Biden administration spends millions to house illegal immigrants, while America grapples with lockdowns, poverty, and homelessness

The Biden administration has announced that they will spend $86.9 million to temporarily house illegal immigrant families in hotels as the crisis on the border intensifies, with so many migrants trying to cross into the U.S. that processing personnel and facilities are completely overwhelmed.

Quick Facts

• The number of immigrants at the border has soared since Biden took office, filling processing facilities beyond capacity.
• A contract for nearly $90 million has been awarded to Endeavors, an organization that provides services to immigrants.
• Other immigrants are being housed in convention centers and at military bases.
• The border surge has been a windfall for Mexican cartels, who raked in $14 million a day in the month of February and are putting GPS tracking devices on migrants to ensure they can collect debt from immigrants after they enter the U.S.

A contract was awarded to Endeavors, a Texas-based nonprofit, which has been providing services to migrants since 2012. The organization will use the money to temporarily shelter families who have not yet been processed by immigration authorities in commercial hotels. It will also provide health evaluations, including COVID testing, educational resources, mental health care, and other services.

A sharp increase in illegal immigration occurred from January to February after President Biden was elected. In January, around 7,000 families and 5,694 unaccompanied minors were caught crossing the border. In February, that number more than doubled, with approximately 19,000 families and 9,297 unaccompanied minors caught trying to cross the border.

The Biden administration claims that the situation is not a crisis, but evidence suggests otherwise. While all media access to the immigrant detention facilities has been banned, Rep. Henry Cueller, D-Texas, provided exclusive photos after he and other lawmakers were allowed to tour the crowded, makeshift shelters and detention facilities.

With some facilities at 700 percent capacity, the spike in immigration has led to rolling back COVID restrictions, and some immigrants who have tested positive for COVID are, nonetheless, being released into the United States. According to Cueller, immigrants are also being released into the U.S. without a “notice to appear” in court, which the congressman called “unprecedented.”

In addition to putting up immigrant families in hotels, the Biden administration is housing migrant children and teens at convention centers in Dallas and San Diego and at military bases in San Antonio and El Paso, Texas.

Biden officials have continually blamed the Trump administration for the current crisis at the border. Through executive order, Biden quickly reversed all of Trump’s previous measures to discourage and slow illegal immigration to the U.S., including the “Stay in Mexico” policy. In a statement, Trump responded to the charge by saying,

“We proudly handed the Biden administration the most secure border in history. All they had to do was keep this smooth-running system on autopilot. Instead, in the span of a just few weeks, the Biden administration has turned a national triumph into a national disaster. They are in way over their heads and taking on water fast.”

Moreover, the number of people making their way to the southern border is so great that criminal illegal traffickers took in $411.5 million in the month of February, or $14 million a day, as payment for bringing men, women, and children across Mexico and into the United States, according to estimates by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. Moreover, the cartels are outfitting migrants with GPS wristbands so they can track them once they are in the United States and collect any outstanding debt.

Trafficking is actually “a multibillion-dollar industry,” says former Tucson Border Patrol Chief Roy Villareal, who retired in December after 30 years with the agency. “A lot of these vulnerable populations use their life savings. Some are essentially indentured servants and they’re working off this debt for a long period of time. In other cases, some of these migrants are asked to transport narcotics or some form of crime to work off a different part of their debt.”

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Biden’s policies have encouraged an exponential surge in immigration that is being described as the largest in 20 years, and the president’s handling of the crisis has done nothing to mitigate the situation. By employing a catch-and-release policy, offering amnesty and free healthcare, and releasing immigrants into the U.S. who will likely never show up for their court hearing, the Biden administration has signaled to the world that the United States is open to illegal immigration.

All of this while the U.S. is still reeling from the failed COVID-19 lockdowns that destroyed small businesses, put hundreds of thousands of Americans into the unemployment line, and forced parents, mostly women, to voluntarily leave the workforce to stay home with children who weren’t allowed to go to school. Nearly 90,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses in 2020, an increase of 29 percent. Approximately 7.8 million Americans slipped into official poverty, according to a report released this week showing that the poverty rate rose from 9.3 percent to 11.7 percent between June and November 2020, the large increase in a single year since the government began tracking poverty more than 60 years ago.

What’s more, homelessness continues to be a crisis across the country. A report released by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) found that homelessness, which was already on the rise before the pandemic, got worse in 2020. For example, 106,000 American children on any given night in early 2020 lacked permanent housing, with most living in emergency or transitional shelters, although an estimated 11,000 children remained outside of the system, living on the streets or in cars. The report also showed that, in 2019, homelessness among veterans increased for the first time in a decade and continued to increase in 2020.

In Seattle, homelessness is so rampant that it has negatively impacted the overall quality of life for everyone. Seattle’s Denny Park, for example, had turned into an encampment of homeless people and a nightmare of criminal activity, but the city would do nothing. After the efforts of volunteers, the city eventually cleared the park.

In San Francisco, a humanitarian crisis has been declared because homeless people have so little access to water. In Philadelphia, dozens of homeless people were photographed huddling around a fire to keep warm.

The United States is dealing with massive problems as a result of the COVID lockdowns, and the Biden administration’s encouragement of an immigration surge and humanitarian crisis at the border will only further hurt the most vulnerable American populations — including children, veterans, and African Americans and other minority communities — in the areas of jobs, housing, education, and safety.

Incentivizing unaccompanied minors and families to trek across the desert in the company of criminal cartels and human traffickers is not compassionate either. Migrants are often the victims of rape, kidnapping, and extortion during their journey. In recent weeks, numerous illegal immigrants jammed into unsafe human transport vehicles have been killed in car crashes. Moreover, criminals are using the chaos and lax border policies to make their way into the U.S. In March, border patrol agents reported that an MS-13 gang member, a murderer, and numerous sexual predators were found to be in the country illegally. 

Liberal policies enacted in the name of “helping” have led to untold suffering for both Americans and illegal immigrants, and as the Biden administration ignores reality and doubles down on those same failed policies, the suffering is only going to increase.