Retirement Nightmare: The Looming Crisis of Senior Homelessness
California to help 'undocumented immigrants' purchase homes?
California Assemblymember Joaquin Arambula has introduced Assembly Bill 1840, aimed at expanding home ownership opportunities for “undocumented immigrants” in the state.
The bill would make illegal aliens eligible for first time homebuyer loans. The bill, as originally introduced earlier this year, was aimed at low- and middle-income citizens, but Arambula apparently decided that was too exclusive, and therefore recently proposed his updated version.
This is yet another kick in the shorts to citizens, especially since the formerly Golden State has the highest priced housing — and by far the most homeless people — in the nation.
California is already the only state to fund comprehensive health care for undocumented immigrants. And it has a stupefying projected budget deficit of $73 billion with an average personal debt of $84,730 … which “undocumented immigrants” undoubtedly will not have to pay.
Illegal migrants pouring across our Southern border have allegedly been handed credit cards and cell phones. In some cases, they are being put up in very nice hotels. Moreover, residents and property owners in places like Boston, Denver and New York City have been asked to take these immigrants into their own homes.
New California Bill Makes Illegal Immigrants Eligible For First Time Homebuyer Loans!
Homelessness has devastated New York
Citizens OUTRAGED In Maine As Migrants Get 2 Years Of FREE RENT!
Housing Crisis 2024: The Middle-Class Edge of Homelessness
The Unseen Battle: America's Middle Class Rent Crisis
TWO LYING GAMER LAWYERS: BIDEN AND HIS CUBAN MAYORKAS
While discussing crimes committed by migrants, Lopez stated, “I think as we see more and more of these videos, not just in Chicago and New York and elsewhere, the onus has to be on the federal government, on Joe Biden and Secretary Mayorkas, who allow these individuals to come in here, completely unvetted, based on whatever they were willing to tell us at the time and allow them to roam free throughout our country.
Dem Chicago Alderman: Any Biden Immigration Action ‘Too Little, Too Late’ — He Helped People Manipulate Asylum
On Thursday’s broadcast of “NewsNation Live,” Chicago Alderman and Democratic U.S. House candidate Raymond Lopez stated that the Biden administration has helped people manipulate American asylum laws and let people “come in here, completely unvetted, based on whatever they were willing to tell us at the time and allow them to roam free throughout our country.” And even if Biden takes executive action on immigration, it would be “too little, too late.”
While discussing crimes committed by migrants, Lopez stated, “I think as we see more and more of these videos, not just in Chicago and New York and elsewhere, the onus has to be on the federal government, on Joe Biden and Secretary Mayorkas, who allow these individuals to come in here, completely unvetted, based on whatever they were willing to tell us at the time and allow them to roam free throughout our country.
Not everyone that’s come here is looking for a better life, some individuals are just here to exploit the situation. And it’s putting Americans at risk. This is one of the greatest national security threats we’ve seen in a long time, because 8 million people have come through this porous border, manipulating our asylum laws with the help of the administration. And both Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress are turning a blind eye, saying, well, we’ll deal with it after the election. They are paid to be there now. They are paid to act now and address this now. And every American has the right to be outraged that they’re punting, yet again, on this so important issue.”
Later, host Marni Hughes asked, “Are you optimistic the President will adequately address this tonight?”
Lopez answered, “I hope he does. But, to be honest, it’s too little, too late. We have nearly 8 million people in our country right now. There are 35,000 of them in the City of Chicago with no support, and not just dealing with the crisis as it is, but what about those millions of individuals who are going to be here for several years waiting for adjudication? Who’s going to address that?”
He added that the problem is a difficult one and will require a complicated solution.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
Illinois provides $9,000 in rental assistance to migrants seeking temporary housing
https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/chicago-rental-assistance-migrants-temporary-housing
By Tia EwingPublished October 13, 2023ChicagoFOX 32 Chicago
New information emerges on the migrant situation in Chicago
FOX 32 spoke to Cristina Pacione-Zayas, the citys first deputy chief of staff, who provided insight into how the crisis is impacting the city and state financially.
CHICAGO - We are learning more about the migrant situation in Chicago.
FOX 32 spoke to Cristina Pacione-Zayas, the city's first deputy chief of staff, who provided insight into how the crisis is impacting the city and state financially.
