scrambled up ladders onto the roof of one car. But, again, they were foiled.
A truck of armed Mexican National Guard troops and two immigration enforcement vans approached. Everyone rushed back down, dropping their backpacks off the train in a swirl of panic.
Seconds before the immigration vans arrived, they group disappeared into the brush.
I lingered to talk to the guards, but their vehicles never slowed. Though I could see that the two vans were full of migrants, perhaps caught elsewhere along the train line.
The train chugged away without anyone on it. And, shortly after, the migrants emerged from the brush once again.
This time, they refused to speak to me, hurrying off down the road… to a likely dead end.
illegal immigration
Shocking footage shows Biden admin selling off southern border wall before Trump takes office
From LifeSiteNews
By Wade Searle
Many notable GOP figures are pushing back on the Biden-Harris White House for an apparent attempt to greatly hinder the incoming Trump administration’s plan to finish the southern border wall.
The Biden administration has been caught moving away unused materials for a border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border to be auctioned off online, according to shocking footage taken by a US Customs agent, with bidding starting at just $5.00.
A border patrol agent told The Daily Wire that the material for the construction of the border wall along the southern border of the United States is being taken from multiple areas in Arizona: Nogales, Tucson, and Three Points, with the goal to “move all of it off the border before Christmas.” Footage provided by the border patrol agent shows several unused sections of border wall being taken away on flatbed trucks owned by DP Trucking LLC, a government contractor. The owner, Harold Lambeth, confirmed to Daily Wire over the phone that the border wall materials are indeed being transported away from construction sites– although he was “unable to disclose” any further information. The materials are being auctioned through GovPlanet, an online auction marketplace for surplus government equipment, with bidding for each section of wall panels beginning at just $5.00, according to the website. Materials for border wall construction were similarly sold by the Biden administration in 2023 through GovPlanet.
The Daily Wire exclusive led to widespread outrage on X, formerly known as Twitter, with many notable GOP figures pushing back on the Biden-Harris White House for an apparent attempt to greatly hinder the incoming Trump administration’s plan to finish the southern border wall. Elon Musk shared the footage in shock, writing “what!?” Texas Senator Ted Cruz said, “President Biden and Kamala Harris have successfully put illegal aliens over the safety and security of our own citizens,” in a statement posted to X on Thursday, adding, “Never forget why the American people rejected them.” Missouri Representative Eric Burlison accused the Biden administration of “intentionally sabotaging President Trump and the American people.”
Eric Schmitt, the Senator from Missouri, sent a letter on Friday to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin demanding that he “immediately cease the auctioning off of border wall materials.” Most notably, the letter contains a thorough analysis of the already completed sales of border wall material, finding that the Biden-Harris administration is recouping just 0.02% of the taxpayer money used to originally purchase the material under President Trump’s first term.
Hope may not be lost for the unused border wall material, however. In a conversation with Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Thursday, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick revealed that the state of Texas plans to purchase the border wall material up for auction and “give it to [President-Elect Donald] Trump.” Patrick told Ingraham that he has “a billion dollars in my pocket to do it,” adding that he plans to “go in and buy it all”. In a statement posted to X on Friday, the Lt. Gov wrote that “[Texas Governor Abbott] and I spoke last night about purchasing ‘wall’ material President Biden is auctioning off. The Governor had already instructed the [Texas Facilities Comission], which oversees Texas’ border wall construction, to look at what Biden was selling.” According to Patrick, the Texas Facilities Commission claims that the material for sale is mostly junk, including panels “covered in concrete and rust”.
“Rest assured, if they sell any panels that make economic sense, we will buy them and give them to President Trump when he takes office.” Lt. Gov. Patrick concluded.
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