14 Feb 2025

Elon Musk reported that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) spent $59 million last week alone – all on immigrants in New York City. Part of that was for housing, including luxury properties like The Row and The Watson, meant for tourists headed to see the marquees of Broadway. (Later the feds clawed back $80M from the city).

Open the Books previously reported that FEMA had an enormous $8 billion shortfall in its Disaster Relief Fund following the catastrophic damage of Hurricane Helene.

Well, FEMA is not the only agency that’s been spending gobs of taxpayer dollars on the immigration crisis. Programs span various agencies.

Included is the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), housed inside the Department of Health and Human Services subagency called the Administration for Children and Families.

ORR has spent over $22.6 BILLION since 2020 on grants to nonprofits providing everything from help accessing Medicaid to help building credit, help with home and auto loans, and cash assistance. Yes, cold hard cash!

The demise of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been swift and total. But while liberals have devolved into literal tears over the dissolution of the once-obscure foreign aid agency, they should not mourn its passing if they are truly concerned about America’s “standing” in the world.

USAID, for all practical purposes, was running its own foreign policy. Through strategic grants, it bred dependency that allowed it to in effect take over large segments of the charity/NGO (non-governmental organization) sector around the world. To say it bestrode the world stage like a giant would not be unfair. The Pentagon’s procurement office could learn something from the manner in which USAID utilized everything from newspapers to theaters and even vaccination campaigns to advance its agenda.

Whether that agenda was in the best interests of the United States is, to say the least, doubtful.

The original mission of USAID, which President Kennedy established in 1961, was to advance American influence by advancing American values around the world. During the Cold War, when there was something of a common American culture, socially “progressive” within a civically Judeo-Christian, pro-free market mindset, there was little contradiction between advancing America’s perceived values and boosting American influence.

In a conflict against an atheistic, socialist Soviet Union, the idea that humans should be free to believe what they wished was at once both conservative and “progressive.” When the status quo across much of the world was feudalism or central planning, the idea that anyone, regardless of religion, race, or gender should be able to own property or start a business was both “progressive” and capitalist.

What changed after the 1990s was the values that USAID sought to advance.

Equality is universal. Everyone should be treated the same regardless of background. Equity and DEI, on the other hand, are divisive. These concepts define people based on immutable characteristics like race and sex. By embracing DEI, USAID ceased advancing the shared interests of the United States and the people of the world, and instead chose specific individuals and groups to favor, most notably those dedicated to LGBT or feminist causes and religious or ethnic minorities.

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For years, loads of cash, courtesy of U.S. taxpayers, have bolstered migrant resettlement services, often administered by faith-based nonprofits. In fiscal year 2024 alone, the U.S. government spent more than $2.7 billion on “refugee and entrant assistance” programs, and more than $1 billion went to nonprofits connected to four major Christian denominations: Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopal, and the United Methodist Church.

That staggering number only skims the surface of the complicated funding web supporting immigration through multiple federal offices, with contracts and grants given to state and local governments as well as secular and faith-based nonprofits, including other denominations not mentioned here.

Normally, religious nonprofits rely on donors who expect to see their money used to solve social ills. But when an increase in the problem (in this case, more refugees in need of financial and other assistance) means more government cash, “charities” are incentivized to show a need for more taxpayer funds by keeping the problem unsolved. Data from usaspending.gov shows the problem has gotten worse. Most nonprofits serving immigrants saw year-over-year increases in funding during President Joe Biden’s term. This is something donors would not tolerate. The government should let taxpayers decide whether they want to continue supporting a nonprofit infrastructure that places migrants around the United States.

President Donald Trump is changing the immigration landscape, cutting funding from these programs and sending illegal aliens back to their home countries. He aims to stamp out criminal coyote networks that sneak thousands of unvetted illegal aliens into the United States, and to hobble the deadly drug cartels that supply U.S. addiction.

Attracting Immigration

You would think Christian groups working with the immigrant population would be elated Trump is trying to end illegal immigration, but instead, they are resisting it and issuing angry statements.

Immigration attorney Barbara Graham of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee’s Refugee & Immigration Services recently released a video offering advice for how migrants can slow officials investigating their workplace.

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USAID, the country’s chief international aid agency, enjoys an annual budget of over $40 billion in appropriations—much of it splurged on a host of far-left foreign causes that run counter to Trump’s America First agenda. “They’re not a global charity,” Rubio said of USAID’s spending spree. “These are taxpayer dollars. People are asking simple questions. What are they doing with the money?”

Here are some of the most horrific projects, outrageous initiatives, and biggest boondoggles USAID has financed:

1. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Until Trump’s funding freeze, USAID was actively paying for “sex-change” procedures in Guatemala. USAID poured $2 million into Asociación Lambda, a Guatemalan LGBTQ+ activist organization, to “strengthen trans-led” activism and provide “gender-affirming health care,” grant records show. Launched in April 2024, the five-year program was slated to span through the spring of 2027.

Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), the House Foreign Affairs Committee’s new chairman, released a report Tuesday exposing USAID’s frivolous DEI-related expenses. Among them, Mast reported, $1 million went toward supporting French-speaking LGBTQ+ groups in West and Central Africa, $3.3 million was blown on normalizing “being LGBTQ in the Caribbean,” and $425,600 helped Indonesian coffee companies become “more climate and gender friendly.”

Mast said $1.5 million had gone toward promoting job opportunities for LGBTQ-identifying individuals in Serbia, $16,500 for fostering a “united and equal queer-feminist discourse in Albanian society,” $47,000-plus on a “transgender opera” in Colombia, $32,000 for an LGBTQ-centered comic book in Peru, $70,880 on a musical promoting DEI in Ireland, $20,600 for a drag show in Ecuador, over $7,000 for a BIPOC speaker series in Canada, more than $39,650 to host seminars at the Edinburgh International Book Festival on “gender identity and racial equality,” $80,000 on an LGBTQ community center in Slovakia, $10,000 on pressuring Lithuanian corporations to push DEI messaging, and $8,000 to promote DEI among LGBTQ+ groups in Cyprus.

USAID’s Office of Chief Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility notified Congress just before Christmas that they’ve earmarked money (about $1 million) for several programs that will support “marginalized” groups in Indonesia, Guatemala, and Kenya. The funding notice said USAID would “engage with Indigenous-led institutions to implement an Indigenous language technology program” in Guatemala.

2. Climate Activism

In March 2023, USAID set aside up to $1 million to help disabled people in Tajikistan become “climate leaders.” The grant notice solicited proposals for a “Disability-Inclusive Climate Action” project in the Central Asian country that would ensure that disabled Tajikistanis are included “in the development of climate change response and mitigation policies.”

In May 2023, USAID unveiled a $1.5 million effort aimed at “empowering women to adapt to climate change in northern Kenya.” Women in the area, USAID wrote, live in “traditionally patriarchal communities” and need training to join Kenya’s fight against climate change. The program would “improve their participation in decision making” and “enhance adaptive capabilities to climate change.”

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