This week, 41 buses have arrived in Chicago, bringing the total number of migrants in shelters to 11,000, with 4,000 still sleeping on police station floors and staying at airports.
Notably, 30% of migrants in Chicago are children, with the majority of them attending Chicago Public Schools.
Currently, the state is funding temporary housing, including rented apartments and homes for migrants. The state is providing up to $9,000 in rental assistance over a 6-month period, which includes assistance with moving in and a starter kit to furnish the apartment.
"That rent lasts for six months and ideally people would have started their legal process, secured legal work authorization and be able to sustain that apartment. And so the cost, or I guess the payment toward the landlord is based on market rate, it's based on the configuration of the parament – how many rooms, where it's located – all those things. And so it varies from place to place," said Ald. Pacione-Zayas.
The number of asylum seekers currently utilizing the rental assistance is unclear.
The city has allocated $4 million to assist migrants in obtaining temporary housing, with the state contributing an additional $38 million. At present, 30 to 40 case management workers from Catholic Charities are actively working to secure temporary housing for thousands of migrants, with efforts underway to hire more.
Chicago to Give Illegal Immigrants up to $9,000 Each for Housing Costs
The Windy City currently has 11,000 illegal migrants in shelters and a further 4,000 still sleeping on police station floors or staying at airports.
Homeless in the US: Supreme Court seeks to make homelessness illegal
Trump Campaign: Democrats Give Housing to Illegal Migrants, Penalizing Black Americans
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
28 Aug 202023
3:30
President Donald Trump’s campaign used the issue of illegal immigration on Thursday to seek votes from working-class blacks.
A short video released by the Trump campaign Twitter account highlighted the president’s record on improving public housing in New York and other cities.
“My name is Judy Smith,” said one black woman, who continued:
I live in New York City public housing. I’m grateful for the spotlight that President Trump is putting on New York City public housing. I think it’s wrong that the Democrats put illegal immigrants before black Americans. How is it that we have people waiting on the waiting lists for New York City public housing for 10 years or more, but yet we have illegal immigrants living here? Something is wrong with that picture.
President Trump is bringing real solutions to real problems.#RNC2020 pic.twitter.com/3Q7s2ZEchE
— Team Trump (Text VOTE to 88022) (@TeamTrump) August 28, 2020
The comments were likely aimed at working-class blacks in many swing states, including several Midwest states.
“Working-class African Americans are significantly more supportive of policies that seek to: decrease the number of immigrants coming to the United States, increase the federal role in verifying the employment status of immigrants, and attempts to amend the Constitution’s citizenship provisions,” said a 2013 peer-reviewed study by Tatishe Nteta, a professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. The study continued:
For African Americans who lost a job to an immigrant, working-class membership resulted in a 13 percentage point increase in the probability of support for an increased federal role in workplace oversight [against employment of illegal immigrants] when compared to middle-class African Americans who experienced a similar loss.
Numerous polls show that blacks — like all other groups — say they wish to welcome migrants, but strongly prefer that Americans get jobs before companies import more migrants.
Nationwide, the expanded supply of new migrants also cuts Americans’ disposable wages by inflating their housing costs. That reality is recognized by investor groups who are urging more immigration. For example, the Economic Innovation Group says, “The relationship between population growth and housing demand is clear. More people means more demand for housing, and fewer people means less demand.”
Mike Bloomberg’s pro-migration advocacy group, New American Economy, pushed the same argument:
The research shows that an increase in the absolute number of immigrants in a particular county from 2000–2010 results in corresponding economic gains—increased demand for locally produced goods and services, a corresponding inflow of U.S.-born individuals—that are reflected in the housing market.
The video also included comments from other blacks in New York:
My name is Manuel Martinez … Under the Trump administration, New York City Housing Authority has received an influx of cash that it has not seen since 1997.
My name is Claudia Perez I’m the resident council president of Washington Houses, which is in Spanish Harlem. [New York Mayor] Bill de Blasio and the way he has dealt with public housing residents is disgraceful. President Trump administration has opened their ears and has listened … [and] is bringing real solutions to real problems.
The video ends with the claim, “More Funding: Better Housing: Promise Made: Promise Kept.”
Donald Trump's labor & immigration promises for a 2nd term are vague but useful.
