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Nonprofit organizations are making billions of dollars from border crisis federal funding, with their CEOs are raking in as much as $1 million in annual compensation. Money that is being distributed amongst NGOs to help fund the migrant crisis at the border has raised red flags for Americans whose tax dollars are going into the pockets of the organizations’ chief executives. The most recent data to reveal the astronomical amounts of federal funding being funneled into NGOs is from 2022, according to The Free Press, meaning that the results will most likely be higher when data becomes available for 2023.
The migrant crisis on the border has been continuously surging over the years – with 300,000 monthly border crossings at the end of 2023, up 50,000 from the highest monthly report in 2022. According to the data, based on the 990 Tax Forms of organizations exempt from income taxes, nonprofits received billions of dollars in federal awards – which were then used to compensate CEOs and fund questionable services like pet therapy. ‘The amount of taxpayer money they are getting is obscene,’ Charles Marino, former adviser to Janet Napolitano, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security under Obama, said of the NGOs.
‘We’re going to find that the waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer money will rival what we saw with the Covid federal money,’ he said. Three organizations – Global Refuge, Southwest Key Programs and Endeavors – saw their combined revenue sky-rocket by $597 million in 2019 to a whopping $2 billion in 2022. Global Refuge’s CEO Krish O’Mara Vignarajah (pictured) was compensated over $500,000 – and the organization received almost $250,000,000 in federal awards in 2022.
Endeavors, Inc. raked in almost $1,500,000,000 in funding as the CEO, Chip Fulghum (pictured), was paid almost $750,000. The prominent NGO used taxpayer funds to offer migrant children ‘pet therapy’, ‘horticulture therapy’ and music therapy, according to The Free Press Christy Merrell, a music therapist, was paid $533,000 in 2021 alone for her services. More recently it was revealed that 1,625 ‘people-plant interactions’ we’re paid for by Endeavors and 287 pet therapy sessions were conducted between April 2021 and March 2023, according to a PowerPoint presentation from the organization itself.
Endeavors’ 2022 federal disclosure form also shows that it paid $5million to a company that provides fill-in doctors and nurses, $4.6 million for ‘consulting services,’ $1.4 million to attend conferences and $700,000 on lobbyists. In 2021, the company spent $8million on housing migrants in hotels belonging to Esperanto Developments. Southwest Key received nearly $800,000,000 in federal rewards in 2022 – and the organization’s CEO, Dr. Anselmo Villarreal (pictured), was compensated over $1 million that year.
Global refuge federal awards shot up in 2022 – one year after Biden took office – with numbers more than doubling, soaring from $100,000,000 in 2021 to $250,000,000 in 2022. The data revealing which nonprofits have benefitted the most from federal funding comes after several other organizations came under fire for ‘aiding and abetting’ the migrant crisis. In February, f ootage of a charity volunteer allegedly holding open a section of Arizona’s border wall for migrants to enter the country illegally fueled scrutiny of non-profits accused by Republicans of ‘aiding and abetting’ the crisis and even engaging in ‘human smuggling’.
Organizations that operate on both sides of the US-Mexico border are accused of providing ‘incentives’ to migrants in the form of money, accommodation and transport. Republicans have called for an investigation by Congress into the groups’ activities after the video surfaced last week of a charity worker in Arizona allegedly holding open a section of border fence for people to enter the US from Mexico. Some of the charities that are facing scrutiny have received tens of millions of dollars in taxpayers’ money through federal grants.
The organizations, many with religious affiliations, have issued fierce denials of the claims and some have said the suggestion they encourage illegal immigration is ‘preposterous’. They insist they are engaged in humanitarian work to help desperate asylum seekers who make dangerous journeys to the border. Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin shared footage a volunteer from the Tucson Samaritans appear to hold open a section of border fence so a group of migrants could enter the country. The migrants then boarded a charity vehicle before they were transported away. Tiffany suggested the volunteer’s actions breached US laws which make it an offense to bring an alien into the US. ‘NGOs are actively facilitating illegal immigration before our eyes,’ he said. ‘Now is the time to cut taxpayer funding to these groups that break our laws.’
Lance Gooden, a Representative from Texas, singled out Catholic Charities and ten other organizations in a letter to House colleagues in May 2023 which accused the groups of playing a ‘disturbing role in the inflow and spread of illegal immigrants throughout the country’. ‘These NGOs abuse their tax-exempt status and the trust of the very taxpayers that fund them by encouraging migrants to travel to the southern border illegally with resources from federal funds,’ Gooden wrote. Lee Williams, an executive at Global Refuge – the non-profit also facing backlash for receiving billions in federal funding, was also singled out by Gooden.
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