Biden Admin Spending Billions on Programs to Aid Illegal Immigrants Amid Border Crisis: Watchdog

Ethics concerns about agency’s leadership now added to previous controversy over Office of Refugee Resettlement losing track of 85,000 unaccompanied minors.

More than 1,000 unvetted immigrants wait in line near a U.S. Border Patrol field processing center after crossing the Rio Grande from Mexico, in Eagle Pass, Texas, on Dec. 18, 2023. John Moore/Getty Images

Expenditures on one of the most controversial federal programs aiding the millions of illegal immigrants and refugees from Afghanistan, Cuba, and Haiti have skyrocketed more than $2 billion in two years, according to a new report by a non-profit government spending watchdog.

Spending on the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) jumped from $8.9 billion in 2022 to more than $10.9 billion last year, auditors at OpenTheBooks.org (OTB), the Hinsdale, Illinois-based watchdog, found.

Most of the ORR spending explosion came in grants under ORR’s Refugee and Entrant Assistance program that provides a lengthy list of services to such individuals, including emergency housing assistance, work authorizations, public assistance benefits, medical screening, school enrollment, employment, and mental health referrals, and legal assistance.

Such spending was $33.4 million in 2021, the first year of President Joe Biden’s administration. But it hit $404.5 million the next year and then increased to $616.6 million last year, according to federal data obtained by OTB under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Much of the funding went to seven social service organizations, including the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops ($66.5 million), the International Rescue Committee ($66.4 million), Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services ($66.2 million), Church World Service ($64.9 million), U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants ($64.6 million), HIAS (originally the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society)($56.4 million), and the Ethiopian Community Development Council ($51.6 million).  

The ORR has been a controversial cog in Mr. Biden’s reversal of the tightened border policies enforced by his predecessor in the Oval Office, Donald Trump, that had sharply reduced the number of illegal immigrants crossing the U.S. border with Mexico.

Border Patrol Agents talk to unaccompanied minors who just crossed over the U.S.–Mexico border, before loading them into a van for transport to an Office of Refugee and Resettlement facility, in Hidalgo County, Texas, on May 26, 2017. Benjamin Chasteen/The Epoch Times

Adam Andrzejewski, OTB’s founder and president, told The Epoch Times “the numbers are troubling but shouldn’t surprise us. The stacking of Biden’s policy failures resulted in this immigration crisis. As more refugees flood our border, the administration keeps spending on aid and proffering even more perks. America’s southern border is now just an ever-growing magnet for people from every corner of the planet. The numbers won’t slow down unless the dollars do.”

With the huge increase in illegal immigrants crossing into the United States under Mr. Biden came rapidly increasing spending and management problems in the increasingly stressed federal immigration bureaucracy, including especially ORR.

During an Oct. 27, 2023, Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) confronted ORR Director Robin Dunn Marcos on reports by the HHS Inspector-General and the national news media that her agency had lost track of an estimated 85,000 unaccompanied minors, many of whom ended up in sex and labor trafficking networks in the United States.

Oddly, the Biden administration’s ORR funding did not include an increase for 2023 of the $5.5 million authorized in 2022 for dealing with unaccompanied minors crossing the border from Mexico, according to the data compiled by OTB.

In addition, Ms. Marcos, who was appointed by President Biden on Sept. 11, 2022, has faced continuing questions about the appearance of conflicts of interest in funding actions by ORR during her tenure.

“Dunn Marcos came to ORR after eight years with the International Rescue Committee (IRC), rising to their Senior Director for Resettlement, Asylum, and Integration,” the OTB reported.

“Previously, Dunn Marcos served as executive director of the International Rescue Committee Phoenix branch for 15 years, for a total of 23 years with the nonprofit. She spent four years at Church World Service between her IRC stints. Both IRC and Church World Service have been some of biggest recipients of Refugee and Entrant Assistance Discretionary Grants over the years,” OTB said.

An ORR spokesman told OTB that “Consistent with the Ethics Pledge, Robin Dunn Marcos is recused from participating in particular matters involving specific parties in which IRC is or represents a party. That recusal obligation lasts for two years from her date of appointment, which was September 11, 2022.” The ORR spokesman did not say if the recusal also covers grant and other decisions involving the Church World Service organization where Ms Dunn Marcos worked for four years.

The federal Ethics in Government Act that was adopted in 1978 in the wake of the Watergate scandal bars both an actual conflict of interest and the appearance of a conflict.