They are also better for ordinary Americans than Joe Biden's business-backed, open-ended inflow of wage-cutting & rent-raising blue-collar workers & college-graduates. https://t.co/OmE4tRPf4T
— Neil Munro (@NeilMunroDC) August 26, 2020
Another line they cut into: Illegals get free public housing as impoverished Americans wait
Want some perspective on why so many blue sanctuary cities have so many homeless encampments hovering around?
Try the reality that illegal immigrants are routinely given free public housing by the U.S., based on the fact that they are uneducated, unskilled, and largely unemployable. Those are the criteria, and now importing poverty has never been easier. Shockingly, this comes as millions of poor Americans are out in the cold awaiting that housing that the original law was intended to help.
Thus, the tent cities, and by coincidence, the worst of these emerging shantytowns are in blue sanctuary cities loaded with illegal immigrants - Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, New York...Is there a connection? At a minimum, it's worth looking at.
The Trump administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development is finally trying to put a stop to it as 1.5 million illegals prepare to enter the U.S. this year, and one can only wonder why they didn't do it yesterday.
According to a report in the Washington Times:
The plan would scrap Clinton-era regulations that allowed illegal immigrants to sign up for assistance without having to disclose their status.
Under the new Trump rules, not only would the leaseholder using public housing have to be an eligible U.S. person, but the government would verify all applicants through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, a federal system that’s used to weed illegal immigrants out of other welfare programs.
Those already getting HUD assistance would have to go through a new verification, though it would be over a period of time and wouldn’t all come at once.
“We’ve got our own people to house and need to take care of our citizens,” an administration official told The Washington Times. “Because of past loopholes in HUD guidance, illegal aliens were able to live in free public housing desperately needed by so many of our own citizens. As illegal aliens attempt to swarm our borders, we’re sending the message that you can’t live off of American welfare on the taxpayers’ dime.”
The Times notes that the rules are confusingly contradictary, and some illegal immigrant families are getting full rides based on just one member being born in the U.S. The pregnant caravaner who calculatingly slipped across the U.S. in San Diego late last year, only to have her baby the next day, now, along with her entire family, gets that free ride on government housing. Plus lots of cheesy news coverage about how heartwarming it all is. That's a lot cheaper than any housing she's going to find back in Tegucigalpa.
Migrants would be almost fools not to take the offering.
The problem of course is that Americans who paid into these programs, and the subset who find themselves in dire circumstances, are in fact being shut out.
The fill-the-pews Catholic archbishops may love to tout the virtues of illegal immigrants and wave signs about getting 'justice" for them, but the hard fact here is that these foreign nationals are stealing from others as they take this housing benefit under legal technicalities. That's not a good thing under anyone's theological law. But hypocrisy is comfortable ground for the entire open borders lobby as they shamelessly celebrate lawbreaking at the border, leaving the impoverished of the U.S. out cold.
The Trump administration is trying to have this outrage fixed by summer. But don't imagine it won't be without the open-borders lawsuits, the media sob stories, the leftist judges, and the scolding clerics.
Los Angeles County Pays Over a Billion in Welfare to Illegal Aliens Over Two Years
BY MASOOMA HAQ
In 2015 and 2016, Los Angeles County paid nearly $1.3 billion in welfare funds to illegal aliens and their families. That figure amounts to 25 percent of the total spent on the county’s entire needy population, according to Fox News.
The state of California is home to more illegal aliens than any other state in the country. Approximately one in five illegal aliens lives in California, Pew reported.
Approximately a quarter of California’s 4 million illegal immigrants reside in Los Angeles County. The county allows illegal immigrant parents with children born in the United States to seek welfare and food stamp benefits.
The welfare benefits data acquired by Fox News comes from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Social Services and shows welfare and food stamp costs for the county’s entire population were $3.1 billion in 2015, $2.9 billion in 2016.
The data also shows that during the first five months of 2017, more than 60,000 families received a total of $181 million.
Over 58,000 families received a total of $602 million in benefits in 2015 and more than 64,000 families received a total of $675 million in 2016.
Robert Rector, a Heritage Foundation senior fellow who studies poverty and illegal immigration, told Fox the costs represent “the tip of the iceberg.”
“They get $3 in benefits for every $1 they spend,” Rector said. It can cost the government a total of $24,000 per year per family to pay for things like education, police, fire, medical, and subsidized housing.
