HHS Reprogramming Department Funding to Facilitate Resettling ‘unaccompanied’ Central American Teens

DigtialStorm/Getty Images

What if I told you that our government is unintentionally completing a criminal conspiracy to deliver Central American teens from cartels and smugglers to other illegal aliens, resettling them on our dime, and sending them to our schools, all the while enriching some of the most evil organizations and nourishing the growth of MS-13 and drug traffickers?

Yesterday, HHS Secretary Alex Azar told the Senate Appropriations Labor-HHS-Education Subcommittee that the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which cares for and resettles unaccompanied alien children (UACs), will run out of cash before the end of the year. That is because, as Congressional Quarterly (paywall) reported in a summary of the hearing, at a pace of about 300-350 UACs arriving each day, HHS is taking custody of roughly 70-80 children from CBP each day who are not immediately released to other family members. Azar said that there are currently 12,340 mainly Central American children, in HHS custody and bed space is almost full.

We’ve been spending roughly $1.3 billion a year on this program, and Azar revealed at the hearing that the administration transferred $446 million from other HHS programs to help fund the UAC program and that it recently transferred another $385 million.

I reached out to ORR for comment and received this statement from an HHS spokesperson:

HHS is assessing the additional resources that may be needed to support this influx and sustain critical child welfare operations. Last month, Secretary Azar notified the Appropriations Committees that he would make $385 million in administrative resources available to the UAC program, $99 million in reprogrammed ORR funds and $286 million from a Secretary’s Transfer. However, HHS projections show a continued influx would exceed all current HHS resources this fiscal year. The Administration is currently working to find solutions to this potential issue.

As I’ve noted many times, almost all of the Central American teens are self-smuggled into the country to be reunited with other illegal immigrant family. That makes them ineligible for the program on two accounts – they are not victims of a “severe form of trafficking” and they are not here without relatives. In fact, we are completing the very criminal conspiracy of smuggling that the law was designed to combat. At $4,000-$8,000 per illegal alien, the cartels have made billions off this scam, so they can further ramp up their drugs to kill Americans.

Read the rest of the story HERE.

If you like what you see, please "Like" us on Facebook either here or here. Please follow us on Twitter here.