Congress’ $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill includes a number of provisions that provide support to organizations that help illegal immigrants by providing shelter, legal support and other forms of aid.
The bill, which passed both chambers of Congress, includes funding to Border Patrol that can’t be used for expanding border security, while adding funds to a number of other programs that subsidize nongovernmental groups seeking to help illegal immigrants released into the country. The funding comes amid record numbers of illegal immigration, with Customs and Border Protection (CBP) encountering more than 2.3 million migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2022 alone.
“Rather than do anything to regain control of our borders, the omnibus is focused entirely on processing illegal aliens as quickly as possible and transporting them to already overwhelmed communities all across the United States,” Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) Dan Stein said in a statement shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. “This massive spending bill effectively turns CBP into a federally administered travel agency for illegal aliens and saddles state and local governments with the costs of education, health care, housing and other basic needs for the endless flow of illegal aliens the Biden administration is waiving into the country.”
The bill includes over $1.5 billion for Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) “border management” efforts on the condition that the funding can’t be used for border security. The funds, however, can be used “for technology and capabilities to improve Border Patrol processing” of illegal immigrants, many of whom are released into the country. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: NFL Legend Visits Southern Border Weeks After Biden Said ‘There Are More Important Things Going On’)
In the House, we just passed an Omnibus budget, boosting public investments by more than 9%.
New investments in clean energy, K-12 education, higher education, election security, immigration, labor, mental health, public health, Puerto Rico, veterans…
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) December 23, 2022
The bill also increases funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) emergency food and shelter program, which reimburses nongovernmental organizations that house and care for illegal immigrants released into the country, by roughly 400% compared to the fiscal year 2022 budget.
The bill also seeks to allocate $20 million to the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Case Management Pilot Program, which is headed by an organization that advocated to “abolish ICE,” Church World Service. The DHS program tasks nongovernmental organizations with providing “voluntary case management and other services” for illegal immigrants awaiting court proceedings.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) could receive $29 million from the bill for a program that funds nongovernmental organizations that walk illegal immigrants through the judicial process.
“If Democrats were serious about border security, they would not have included a provision in this bill to block DHS from using portions of the funding to increase border security. Though the Left wants to spin this bill in an attempt to save face with the American people, we all know this legislation will only exacerbate the crisis and send our country further into debt and chaos,” Executive Director of Heritage Action for America Jessica Anderson said in a statement to the DCNF.
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