In February of 2019, the Los Angeles city council signed a resolution making it a sanctuary city. The resolution did not provide any new legal protections to their immigrants, but instead solidified existing policies.
In October 2017, former California governor Jerry Brown signed SB 54 into law. This bill made California, in Brown’s own words, a “sanctuary state.” The Justice Department filed a lawsuit against the State of California over the law. A federal judge dismissed that suit in July. SB 54 took effect on Jan. 1, 2018.
According to Center for Immigration Studies, “The new law does many things: It forbids all localities from cooperating with ICE detainer notices, it bars any law enforcement officer from participating in the popular 287(g) program, and it prevents state and local police from inquiring about individuals’ immigration status.”
Some counties in California have protested its implementation and joined the Trump administration’s lawsuit against the state.
California’s campaign to provide public services to illegal immigrants did not end with the exit of Jerry Brown. His successor, Gavin Newsom, is just as focused as Brown in funding programs for illegal residents at the expense of California taxpayers.
California’s budget earmarks millions of dollars annually to the One California program, which provides free legal assistance to all aliens, including those facing deportation, and makes California’s public universities easier for illegal-alien students to attend.
According to the Fiscal Burden of Illegal Immigration on United States Taxpayers 2017 report, for the estimated 12.5 million illegal immigrants living in the country, the resulting cost is a $116 billion burden on the national economy and taxpayers each year, after deducting the $19 billion in taxes paid by some of those illegal immigrants.
BLOG: MOST FIGURES PUT THE NUMBER OF ILLEGALS IN THE U.S. AT ABOUT 40 MILLION. WHEN THESE PEOPLE ARE HANDED AMNESTY, THEY ARE LEGALLY ENTITLED TO BRING UP THE REST OF THEIR FAMILY EFFECTIVELY LEAVING MEXICO DESERTED.
New data from the U.S. Census Bureau shows that more than 22 million non-citizens now live in the United States.
Joe Biden to Spend $86 Million on Hotel Rooms for Border Crossers
President Joe Biden’s administration has awarded a taxpayer-
funded contract to pay for hotel rooms for border crossers
arriving at the United States-Mexico border.
An Axios report reveals that Biden’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will pay a Texas-based nonprofit to provide $86 million worth of hotel rooms for six months for approximately 1,200 families who cross the southern border. DHS confirmed the arrangement.
The hotel rooms, according to Axios, will be in Arizona and Texas near the southern border and will serve as welcoming centers for border crossers whom the Biden administration is hoping to quickly release into the U.S. interior.
Already, detention facilities at the southern border are being reworked to become similar-style welcoming centers for border crossers where adults and children are released within a 72-hour period. The administration is looking to welcome nearly 120,000 Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) into the U.S. this year.
In addition, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is spending $110 million for “eligible local nonprofit and governmental organizations and state governmental facilities that have aided, or will aid” border crossers apprehended and released into the U.S. interior.
This week, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas confirmed to lawmakers the agency had been releasing border crossers into the U.S. interior who were not tested for the coronavirus and, it was discovered, were carrying the virus.
Federal officials told the media that UACs at one particular facility had a positive coronavirus rate of 11 percent — nearly double the Texas positivity average. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) called the coronavirus outbreak at the UAC facilities “unacceptable and inhumane.”
In February, almost 100,000 border crossers were apprehended at the southern border, an increase of 170 percent from the same time last year. The number of illegal aliens who successfully crossed the border, undetected, since October 2020 has surpassed 118,000, Breitbart News exclusively reported.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
San Francisco Approves Plan for Budget Surplus: $4.4M for Arts Grants, $2M for ‘Undocumented Families’
The city of San Francisco has a long laundry list of what it wants to do with its $125 million budget surplus, including millions for “cultural equity” in the arts and for families who are in the United States illegally.
Even as the city faces epidemics of homelessness and drug overdoses, Mayor London Breed and the city budget board’s chairman prioritized other things, including $2 million for the Family Relief Fund for “vulnerable and undocumented families who were not eligible for other forms of state and federal financial support.”
The city finalized a plan this week that designates $1.6 million for “overdose prevention” and none for homelessness but did put aside $10 million for expansion of low-income housing.
City officials decided $24 million should go to the arts, including $4.4 million to the Arts Commission’s cultural equity endowment, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Supervisor Matt Haney, the budget chairman, said in the Chronicle report:
These are urgent priorities that can’t wait and this supplemental package will help our city recover and help keep small businesses open, support kids and keep tenants in their home. The funds are going directly and overwhelmingly to the people who are most impacted during this crisis.
