In an earlier article about Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg’s efforts to fix the 2020 presidential election, we observed that the root cause of America’s current problems, beginning with broken borders and off-the-charts urban violence – is lawlessness.[1] We also observed that this lawlessness originates in the White House, and includes the Justice Department, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Executive Branch generally.
Discussions of the border problem often touch on the criminal element that violates our unenforced border laws beginning with drug dealers, sex traffickers, and migrant smugglers. But the crime problem is vastly understated in these references which gives the impression that it is largely confined to the countries they have left, and has no impact on the country they have invaded. In July 2018, the Government Accountability Office issued a report containing “Criminal Alien Statistics,”[2] which serves to correct this false impression. Among its conclusions, the report states that one in five federal prisoners in the United States is a criminal alien. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.
The G.A.O. report covered the period between 2011 and 2016. During that time frame, approximately 2 million foreigners crossed the border into the United States illegally – which is just about the number of unvetted foreigners whom border officials predict will cross the border illegally this year alone. In that same time frame, there were more than 730,000 criminal aliens in U.S. prisons, federal and state, and local jails. Criminals are not usually arrested the first time they commit a crime and are often released with minimal time served when they are. So while there were 730,000 criminal aliens in U.S. prisons, they accounted for 4.9 million arrests and 7.5 million offenses – which would translate into 10 times greater number of victims than offenders.
The offenses of these criminals, according to the report, included more than 1 million drug crimes (number of victims unknown); 500,000 assaults; 133,800 sex offenses (number of actual victims who may have been reluctant to report the crimes also unknown); 24,200 kidnappings; 33,300 “homicide-related events:” and “1,500 terrorism-related crimes.”
How many lives were damaged or destroyed by these aliens who entered the country illegally and should never have even been here in the first place, will never be known, and yet the lawless Biden administration which will not enforce existing immigration laws is planning to continue the outrage and pile up the victims at an even greater rate.
And worse. On July 14, 2021, Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson revealed the Biden Administration had suborned the U.S. military to ship tens of thousands of illegals into cities across the country at taxpayer expense. Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas was used as the platform from which to secretly board illegals and fly them, under the dark of night, to locations across the U.S. Many other illegals were being sent to occupy the American interior, also at taxpayer expense, but by bus rather than by jet. In the words of Center for Immigration Studies fellow Todd Bensman, “a conveyor belt of commercial and charter buses … are carrying tens of thousands, sight unseen, from Texas, Arizona, and California borderlands northward, and they are dropping their Haitian, Venezuelan, Cuban, and Central American family units in Florida and New Jersey, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, and into large cities in Texas such as Dallas and Houston.”
The fact that the Biden administration chose the middle of the night to ship illegals secretly is a clear indication that the White House was quite aware it was conducting an illegal operation. Its goal, as Tucker Carlson claimed was “changing the electoral map” of the United States and enacting “demographic transformation in our country, without our consent, and in violation of our laws.” Former Trump White House advisor Stephen Miller explained on the same show: “[W]hat is happening now is unprecedented…. This is not about an administration that is unable to protect the border. This is about an administration that in a very purposeful, planned, deliberate, painstaking fashion has turned our Border Patrol and I.C.E. [Immigration & Customs Enforcement] agencies into resettlement agencies…. This is a planned resettlement. The largest of its kind, I would suggest, perhaps in the history of the world in terms of the number of illegal border crossers being resettled into the interior of our country in violation of plain law.”
In a similar vein, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis reported in early November 2021 that, over the course of the preceding summer, dozens of flights had transported groups of illegals from America’s southern border to Jacksonville, Florida in the middle of the night. “Over 70 air charter flights [on] jetliner airliners coming from the southwest border have landed at Jacksonville International Airport,” said Larry Keefe, DeSantis’s public safety spokesman. “On average, there are 36 passengers on each of these flights,” added Keefe. “And that has been going on over the course of the summer through September…. Who is facilitating this travel? How are they getting here? Who are the support people? Who are the sponsors?”
To answer Keefe’s questions, the support people and sponsors of the aforementioned flights were, in many cases, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have long enjoyed tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. This status permits donors to give money to NGOs while claiming their donations as tax deductions. In many cases, the cost of the midnight flights was paid in full by faith-based and open-border NGOs that had contracted with and were being paid by, the federal government.
