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