Breed said in a press release announcing the decision:
One year ago today we went into a Shelter in Place that, while saving lives, has impacted our city like nothing I’ve ever seen. We’ve had small businesses close, our students have been out of the classrooms for over a year, and people are worried about how they are going to pay rent.
People continue to struggle with housing security and addiction, and our arts and culture sector, which is part of what makes San Francisco so unique, is suffering. While we are working towards our long-term recovery, we know we need this immediate support that will help get our City back on its feet.
“Our goal now is to get this funding approved and out the door and into the hands of those who need it as fast possible,” Breed said.
Other spending approved includes $53 million for small businesses, the Chronicle reported:
The intent is to help 1,000 small low-income businesses, with a focus on those owned by women and people of color that were most hurt by shelter-in-place and haven’t accessed state or federal relief. Grants will vary from $5,000 to $25,000, based on how many full-time employees the business has. Loans will supplement an existing state lending program, but with a lower interest rate.
Also included is $20 million for “rent relief” and affordable housing, and $17 million for student summer programs so that students can attend for free.
Follow Penny Starr on Twitter or send news tips to pstarr@breitbart.com
Another line they cut into: Illegals get free public housing as impoverished Americans wait
Want some perspective on why so many blue sanctuary cities have so many homeless encampments hovering around?
Try the reality that illegal immigrants are routinely given free public housing by the U.S., based on the fact that they are uneducated, unskilled, and largely unemployable. Those are the criteria, and now importing poverty has never been easier. Shockingly, this comes as millions of poor Americans are out in the cold awaiting that housing that the original law was intended to help.
Thus, the tent cities, and by coincidence, the worst of these emerging shantytowns are in blue sanctuary cities loaded with illegal immigrants - Orange County, San Francisco, San Diego, Seattle, New York...Is there a connection? At a minimum, it's worth looking at.
The Trump administration's Department of Housing and Urban Development is finally trying to put a stop to it as 1.5 million illegals prepare to enter the U.S. this year, and one can only wonder why they didn't do it yesterday.
According to a report in the Washington Times:
The plan would scrap Clinton-era regulations that allowed illegal immigrants to sign up for assistance without having to disclose their status.
Under the new Trump rules, not only would the leaseholder using public housing have to be an eligible U.S. person, but the government would verify all applicants through the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlements (SAVE) database, a federal system that’s used to weed illegal immigrants out of other welfare programs.
Those already getting HUD assistance would have to go through a new verification, though it would be over a period of time and wouldn’t all come at once.
“We’ve got our own people to house and need to take care of our citizens,” an administration official told The Washington Times. “Because of past loopholes in HUD guidance, illegal aliens were able to live in free public housing desperately needed by so many of our own citizens. As illegal aliens attempt to swarm our borders, we’re sending the message that you can’t live off of American welfare on the taxpayers’ dime.”
The Times notes that the rules are confusingly contradictary, and some illegal immigrant families are getting full rides based on just one member being born in the U.S. The pregnant caravaner who calculatingly slipped across the U.S. in San Diego late last year, only to have her baby the next day, now, along with her entire family, gets that free ride on government housing. Plus lots of cheesy news coverage about how heartwarming it all is. That's a lot cheaper than any housing she's going to find back in Tegucigalpa.
Migrants would be almost fools not to take the offering.
The problem of course is that Americans who paid into these programs, and the subset who find themselves in dire circumstances, are in fact being shut out.
The fill-the-pews Catholic archbishops may love to tout the virtues of illegal immigrants and wave signs about getting 'justice" for them, but the hard fact here is that these foreign nationals are stealing from others as they take this housing benefit under legal technicalities. That's not a good thing under anyone's theological law. But hypocrisy is comfortable ground for the entire open borders lobby as they shamelessly celebrate lawbreaking at the border, leaving the impoverished of the U.S. out cold.
The Trump administration is trying to have this outrage fixed by summer. But don't imagine it won't be without the open-borders lawsuits, the media sob stories, the leftist judges, and the scolding clerics.
Biden gives cartel human-smugglers an 'assist' by handing out free hotel rooms to illegal migrants
Well, that was deluxe.
