From The Center Square

By Bethany Blankley

As Americans struggle with high inflationary costs, paying record high grocery costs and energy bills, Congress continues to allocate billions of dollars of taxpayer money to fund services for illegal border crossers living in U.S. cities.

Prior to the last budget funding showdown in March, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, said in January that “any bill that does not secure the border is not acceptable.”

He also identified 64 examples of ways he says the Biden-Harris administration “worked to systematically undermine America’s border security.”

In February, House Republicans impeached Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas arguing he was derelict in his duty and violated the public trust by creating a border crisis. One month later, the majority of Republicans who voted to impeach him, passed a spending bill that funded programs he created they maintain are illegal.

While Americans complain about escalating crime caused by illegal border crossers who’ve inundated their communities, Congress funded the programs that brought them there – and are keeping them there – including DHS’ Shelter and Services Program grants funneling billions to primarily Democratic states, counties, cities as well as nonprofits.

Likewise, the U.S. Senate’s “strongest border security bill in history” the White House, Senate and House Democrats keep touting, co-authored by U.S. Sen. James Lankford, R-OK, allocated “an additional $1.4 billion in SSP funds, and provide additional needed tools and resources to respond to historic global migration,” DHS says – to fund caring for illegal border crossers released into the US.

DHS recently announced the latest round of SSP funding of $380 million—a drop in the bucket to overall spending authorized by Congress. This round “augments the $259.13 million in SSP grants that DHS distributed in April 2024 … which was authorized by Congress to support communities that are providing services to migrants,” DHS says.

The April DHS grant money was distributed after Congress in March passed a $1.2 trillion spending package to avoid a so-called government shutdown, despite Johnson’s and others’ claims, about requiring border security as a condition for passing it.

More than $780 million worth of SSP and the Emergency Food and Shelter Program – Humanitarian Awards grants were awarded in fiscal 2023 “which went to organizations and cities across the country,” DHS says. That’s after DHS awarded $640.9 million in fiscal 2024 “to enable non-federal entities to off-set allowable costs incurred for services associated with noncitizen migrant arrivals in their communities,” also authorized by Congress.

Here are examples of fiscal 2023 and fiscal 2024 grant recipients and the amounts they received.

The SSP grants are awarded in phases. One round in fiscal 2024, totaling $40.8 million, was awarded to:

• City/County of Denver, $5.9 million;
• District of Columbia, $2.7 million;
• City of Chicago, $3.8 million;
• Commonwealth of Massachusetts, nearly $4.9 million;
• NYC Office of Management and Budget, $20.4 million;
• City of Philadelphia over $3 million.
• That’s after $275 million was awarded to 55 recipients in the attached spreadsheet. Top recipients in one round of funding include:
• New York City’s Office of Management and Budget, $38.8 million;
• Pima County, Ariz., $21.8 million;
• Catholic Charities, Diocese of San Diego of $19.5 million;
• Maricopa County, $11.6 million, among others.

Democratic-led cities also received large payouts in one round of funding:

• Atlanta, $10.8 million;
• Chicago, $9.6 million;
• Denver, $5.8 million.

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts also cashed in, receiving nearly $7 million; the District of Columbia received $8.7 million; Illinois, $9.6 million, all in one round of funding.

Democratic controlled El Paso County has long received federal money to coordinate transporting illegal foreign nationals north to New York City, Chicago and Denver, The Center Square reported; Austin and San Antonio followed suit flying north “guests coming from the border,” to “proactively manage the flow of people” out of their cities.

These grants exclude others awarded through numerous other federal agencies, including FEMA, U.S. Health and Human Services and others.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-FL, U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-KY, and several House Freedom Caucus members argue Congress has a constitutional requirement to stop funding the border crisis. DeSantis, a Freedom Caucus member when he served in Congress, has asked, “How many congressmen rail against Biden’s transgressions yet still vote to fund them?”

Massie said in January that “in March, when funding expires, we can put a rider in the next bill that says none of the money hereby appropriated can be used to countermand border security measures of the states.”

This didn’t happen. The majority of Republicans voted to keep spending taxpayer money on these programs. By July, a U.S. House Judiciary Committee report highlighted examples of how Congress was still funding the border crisis.

