Millions of Americans are paying taxes this week. What worsens the pain is to see President Joe Biden spending our tax money on hotel stays, debit cards and cellphones for illegal migrants crossing the southern border.
Biden is rolling out the welcome mat.
Illegal border-crossers will no longer be treated like criminals. More like customers. The president’s fiscal budget, presented March 28, cuts funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement by 8%, despite an expected surge in migrants, and reduces detention beds. Meanwhile, he’s increasing funding a whopping 700% for “noncitizen processing and care,” speedier service and more flights and ground transportation.
Kind of like a travel agency.
As of late May, Customs and Border Protection officials will not be able to send back migrants using Title 42, a legal tool invoked to limit immigration during COVID-19. Illegal migration is predicted to surge to 18,000 people a day.
Biden isn’t planning to deter it, only to accommodate it. There will be no punishment for sneaking into the country, or what the White House prefers to call “irregular” migration.
Migrants won’t be detained in crowded facilities, sleeping under metallic sheets. The feds are phasing out these facilities.
After crossing and being apprehended, migrants are fingerprinted and handed an Order of Release on Recognizance, granting them a legal right to travel in the United States, so long as they report to an ICE officer when they reach their destination.
Then they’re welcomed by Catholic Charities or other nonprofits, which help with travel instructions. Some are taken directly to bus stations or airports. But many others are checked into hotels for one or two days of R&R before continuing to the destination of their choice.
Call it the Catch and Concierge experience.
Over the last year, the Biden administration has contracted for hotel space in Scottsdale, Ariz., El Paso, Texas, and other sites to house migrants while they’re provided COVID screening, medical care, hot meals and a chance to shower and rest. What’s next? Mints on the pillow?
Hotels were used in the past, but only when detention facilities were full, not to replace them.
The California health department is also renting hotels in San Diego, including a Four Points Sheraton and a Ramada Inn, where Catholic Charities and Jewish Family Service of San Diego provide migrants assistance.
Don’t think that because these charities are helping taxpayers are off the hook. The federal government is Catholic Charities’ largest source of funds, and Jewish Family Service gets its money largely from Catholic Charities. Illegal migration is funded in a tangled maze that invariably leads back to US taxpayers.
That’s who’s paying for the smartphones and tablets for migrants, the latest perk. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki claims the devices will make it easier to track migrants. Border officials, according to the Los Angeles Times, insist the smartphones are for safer travel, not tracking. Migrants can simply throw the devices away.
Previous administrations used ankle bracelets, but immigration advocates complained they were uncomfortable and humiliating, so the Biden administration discontinued them.
Even before migrants cross the border, the International Organization for Migration, a UN agency, distributes plastic debit cards worth about $400 to help tide over migrants waiting to enter. Where does IOM get its money? Partly from America, of course. Twelve House Republicans introduced a bill, “No Tax Dollars for the United Nation’s Immigration Invasion Act,” to bar funding these cash giveaways.
And what says luxe more than charter air travel? Unaccompanied minors and some adults are being flown on private jets to destinations across the country, including Florida, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and New York. The Post has reported on frequent charters landing late at night at White Plains airport, where migrants deplane and board buses to their final destinations.
With Biden welcoming illegals and helping them settle wherever in the United States they choose, every state becomes a border state. Taxpayers in all 50 are clobbered with the cost of providing housing, emergency medical care and public schooling. Dems in New York, who have no mercy on taxpayers, are even extending Medicaid to illegals 65 and over.
Americans are generous people. But they have to provide for their own kids and neighbors first. Without warning, Biden is flying migrants into communities under the cover of night and expecting taxpayers to care for them. It’s nothing short of an ambush.
* story by The New York Post
