Democrats and their media allies are pressuring Republican leaders to endorse a $14 billion slush fund that would hide President Joe Biden’s migration flood during the 2024 election campaign.
“They ought to give me the money — I need to protect the border,” Biden told reporters on Jan. 2 about his “Emergency Supplemental” funding request.
But House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and other GOP leaders say the funding will be used to accelerate — not block — the inflow of Biden’s poor economic migrants during the 2024 campaign year.
“What the White House is proposing is more money to process and allow more illegals into the country,” Johnson told CNN host Jake Tapper on January 3. “We need to do the opposite of that.”
The funding fight is hidden from the public under the media’s skimpy coverage of Senate negotiations on border reforms and dramatic demands for aid to embattled Ukraine and Israel. Those negotiations have stalled amid the Democrats’ determination to protect their “parole” backdoor at the border, forcing the Democrats to step up their demands for the $14 billion.
In August, Breitbart News detailed the funding request, which includes at least $5.3 billion to expand migration.
In his first three years, Biden and his deputies have spent billions of Americans’ taxes to import — not exclude — at least six million migrants into the United States.
The funds — and the requested authority to transfer yet more funds — are intended to operate the network of quasi-government non-profits that help transport and shelter migrants into many cities around the nation. The request even asks for $800 million to operate new “Safe Mobility Offices” in Ecuador and other countries that are intended to help more migrants reach the U.S. border.
The extra funding is in addition to the redirected disaster aid included in the agency’s regular annual budget that continues from the prior year.
Years of prior funding have allowed the administration to establish a vast network of “controlled flow” aid camps for migrants, all the way from Panama to New York.
This NGO-run migration network — also dubbed the Northside Catch and Release Network — helps many of the migrants that are delivered to the border via the cartel-managed networks. The NGOs, such as Catholic Charities, also work with many U.S. employers and investors eager for more cheap labor, apartment-sharing renters, and taxpayer-funded consumers.
But in 2023 and 2024, the huge network has been swamped by Biden’s rising number of migrants. The crush has created squalid encampments in Mexico, budget cuts in New York, voter protests in Chicago, and migrant tents in Denver — even as millions of additional migrants are trekking northwards to Biden’s welcome.
The $14 billion bill is intended to quietly smuggle 2024 migrants through the country and to pay off cooperation by Democrat-run cities, said Jessica Vaughan, founder of the Immigration Accountability Project.
The requested billions are not enough to conceal Biden’s migrant flood from Americans in 2024, she added:
There’s not enough money, even in the $14 billion … with the numbers that are coming over right now. … People are seeing it, and they’re gonna keep seeing it. They’re going to see it in the schools. They’re going to see it in their emergency rooms, they’re going to see it in their housing costs. They’re going to see it everywhere.
Their children are going to come home and and talk about all the foreign languages being spoken. And if they’re, you know, if they happen to live in a suburban neighborhood and the house next door is rented out to four different families who are living there at the same time, they’re going to see that too.
“I think it’s going to have a huge impact on suburban America,” she said.
The damage from Biden’s migration is also being felt in small towns.
So Democrats are stepping up their demands for migration funding.
“States like Massachusetts are in desperate need of more support from the federal government to address this historic surge in migrant arrivals,” Democrat Gov. Maura Healey of Massachusetts, told the New York Times for a January 4 article about the issue. “We need Congress to act on President Biden’s budget that includes critical funding for border security and cities and states like ours.”
“I can tell you that the [$14 billion] money right now will help those cities that are struggling, whether it’s Eagle Pass or if we’re talking about Chicago, or if we’re talking about New York,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-TX) told CNN. “I can guarantee you those mayors would not turn down the funding that the President has tried to push through and the Republicans refuse to do it,” she said.
The establishment media is mobilizing to help win the $14 billion for Biden.
The Washington Post joined on January 4, saying:
Thomas S. Warrick, a former DHS official who is now a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Atlantic Council, said the [$14 billion] cash injection is “absolutely vital” to keep the U.S. immigration system from breaking down further.
“A system that was already under enormous strain is now stretched to the point where even the most basic legal and humanitarian requirements can’t be met,” Warrick said.
…
“We need more resources,” [White House spokeswoman Karine] Jean-Pierre said. “House Republicans keep getting in the way of doing the work to deal with what we’re seeing at the border,” she said.
“You’re at the border today and I presume you’re seeing a very dire situation,” said CNN’s Tapper as he pleaded with Johnson:
Hardworking border agents … who can’t do their jobs with what they have. They need more money. They need more colleagues … they need more funding. How come the House has not yet touched this $14 billion supplemental request from the Biden administration? The White House is hammering you on it, why not take it up and help?
…
Why not pass the $14 billion supplemental bill that the President Biden has put before you to at least try to help with some of these issues?
“That won’t do a damn thing” to get the border under control, Johnson responded.
Johnson’s office released a report on January 5, saying:
Of the $14 billion request, just over $2.3 billion, or less than 17%, would actually go to Border Patrol operations. Of that funding, much of it falls within the parameters of managing the crisis – processing tents, medical services, consumables, etc. – that have little to do with actual border security and interior enforcement and more to do with processing illegal immigration into the interior as fast as possible, arguably to hide the humanitarian crisis from public view.
…
In fact, a larger share of the Administration’s request, over $3 billion, would actually go to providing direct and indirect assistance to people coming here illegally, through NGOs or even direct cash assistance.
White House officials and senators who are negotiating a border deal have released no information about how much funding they will give to Biden’s deputies in 2024. The evidence, however, suggests that the Republican senators will not be able to get a deal acceptable to the GOP.
But many GOP leaders understand how Biden and his deputies will use the money.
“When we looked at this emergency supplemental … [we found it] continues to facilitate the mass migration that we see across our border,” Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) told a December 7 press conference. “It was yet more of a magnet to draw more and more people here!”
“Giving the Biden Admin more money to fuel its disastrous open-borders resettlement operation is insanity,” said Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN). “It would worsen the border crisis, not stop it,” he tweeted on October 20.
The funding will “offer ZERO actual border security while providing more money to process more people … & continue to rack up mountains of debt,” said a tweet by Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX).
“We’re in serious, serious, dire straits as a nation and we have to address those things seriously,” Johnson told Tapper on January 3.