 Download PDF

From Heartland Daily News

Border Patrol officials say foreign nationals who illegally cross the border aren’t being vetted prior to being released into the U.S.

At a press conference in Houston Monday, Gov. Greg Abbott announced Texas’ plan to target and arrest members of a violent Venezuelan prison gang, Tren De Aragua, who illegally entered the country. “I will not allow them to use Texas as a base of operations to terrorize our citizens,” he said.

Joining Abbott was National Border Patrol Council Vice President Chris Cabrera, who said, “As a federal agent, we have no way of vetting these people other than the honor system. If they tell us they’re from so and so and this is their name and we can’t check against Venezuela’s database, that they’re not going to give us access to it, so we have to let them go,” he said, referring to releasing them into the U.S. “Unfortunately, we do let them go.”

When it comes to processing people for removal, he said, “In the off chance, we’re going to deport them, Venezuela won’t take them back.” Instead of requiring them to, as was the case in the Trump administration, he said, “Our government on the federal level is kind of weak-minded. We just go ahead and say, ‘OK, well, you know, go ahead and stay here.’”

The level of violence Americans are experiencing at the hands of criminal Venezuelans is “an infestation,” he said. “It’s taking hold not just in Colorado or New York, but in Michigan, Florida, Texas, you name it.

“What people fail to realize is working on the border, we see everything come through, but it doesn’t affect us as much as it affects the rest of the United States, especially Houston. Everything that comes through our area just passes through and it ends up as your problem or a problem somewhere up north. If people don’t wake up and see it for what it is, we’re going to be in a lot of trouble in this country.”

The National Border Patrol Council has endorsed former President Donald Trump. Its union leaders credit Trump with improving border security and the current administration for obliterating it. Cabrera has testified before Congress about the toll of Biden-Harris policies on agents, including 17 who committed suicide in one year.

Retired Border Patrol supervisory agent and now Texas Border Czar Mike Banks said, “The TDA problem in Texas and the rest of the United States is a direct result of open border policies. The Biden Harris administration has sent out an ‘all call’ to the world that you can cross this border without any consequences.”

“It is a known fact that the Venezuelan government has released prisoners” with the condition that they don’t come back. “When they show up here, there’s no surprise that we have a criminal illegal gang problem in the United States,” he said.

The Biden administration maintains all illegal border crossers are being vetted. “That is an absolute lie,” Banks said, “because they cannot vet them against their criminal history in Venezuela because Venezuela refuses to share that information with us.”

No criminal database exists to capture TDA gang member data and arrests. Texas Department of Public Safety is creating one, Abbott said.

Texas Public Policy Foundation fellow and former Border Patrol agent Ammon Blair told The Center Square that because of the volume of illegal border crossers, there isn’t enough time for an individual agent to properly vet anyone.

Not all agents are trained to identify false identification and some just “want to get them out of the field as fast as possible,” he said. “That’s priority number one is getting them into the intake system, putting them on the bus and moving them out.

“There really is no vetting. The only vetting is asking them, ‘What country are you from? What is your name? How old are you? Are you a family member?’”

If they have a criminal history, it may pop up if it’s connected to their ID, or fake ID, he said. But many have no ID so they have to take them at their word for who they say they are. “They just tell us, and we have to accept that as truth,” he said.

Agents also no longer ask if they are seeking asylum or making a claim of credible fear, he said. After a foreign national illegally crosses the border, agents “immediately just get their biographical information however best we can.” They input their information and scan passports if they have them, he said. For those with no IDs, they input biometric data, including fingerprints. “That’s the only vetting we do.”

Under the Trump administration, he said, “we heavily scrutinized. The process was completely different. We adhered more towards the immigration law than we do now.”

Since fiscal 2021 through July, illegal border crossers from Venezuela total nearly 856,000, the greatest number in U.S. history, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data.

Another 115,000 Venezuelans were granted parole through a program that’s been directly linked to perpetrators committing violent crimes against Americans, including TDA gang members, who are being arrested nationwide, The Center Square reported.

In Texas, law enforcement officials have arrested more than 3,000 Venezuelan illegal border crossers; more than 200 are wanted, Abbott said.

Originally published by The Center Square. Republished with permission.