After riding through Mexico under car seats, inside sweltering trucks, stuffed in packed trunks, shimmying through rat-infested tunnels, crossing rivers, and on the tops of trains, illegal migrant families (or "families") who make it illegally across to the states get free hotel rooms, courtesy of Joe Biden and the U.S. taxpayer.
That's what Biden has mandated in his self-created border crisis that didn't exist until he started offering immigration line-cutters benefits, and not surprisingly, the migrants are pouring over. Now some new goodies await at the finish line.
Yet here's what Biden said ahead of it:
“I can say quite clearly, ‘Don’t come over,'” Biden said regarding the rise in border crossings. “Don’t leave your town or city or community.
With free hotel rooms, and five thousand people and counting getting across each day, sounds like nobody is listening.
According to Axios, cited by Daily Caller, illegal migrant families can now look forward not to migrant jails but to free hotel rooms once they make it across without papers.
The Biden administration has awarded an $86 million contract for hotel rooms near the border to hold around 1,200 migrant family members who cross the U.S.-Mexico border, DHS officials confirmed to Axios.
Why it matters: It's a sign of growing numbers of migrant families trying to come to the U.S. — in addition to already overwhelming numbers of kids crossing the border without their parents or legal guardians. Both trends appear to be straining government resources.
· The contract through Endeavors, a Texas-based nonprofit, is for six months but could be extended and expanded. The hotels will be near border areas, including in Arizona and Texas.
That's a lot more than legal immigrants get. That's a lot more than an American abroad who's been robbed and goes to a U.S. embassy for help gets. That's a lot more than even irresponsible people who's gone into the wilderness against advice and trigger costly rescues get -- they usually have to pay for their rescues. And don't even think about an American who can't pay his taxes, he's not getting free rides, either. Not even most of the homeless, judging by the blue-city streets, get free hotel rooms. (San Francisco has been an exception.)
Anybody paying for these free hotel rooms? Like maybe someone with a spare $6,000 to pay a cartel human smuggler? Doesn't sound like it. This one's on the taxpayer.
What is amounts to is Joe Biden trying to hide the crisis by throwing money at NGOs and hoping no one notices the unvetted illegals, some with COVID, filling up border town hotel rooms. No kids in cages pictures seems to be the aim, given Biden's effort to cover up such news from the media. Now with the migrants scattered about in private hotel rooms in border towns, the Biden logic is that perhaps the media will go away.
That's a service-added for the cartels, which do entice migrants to leave their homes based on such goodies and not surprisingly they make lots of money off these crossings. The free hotels will add more. Thanks, Joe.
At a minimum, busting a cartel and using its "earnings" from migrants ought to be mandated to pay for these hotels. And not just them, but the governments of the countries that permits these exoduses to benefit from billions in remittances as well as reduced public pressure to reform themselves to make their countries liveable. Anybody there paying? Nope, they get free money from Uncle Sam, too. And as for Mexico, well, they've managed to persuade bumbling Biden that they just don't have space to accommodate. Kind of saves them some trouble, doesn't it?
Strange how the federal government, in paying for free hotel rooms with taxpayer dollars is incentivizing more illegal immigration.
Let's take a look at Endeavors, the non-profit based in San Antonio, which appears to be fairly respectable with ties to various city governments and the United Way, with a reported 10% spent in overhead (which is low), though it doesn't disclose its total money-size in its last-posted 2019 Annual Report.
The group, founded by five Presbyterian churches around 1975 took various names until settling on its current one, and specializes in helping the drug-addicted homeless, including homeless vets and ex-cons, get back into society, which is obviously a costly process involving a lot of hand-holding. It's helped a grand total of 250 families (or, 800 individuals) over 15 years through its shelter project for them. Which is rather tiny, but remember, these projects are intensive. Here is a success story it reports in this video. Its 2019 Annual Report doesn't mention migrants.
But somehow, in the last one or two months, with the migrant surge, it's gotten itself this $86 million hotel contract, which sounds a little sudden, and a bit big as contracts go, for all the known indicators of its size, too. And it doesn't indicate in its report any specialty with migrants, though it has a minor migrant section on its website navbar under 'What We Do.' Migrants are going to want free lawyers, free phone calls, free meals, and free bus or plane tickets to their destinations of choice. Are they going to help with that, do they have enough bilingual staff that can be taken from their current hand-holding duties, or is someone else? They will probably have to hire people at pricey NGO salaries, raising their overhead.
