A funding bill from House Republicans includes billions for mass migration backed by the United Nations’ (U.N.) International Organization for Migration (IOM). The large-scale funding continuation comes as a former Democrat staffer of the House Appropriations Committee has been hired to lobby Congress to fund IOM, using American taxpayer dollars.
Republicans have justified the funding by including a provision that vows “none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to encourage, mobilize, publicize, or manage mass-migration caravans towards the United States southwest border.”
The bill continues, “… not later than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of State shall report to the appropriate congressional committees with analysis on the organization and funding of mass-migration caravans in the Western Hemisphere.”
Significantly, the funding pitch comes as IOM officials have hired a former Democrat staffer of the House Appropriations Committee to sell lawmakers on continuous funding for the organization, the Hill reported in May:
The United Nations’s IOM hired Cornerstone Government Affairs to educate members on the IOM and lobby for “consistent core funding in the FY 2025 appropriations cycle,” according to a new disclosure. Congress barred funding to the U.N.’s agency for Palestinian refugees as part of a foreign aid bill earlier this year, putting the agency responsible for “humane and orderly migration” on the defensive. [Emphasis added]
To aid in that effort, the IOM has enlisted the help of Steve Marchese, who previously spent 21 years working for the House Appropriations Committee. [Emphasis added]
The IOM and the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) play a critical role in facilitating mass migration toward the U.S.-Mexico border.
Earlier in 2024, the Center for Immigration Studies’ Todd Bensman detailed the network of U.N.-led initiatives that see billions in taxpayer money used to provide cash debit cards, food, shelter, medical treatment, and transportation to migrants trying to reach the southern border:
… [T]he State Department and USAID [United States Agency for International Development] also sent historic volumes of cash to the Latin America project’s main United Nations overseers, which also pass that aid straight to migrants: the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization of Migration (IOM). [Emphasis added]
The State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM) and USAID have given IOM $1.4 billion in just the last 12 months, by far the most on record, according to USAspending.gov, a database that tracks federal spending. PRM is also the biggest donor to UNHCR, which is among 15 different UN agencies that will spread money and aid all along the migrant trails of Latin America. This is part and parcel of a State Department agreement to a “2023-2025 Framework for Cooperation” with the UNHCR to pay into the effort and to politically support its goals. The State Department openly acknowledges issuing guidance to field staff on budget and planning coordination for the Latin American effort, and it has turned over operation of major U.S. government policy initiatives in Latin America, such as an expansion of “refugee” centers and management of a no-interest “international travel loan” programs. [Emphasis added]
From the start, in early 2021, IOM officials have supported President Joe Biden’s migration agenda, which has included an expansive Catch and Release network, including a parole pipeline that has imported more than one million migrants to the U.S.
IOM officials have also lobbied the Biden administration to end former President Donald Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” program, which ensured that migrants were not released into the U.S. interior while awaiting asylum hearings, instead being returned to Mexico until their court dates.
“The IOM, the United Nations Agency for Migration, has repeatedly and publicly criticized the MPP [“Remain in Mexico” program], which it considers inhumane and against international law,” IOM officials wrote in a December 2021 press release.
Taxpayer funding for the IOM, if House Republicans approve it, would aid mass migration at the southern border just as the Biden administration is projected to oversee ten million migrant encounters at the nation’s border before the end of Fiscal Year 2024.
Since Biden took office, there have been nearly eight million migrants encountered along the U.S.-Mexico border — millions of which have been released into the U.S. interior.
