Original article.
Published 1 day ago on October 6, 2022 By Sara Carter Staff
“The border is secure” says Vice President Kamala Harris; yet almost two dozen states are sending up to 2,500 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. The assistance is aimed at helping federal immigration officials handle the border crisis.
“Groups that support tougher immigration restrictions say the deployment of the National Guard troops will help overburdened federal agencies deal with the surge of illegal immigration”, reports the Center Square.
The deployments were requested by the U.S. Department of Defense and Republican-led states like Kentucky, South Carolina and Arkansas, as well as Democratic-led states such as Rhode Island and Illinois will all be sending assistance. Other states sending troops include Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, DOD officials said.
“Several other states – Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Oregon, Utah and Washington – will be providing National Guard aviation support for border operations, according to the department.”
“The U.S. Virgin Islands has also committed National Guard troops to the mission, which is being overseen by the U.S. Northern Command.”
The Center Square reports:
The troops were requested by DOD to assist U.S. Border Patrol in dealing with a surge of illegal trafficking of people, weapons and drugs into the country. The troops will work only in support missions, a Defense Department spokesman said, and are prohibited under federal law from detaining undocumented migrants or others caught crossing into the United States illegally…
…The U.S. Border Patrol has apprehended migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border more than 1.8 million times since October, breaking previous records, according to the agency. The Center Square, through its sources, reported in August the number of illegal entries is nearly 5 million since Biden began to occupy the White House in January 2020.
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Related: IG Audit shows nonprofit wasted $17 million taxpayer dollars on hotels to not house illegal foreign nationals
(From the same original page.)
Published 1 week ago on September 27, 2022, By Sara Carter Staff
An audit report by the Inspector General shows enraging information as to exactly how millions of dollars from the American people were completely wasted.
One doesn’t need to read past the IG report’s headline to become furious: “ICE Spent Funds on Unused Beds, Missed COVID-19 Protocols and Detention Standards while Housing Migrant Families in Hotels.”
In summary, an unbelievable $17 million was wasted on not housing illegal foreign nationals. At the heart of the story is Endeavors, a nonprofit which has received half a billion dollars in taxpayer money “through no-bid government contracts to house foreign nationals who illegally entered the U.S. and were released by the Biden administration instead of being deported” reports The Center Square.
The audit evaluated the process used by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to grant no bid contracts to Endeavors and their compliance with federal law, the article explains.
The report evaluated an $86.9 million sole source contract first awarded to Endeavors earlier this year. The contract was awarded for six months to provide “temporary shelter and processing services for families who have not been expelled and are therefore placed in immigration proceedings for their removal from the United States,” The Center Square previously reported.
Months after it received its first no bid contract, Endeavors received a second $530 million contract and hired former Biden administration official Andrew Lorenzen-Straight as its senior director for migrant services and federal affairs, Axios reported.
The Center Square explains:
Sole source contracts are used when an agency can demonstrate the contract meets specific and justified criteria. If contracts don’t meet one of the criteria, they must be awarded through an open competitive process.
Endeavors has no professional history of providing housing services and has never provided beds or all-inclusive emergency family residential services, OIG auditors found. Those critical of DHS’ contract process argue the agency should be awarding contracts through an open competitive process to ensure that those bidding for funds can offer the services they claim they can provide.
Under the contract in question, for six months between March and September 2021, Endeavors was responsible for providing 1,239 beds and other necessary services in hotels. It used six hotels and repurposed them as Emergency Family Reception Sites to accommodate families staying less than three days while ICE considered conditions of release, including alternatives to detention.
The IOG made four recommendations for ICE to improve its contracting and oversight of hotel facility management and operations. “ICE concurred with one recommendation and didn’t concur with three. Based on information ICE provided in its response, the IOG said it considered one recommendation resolved and closed, and three recommendations administratively closed.”
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