Judicial Watch, CatholicVote Sue DHS, HHS for Communications With Church Groups Over Alleged Role in Illegal Immigration
(CNS News) -- Two non-profit organizations, CatholicVote and Judicial Watch, recently filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) because they failed to provide requested information about their communications with Catholic-affiliated agencies at the border and the agencies' alleged role in the surge of illegal immigrants over the last year.
"The Biden administration has refused to provide copies of communications between Catholic-affiliated charities and organizations at the border," said CatholicVote President Brian Burch in a statement. "Their lack of transparency and obstruction forced us to file these federal lawsuits."
"American Catholics deserve to know the full extent of the U.S. government's role in funding and coordinating with Catholic Church-affiliated agencies at the border, and what role these agencies played in the record surge of illegal immigrants over the past year," said Burch.
"We will do whatever is necessary to uncover the truth," he added.
The lawsuit was filed with the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on Feb. 4.
The initial FOIA request, permissible by law, was sent to the Customs and Border Protection (a component of the DHS) and the HHS on Sept. 21, 2021. Both CatholicVote and Judicial Watch were seeking the following information for the time period Jan. 1, 2021 -- Sept. 1, 2021:
"All communications between the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and any of the following:
- The Diocese of Brownsville (San Juan, Texas)
- Bishop Daniel E. Flores in his capacity as Bishop of the Diocese of Brownsville, Texas
- Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley (“CCRGV”)
- Sister Norma Pimentel in her capacity as the Executive Director of CCRGV
- The Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas
That same day, Sept. 1, 2021, CatholicVote and Judicial Watch sent a FOIA request for all communications "between the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops regarding the following:
- Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley ('CCRGV')
- Sister Norma Pimentel in her capacity as the Executive Director of CCRGV
- The Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen, Texas
The DHS was required to make a final determination about the FOIA request by Oct. 13, 2021 but it did not do so. The HHS was required to make a final determination by Sept. 30, 2021. It also failed to do so. The inaction by the two federal departments prompted CatholicVote and Judicial Watch to file their lawsuit.
The lawsuit is requesting that the court order the DHS and the HHS to comply with the FOIA requests and pay attorneys’ fees and other litigation costs.
According to its website, "Judicial Watch, Inc. is a conservative, non-partisan educational foundation, which promotes transparency, accountability and integrity in government, politics and the law. ... Judicial Watch fulfills its educational mission through litigation, investigations, and public outreach."
CatholicVote's mission, according to its website, is "to inspire every Catholic in America to live out the truths of our faith in public life." The organization is "a national faith-based advocacy organization, organized by faithful Catholic laity in full communion with the teachings of the Church, yet does not claim to speak for any individual bishop or the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops."
WHY ARE ALL TECH BILLIONAIRES
DEMOCRATS FOR OPEN BORDERS?
DOJ: Tech Executives Fraudulently Outsourced U.S. Jobs to Foreign H-1B Visa Workers
A pair of tech executives in San Jose, California, fraudulently imported foreign H-1B visa workers to the United States to hold American jobs they were not authorized to take, federal prosecutors allege.
Namrata Patnaik, 42-years-old, and Kartiki Parekh, 56-years-old, have been charged with visa fraud and conspiracy to commit visa fraud after allegedly operating a job outsourcing scheme that delivered foreign H-1B visa workers to employers at huge profits.
According to a federal indictment, Patnaik and Parekh were executives at PerfectVIPs, a computer chip design company. From 2011 to April 2017, prosecutes allege, Patnaik and Parekh filed 85 fraudulent H-1B visa applications to import foreign workers only to then lend them out to other employers whom they were not authorized to work for.
“Once the applications were approved, Patnaik and Parekh instead created a pool of H-1B workers that were placed at employment positions with other employers, not with PerfectVIPs,” a Department of Justice (DOJ) release states:
This practice provided PerfectVIPs an unfair and illegal advantage over employment-staffing firms. During the period of Patnaik’s and Parekh’s conspiracy, the indictment alleges, the other employers paid fees of nearly $7 million to PerfectVIPs to cover the cost of the H-1B workers’ wages and salaries as well as a profit markup for PerfectVIPs. [Emphasis added]
Patnaik and Parekh are due back in federal court in April and are each facing a maximum of 15 to 25 years in prison if convicted, as well as thousands in fines.
The charges come as President Joe Biden recently expanded big business’s ability to outsource thousands of coveted, high-paying American STEM jobs to foreign graduates.
In fiscal year 2021, the top six H-1B visa employers — Cognizant, Amazon, Tata Consulting Services, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook — sought to outsource nearly 57,000 American tech jobs to foreign H-1B visa workers primarily from India and China.
For years, Breitbart News has chronicled the abuses against white-collar American professionals as a result of the H-1B visa program. There are about 650,000 H-1B visa foreign workers in the U.S. at any given moment. Americans are often laid off in the process and forced to train their foreign replacements, as highlighted by Breitbart News.
Nearly all of H-1B visa reforms imposed by former President Trump have been reversed by Biden and his top Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials. Last year, for example, Biden allowed corporations who had been denied foreign H-1B visa workers by the Trump administration to reapply.
Tech executives are currently lobbying Biden to massively increase the number of foreign H-1B visa workers that corporations are allowed to import each year.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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