New Report Tracks $200 Million Spent On Illegal Immigrant Health Care
The day before the start of the latest shutdown drama, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declared that Republicans were “lying” about the Democrats’ hostage demands to turn the lights back on. No, the left’s spending plan would not pay for health care for illegal immigrants, the New York Democrat said. Doing so would require a change in federal law that bars such a thing, echoed Jeffries’ pals in corporate media.
“Nowhere have Democrats suggested that we’re interested in changing federal law,” he told NBC News for a story under the misleading headline, “GOP misleads with claim that Democrats shut down to give health care to ‘illegal immigrants.’” The story, like a lot of reporting from the corporate media, hasn’t aged well.
Hakeem and his team are lying to the American people. The truth is, hundreds of millions of dollars in direct and indirect spending is going to pick up the tab for the explosion of illegal aliens in this country.
An investigation by the nonprofit government watchdog Open The Books finds illegal immigrants have benefited from nearly $200 million in direct federal health care-related grants since fiscal year 2021.
That total doesn’t include indirect taxpayer funding for illegal aliens via Medicaid, estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to be around $27 billion from FY 2017-2023, according to a new Open The Books report exclusively provided to The Federalist. And then there’s the “estimated $70 billion annually in education spending for “undocumented migrants” and their children.
“When elected officials argue that taxpayer dollars aren’t going to illegal immigrants that just isn’t true,” Open The Books CEO John Hart told The Federalist in an email. “Taxpayers have a right to know that billions of their dollars are flowing to illegal immigrants in direct and indirect benefits for health care, education and more, sometimes in the form of gratuitous earmarks.”
‘Culturally Relevant’
As always, Open The Books brings the receipts. Some of the absolutely ridiculous “scientific” projects you are paying for include:
› $2.4 million to the University of California, Los Angeles, from the NIH to study “the use of reproductive healthcare among Asian immigrant women,” including “undocumented Asians, who experience greater barriers to access than their documented peers.” According to Open The Books, “the short-term goal of the research is to identify sexual and reproductive health outreach interventions, which will help ‘achieve the long-term goal to improve the sexual and reproductive health equity of immigrants, families, and communities.’”
› $424,752 via NIH to the University of California, Irvine, for learning about “access to medical care and health care utilization among low-income immigrants.” The goal of he grant is to help “support the development of local and state-level policies that expand access to care for undocumented residents as well as help policy makers, clinicians, and researchers anticipate outcomes after these policies are implemented.”
› $18,678 from the NIH to the University of Southern California to study “disparities in end-of-life care in undocumented Hispanic immigrants,” who are up against “numerous barriers to obtaining healthcare services.” The study strives to “inform the development of targeted interventions that aim to mitigate the identified barriers and promote quality of life for undocumented immigrants at end of life.”
› $1 million from — again — the NIH for a study on “culturally relevant” interventions for drunk driving. The study acknowledges previous research showing that compared to permanent residents, “Undocumented immigrants were less likely to understand DWI [driving while intoxicated] laws, more likely to binge drink, and less likely to perceive the associated risks. Despite such elevated risk factors, undocumented immigrants were less likely to be involved in DWI events than permanent residents, in part because of their desire to stay undetected by law officers, but largely because of their limited access to cars.”
Tell that to Joe Abraham, a Chicago-area man whose 20-year-old daughter, Katie, earlier this year was killed in a drunken driving crash caused by a previously deported illegal alien. The man behind the wheel of the SUV was driving 78 miles per hour in a residential/commercial zone when he slammed into the vehicle Katie was riding in, according to police. The crash also claimed the life of Katie’s friend, 21-year-old Chloe Polzin. The illegal immigrant was recently sentenced to 30 years in prison in a plea deal, according to WCIA.
‘Medicaid Money-Laundering’
Another $2.6 million went to Via Care MAT and Recovery for “medically-assisted treatment with buprenorphine [a drug that reverses the effects of opioid overdose] and comprehensive wraparound recovery support services” to 370 people. Who is the program targeted to? “[L]ow-income, primarily Latinx adults diagnosed with an opioid use disorder” in East Los Angeles, “including those who are ‘undocumented.’”
As The Federalist has reported, the “California loophole” launders taxpayer money to subsidize the Golden State’s Medicaid program for illegal immigrants. Health policy expert Elle Minarik told The Federalist that the Democrats’ alternative continuing resolution would repeal the portion of Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill that blocks taxpayer money from going to initiatives like California’s funding diversion program.
“It uses the Medicaid money-laundering apparatus to inflate federal costs through increased in-state Medicaid spending, [and] then invoice the federal government to be reimbursed,” Minarik, program manager at Paragon Health Institute, said.
Open The Books’ investigation found California has “reaped by far the most federal tax dollars related to illegal immigrant healthcare, at $65.5 million. Florida comes in a distant second with $26 million, followed by D.C. at $22 million.”
Chuck’s Cut
The report shows the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), a sub-agency of the Department of Health and Human Services, handed out at least $75.6 million in grants that went to services for illegal immigrants. HRSA’s purpose is to “provide health care to people who are geographically isolated and economically or medically vulnerable.”
“The bulk of HRSA funding serving illegal immigrants flows through the Ryan White HIV/AIDS Bureau, which provides medical care for low-income people with HIV. Ryan White was a young man who died of AIDS after a transfusion with infected blood in 1990,” the report notes.
Oh, and there are earmarks. Lots of earmarks. What spending bill would be complete without them? Open The Books found a $1.5 million total award to NYU Langone Hospitals, garnered by Democrat New York Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand. The funding is for a “new cancer center in New York City, serving a high-poverty area of 152,700 residents.” According to the grant “almost 50 percent of the population is foreign-born with many being undocumented.”
Hart said the report raises a lot of questions for the American taxpayers. It should also force Democrats to come clean about the taxpayer money going to services for illegal immigrants and the billions more they seek.
“Taxpayers also have a right to ask hard questions about whether the massive expansion of the Department of Homeland Security will repair our system of legal immigration or merely fund marginally effective security theater,” the Open The Books CEO said.
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