Using tax-exempt foundations to defraud taxpayers into subsidizing an illegal invasion of the United States was only possible because of the collusion of the White House and the I.R.S. in supporting this subversion of the American immigration system. And this was only the big picture lawlessness. The smaller details were also full of improprieties. As Breitbart.com reporter John Binder notes, these illegal aliens often received special privileges unavailable to American citizens and legal residents:
“All of the border crossers and illegal aliens used Department of Homeland Security (DHS) forms as their proof of identification, as Biden has allowed them to bypass standard TSA [Transportation Security Administration] rules where American citizens must show photo identification to board commercial flights. Most shockingly, perhaps, the forms border crossers and illegal aliens are allowed to use as official forms of identification for TSA include arrest warrants, deportation orders, Notices to Appear (NTA) in immigration court, and federal custody booking records. In addition, TSA officials confirmed that border crossers and illegal aliens boarding domestic commercial flights do not have to undergo health screenings beforehand.”
The obvious injustice of such an arrangement is greatly compounded by the fact that the very activities in which the NGOs are complicit amount to the willful provision of assistance to countless thousands of people who have intentionally broken American immigration laws. Such NGO activities are clearly in violation of the legal requirements that govern 501(c)(3) nonprofits, requirements that explicitly prohibit support for unlawful actions. As the Internal Revenue Code (I.R.C.) states without ambiguity:
- “[Tax-]exempt purposes may generally be equated with the public good, and violations of law are the antithesis of the public good. Therefore, the conduct of such activities may be a bar to exemption.”
- “Not only is the actual conduct of illegal activities inconsistent with exemption, but the planning and sponsoring of such activities are also incompatible with charity and social welfare.”
- “Violation of constitutionally valid laws is inconsistent with an exemption under IRC 501(c)(3).”
- “[A]ll charitable organizations, regardless of their form, are subject to the requirement that their purpose may not be illegal or contrary to public policy.”
It is impossible to read this Code without concluding that the Internal Revenue Service itself is not only derelict in its duty but has operated with criminal intent to violate its own statutes, indeed its own mission – and on a massive scale.
An enormous amount of money flows from the federal government to the various NGOs that help illegal aliens make their way to their ultimate destinations across the United States. The most recent year for which an accurate dollar figure is available is 2020, the final year of Donald Trump’s presidency. Even under the immigration policies of President Trump, which were far more restrictive than those of his successor, the federal government in 2020 alone distributed more than $1.5 billion among 42 separate nonprofit organizations that provided housing, educational, medical, and legal services for illegals. The leading recipient of this government largesse in 2020 was an Austin, Texas-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit named Southwest Key Programs, which received $400 million in taxpayer funds. The second-leading recipient was BCFS Health & Human Services, a San Antonio-based 501(c)(3) which took in at least $253.1 million from the federal government.
In short, aiding and abetting people who break America’s immigration laws has become a very lucrative enterprise for these NGOs, thanks to the contempt the Biden White House and its bureaucratic agencies have for the law itself.
Another Texas-based 501(c)(3) organization, the Val Verde Border Humanitarian Coalition (VVBHC), processes large numbers of illegal aliens for airline flights or bus trips from Texas to places like Florida, Indiana, New York, Tennessee, and Utah. It also provides those passengers with basic necessities such as food, drink, and access to shower facilities. Moreover, VVBHC is assisted in these endeavors by two additional 501(c)(3) nonprofits, the Salvation Army and the United Methodist Committee on Relief.
In a similar spirit, Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley (CCRGV) plays an active role in providing food and shelter to illegal migrants who have been released from federal custody, before they make their way to their final destinations in various locations across the United States. CCRGV also collaborates with a fellow 501(c)(3) nonprofit named Team Brownsville to provide such items as food, clothing, and diapers — as well as assistance in coordinating travel plans — for illegal aliens in Brownsville, Texas.
Also in Texas, Mercy Ministries works with fellow 501(c)(3)s like Catholic Charities and the Holding Institute to shelter illegal migrants in Laredo.
The Biden Administration has quietly flown enormous numbers of illegal alien minors from Texas to New York between the hours of midnight and 6:30 a.m. Many of those illegals are then dropped off at the Syosset, Long Island campus of MercyFirst, a 501c3 nonprofit sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy, a fellow Catholic 501(c)(3 nonprofit. From there, they are helped to find permanent homes.
On July 28, 2021, Texas’ Republican Governor, Greg Abbott, issued an executive order barring all citizens and residents of that state from providing transportation services for any migrants who had crossed the southern U.S. border illegally. Abbott’s order sparked the ire of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network Inc. (CLINIC), a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that characterized the governor’s edict as “an affront to human dignity and morality.” “It promotes racial profiling and punishes organizations, including CLINIC affiliates, for providing vital, life-saving services to immigrants,” said Viviana Westbrook, CLINIC’s state and local advocacy attorney. “This order, its origins, and its goals,” she added, “are a direct attack on all of us, undermining the core value shared by Catholics and other people of faith across this country — we can and must welcome.”