Was there competitive bidding? Why did this take so little time, and why so much to a non-migrant group so small? There may be legitimate answers, or maybe it was cronyism, but unless the site tells us -- they actually say nothing about this on their website, it looks a little funny.
Now let's look at the size of this contract:
How many free hotel rooms for illegal aliens will $86 million buy? Well, here's a back of the envelope calculation:
Six months is 180 days of hotel rooming. The average hotel room cost in Arizona and Texas border cities -- I looked it up, is about $70 for Nogales, Arizona, and $108 for McAllen, Texas. Other border cities checked -- El Paso, Laredo, Tucson, and Douglas, are all between those ranges, with the Texas cities a bit above $100, and the Arizona towns around $90.
If $90 is the median, then the hotel room cost, divided evenly is about $478,000 a day, and extended over 180 days, brings us to $86 million. That would house about 5,000 families, which squares well with the Axios estimates for family sizes of two to three people. Maybe they get bulk rates or cheaper hotels and can house more, but this is unknown. Federal contracts are prized, after all, because they often pay full fare. Lots of $6,000 toilet seats, after all. But most families are supposedly staying only about 3 days, so the $17,200 figure for 5,000 people at a time would be for the entire six month duration. You can bet there will be a lot more than 5,000 people served if every illegal alien family only stays three days.
Bottom line, all of these new services for illegal border crossers are bonanzas, not just for the NGOs who benefit, they are benefits for human smuggling rackets, who can now advertise these wares as part of their illegal alien benefit packages and use the news of them to draw more business. Biden is helping that bunch ultimately with these free-hotel contracts even Americans in distress don't get. Cartels will use this incentive to drum up more business.
Image: Screen shot from a camera aimed at a live television broadcast, enhanced with FotoSketcher.
WATCH: U.S. Spends $6 Million Per Day to House Unaccompanied Migrant Children
Breitbart Texas
Volume 90%
9 Apr 2021245
3:48
According to Health and Human Services, the federal government is detaining more than 20,000 unaccompanied migrant children nationwide. To accommodate the latest surge, HHS opened 13 new detention facilities since March 1 and are designed to house the children until sponsors receive them.
According to the latest HHS data, they hold 16,000 unaccompanied children and another 4,000 are about to be transferred from Border Patrol custody. The HHS estimates the cost to detain a child in the newest facilities, which they refer to as Emergency Intake Sites (EIS), is $775 per day. In other long-term facilities, they indicate that cost to be approximately $275 per day. The temporary shelter numbers are those in excess of 13,500 permanent facility beds, meaning the agency is spending nearly $4 million a day on long-term UACs and nearly $2 million per day on EIS shelters. This does not account for the expenditures by the Border Patrol to detain the additional 4,000 UACs.
According to HHS, the EIS shelters being brought into service will provide required standards of care for children, such as providing clean and comfortable sleeping quarters, meals, toiletries, laundry, and access to medical services. A COVID-19 health screening protocol for all children will reportedly be implemented to follow CDC guidelines for preventing and controlling communicable diseases. Services will be provided by a combination of contractors and federal staff – including teams from the HHS Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response and the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.
HHS responded to an inquiry from Breitbart Texas concerning the funding of these expenses. HHS did not address any congressional appropriation specifically for the opening and operation of the newest facilities and would only say they are using available funds to provide for the record number of UACs. In effect, this means HHS and CBP are diverting programmatic funds from within the agencies. Where exactly the funds are being diverted from was not revealed.
Under the purview of HHS are the Centers for Disease Control, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the Food and Drug Administration. These are but a few of the HHS-managed programs designed to provide health services to United States residents with Congressional funding. Absent appropriations specifically for the Office of Refugee Resettlement, HHS must utilize funding from other sources to construct, open, and operate facilities to care for and find sponsors for the thousands of unaccompanied children.
Congressman Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), when asked by Breitbart Texas about the issue says the lack of transparency by the agency is troubling. The money has not been appropriated by Congress and must be taken from operating budgets to carry out their mission. He addressed that question at a recent press conference held by a congressional delegation visiting the border in Texas on Thursday.
Of the nearly 170,000 migrants apprehended illegally entering the United States in March, nearly 19,000 were unaccompanied children.
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.
