by Adam Andrzejewski at OpenTheBooks Substack
The U.S. border patrol made 2.5 million migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2023, an all-time high.
There seems to be no end in sight, or meaningful plan from the Biden administration to stop or slow the number of people coming over the border. Meanwhile, federal funds flowing to migrants are growing at an exponential rate.
Our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com looked at just one federal office to get an idea of how much spending is going towards accommodating, transporting, and providing migrants with various other services.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), a part of Health and Human Services, is a major vehicle for migrant-related spending. Congress appropriated $20 billion in just two years on “refugee and entrant assistance.”
Background
Last year, we published an oversight report on the unaccompanied children program run by the agency: up to 85,000 minors were lost after “sponsorship” with a “vetted” guardian. The New York Times found credible allegations of child labor law violations and congressional whistleblowers detailed large-scale child trafficking.
Now, our investigation into the agency reveals new oversight: 1. billion-dollar spending spikes in the adult refugee programs; and 2. potential conflicts-of-interest between agency leadership and its largest grant recipients. In fact, for decades, agency director Robin Dunn Marcos was employed in executive positions by two non-profit organizations that are among the agency’s largest grantees.
Here is a five minute interview describing the big issues in our reporting:…
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