These sentiments may seem noble, but even the Church must obey the law, as its Divine Authority famously said, “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s.” Sedition is not a holy obligation or rite.
Republican Congressman Lance Gooden of Texas has warned that in collaboration with the Biden Administration, tax-exempt NGOs are not only “facilitating human smuggling and child trafficking in our country,” but are also “allowing these migrants, many of whom are unknown to U.S. law enforcement agencies, to board commercial aircraft, creating one of the greatest threats to U.S. national security since September 11, 2001.”
In February 2022, Rep. Gooden introduced The Stop Federal Funding for Human Trafficking and Smuggling Act, legislation designed to deny the flow of government dollars to nonprofit organizations that help facilitate illegal entry into the United States. As Gooden said in a statement: “The Biden administration is working with nonprofits, U.S. corporations, and international agencies to operate an illegal immigration network that spans from South America to every community in the United States. Taxpayer dollars should not be subsiding a mass invasion of our country, and it is time to put a stop to this corrupt operation.”
Former White House Office of Management & Budget Director Russ Vought, who now serves as president of Citizens for Renewing America, lauded Gooden’s bill: “Many NGOs openly encourage the flaunting of our border and immigration laws, providing ‘how-to’ guidance on how to come to the United States illegally, and then reward such activity by facilitating and funding housing, food, utilities, and legal support. The net effect of these activities either directly promotes or provides cover for human trafficking operations, and the exploitation of men, women, and children at the border under the guise of ‘helping’ migrants. I support Rep. Gooden's efforts to make sure groups that facilitate these activities are no longer funded with the hard-earned tax dollars supplied by the forgotten men and women of America.”
When Chris Cabrera, chief of the National Border Patrol Council in South Texas, was asked in February 2022 whether open-borders NGOs “are working at cross purposes to you,” he replied: “Most definitely. And they should not be allowed to, but our government allows it. And that’s a problem. And it’s one reason [Border Patrol] morale is so low.”
Like Texas, California is another state that serves as a destination for countless thousands of illegal border crossers from Mexico and Central America. California-based nonprofits like the San Diego Rapid Response Network (SDRRN) and Jewish Family Service of San Diego (JFS) — both of which receive significant funding from American taxpayers — have helped the Biden Administration fly illegal aliens into the U.S. interior at no cost to them, while allowing them to evade normal airport-security requirements. Indeed, the illegals are asked to do nothing more than pledge that they will check in with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency at some future date — a pledge that is almost always broken.
The San Diego Rapid Response Network — which was launched in 2017 by two California ACLU chapters, the San Diego Organizing Project, and SEIU Local 221 — professes to combat “dehumanizing immigration enforcement activities, including checkpoints, raids, arrests, and harassment, occurring in San Diego County.”
In other words, the lawlessness of the Biden administration has spawned a mentality that is seditious and insurrectionary, and thanks to the complicity of the I.R.S. funded by taxpayer donations that were never intended for such illegal and subversive purposes.
Jewish Family Services is a tax-exempt NGO that colludes with the Homeland Security Department to provide illegal aliens with shelter services. Moreover, JFS furnishes illegals with information packets that explain how they can: find an immigration attorney, apply for asylum, get past TSA agents at airports without showing proof of ID, get free access to high-quality hotels, contact immigration NGOs that can help them break the law, and enroll their children in U.S. public schools. “We … stand with all Dreamers and their families,” JFS proclaims, “and all estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants who consider the United States to be their home.” So much for the rule of law.
In November 2021, Just The News reported that Jewish Family Services, in its most recent financial statement, indicated that it had received more than $16 million in government support during the preceding fiscal year.
JFS’s subversive attacks on U.S. immigration law pre-date the Biden demolition project. JFS opposed virtually all Trump-era immigration policies, including the so-called Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), a government action stipulating that foreign individuals traveling northward through Mexico and seeking asylum in the U.S. without proper documentation, could be required to remain in Mexico while waiting for their asylum hearings in America to eventually make their way onto a court calendar. Prior to the implementation of MMP, American border agencies had been required to release such illegals into the country’s interior, on the shaky expectation that they would someday show up for their asylum hearings. By JFS’s calculus, MMP was a “cruel and inhuman” policy. JFS is entitled to its opinion, but not to subverting the law and abusing taxpayer monies to implement its own agendas.
Other California-based 501(c)(3) nonprofits that help illegal aliens access free food, hotel rooms, and commercial flights into the American interior include Catholic Charities of San Diego and the Los Angeles-based Shapiro Foundation. In San Diego, many illegals have been housed at hotels including The Four Points by Sheraton, where rates start at $159 per night. Elsewhere in southern California, various nonprofit NGOs have negotiated arrangements with the Biden Administration and the state to provide illegals with hotel rooms costing $71 to $90 per night — again, all courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer, and a derelict I.R.S.
Another center of illegal entry into the United States is Arizona, where, between March 2021 and March 2022, a 501(c)(3) non-profit called the Regional Center for Border Health helped more than 16,700 illegal migrants obtain food, clothing, and transport to far-flung locations across the United States where they could provide a demographic basis for future Democrat majorities – at least according to the assumptions of their Democrat sponsors.
Catholic Charities, meanwhile, has operated regular shuttle buses to Arizona’s Yuma International Airport, where illegal aliens are provided free commercial flights to their ultimate destinations. Many of those flights are paid for by Miles4Migrants, a tax-exempt NGO that uses donated air miles to cover the costs.
No account of nonprofit organizations’ complicity in lawbreaking would be complete without some mention of what was done in 2018 by Pueblo Sin Fronteras (PSF, “People Without Borders”), a Chicago-based organization founded in 2001 by Roberto Corona, a Mexican-born activist dedicated to promoting the rights of illegal aliens in the United States. PSF is a project of another Chicago-based nonprofit, the now-defunct La Familia Latina Unida (“The United Latin Family”). Describing itself as “a collective of friends” who stand “in permanent solidarity with displaced peoples,” PSF has led numerous caravans of migrants and refugees from Central America to the U.S. The organization not only pledges to “provide humanitarian aid and legal advice” for such sojourners but also candidly declares that its overriding objective is to “abolish borders” and facilitate the free, unregulated movement of Central American migrants into the United States. It proposes to do this by dismantling the immigration system and legal order that made America such a desirable destination in the first place and replacing it with the lawless attitudes and practices that made Central America a slum.
In the spring of 2018, People Without Borders helped organize a caravan of hundreds of people from Central America seeking to enter the United States illegally. The co-organizer of that caravan was the CARA Family Detention Pro Bono Project, a coalition composed of the Catholic Legal Immigration Network, the American Immigration Council, the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, and the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Three of those four coalition members are tax-exempt NGOs.[3]
On March 23, 2018, People Without Borders publicized the caravan by issuing a press release demanding that Mexico and the United States “respect our rights as refugees and our right to dignified work to be able to support our families”; “open the[ir] borders to us because we are as much citizens as the people of the countries where we are and/or travel”; and end-all “deportations which destroy families.” Notice that everything in this statement is an unsubstantiated claim beginning with the presumption that the caravan members are refugees with rights. Asylum seekers do have rights, but only because America honors them, and the current crisis at the border is in large part the result of would-be asylum seekers failing to show up for the court appointments designed to establish that they are indeed asylum seekers and not just liars seeking the bounties that the rule of law made possible before the Biden progressives began destroying them.
In mid-October of 2018, People Without Borders spearheaded an effort to overwhelm America’s border-control apparatus when it helped launch yet another large caravan — composed of several thousand people from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador — that began migrating northward for the declared purpose of breaking America’s immigration laws and occupying the United States.
In an October 21, 2018 press release, People Without Borders accused President Trump and the U.S. of using “repressive tactics” to inflict “fear and racism” on the people of Central America. These preposterous claims indicate what little chance there is that such people would make a positive contribution to American life should they succeed in their malign agenda. This agenda was made clearer in the statement of one of its funders, Freedom For Immigrants, an Oakland, California-based tax-exempt advocacy group which claims that America’s “immigration detention system is built upon a long history of white supremacy, capitalism, and imperialism.” Sure, that’s what America needs – more racist Marxists who want America to look like Communist Cuba.
The I.R.S. is the patron saint of a movement to break America’s immigration laws, occupy its cities, bilk its taxpayers, overwhelm its health, welfare, and education services, fill its prisons, and destroy its constitutional order. By their words and actions alike, this movement had shown its utter contempt for America’s integrity as a sovereign nation, and for the hard-won principles that made it the object of their envy. The I.R.S. has abandoned its responsibilities and betrayed its mandate in order to turn a blind eye to its own brazen complicity in advancing chaos and lawlessness through the length and breadth of a once-proud nation.
David Horowitz is the founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center and the bestselling author of I Can't Breathe: How a Racial Hoax is Killing America.
John Perazzo is the editor of DiscoverTheNetworks.org—an encyclopedic guide to the political Left and a project of the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is the author of Black Lives Matter: Marxist Hate Dressed Up As Racial Justice.
Notes:
