US State Department continues its pattern of
secrecy regarding refugee resettlement, by
Ann Corcoran 5/25/17
The leading non-profit watchdog on
government transparency, Judicial Watch, has been digging in to records relating to the
resettlement of tens of thousands of refugees and other migrants and the money
we spend on them.
Yesterday, JW reported that while
the Dept of Health and Human Services was forthcoming about the cost of care
for the tens of thousands of ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children’ (they are NOT
refugees) spread throughout America, the State Department continues to withhold
information about what you pay for the resettlement of refugees from around the
world.
Incidentally I like the use of the words “foreign nationals” in this
article to describe the disparate people we are paying to care for.
Again, the ‘children’ from Central
America are not “refugees” and that distinction must continue to be made
because the Open Borders Left is working every day to make you think that the
mostly male teens are refugees escaping persecution.
Judicial Watch (two days ago): The U.S. government spends billions of dollars
to “resettle” foreign nationals and transparency on how the money is spent
depends on the agency involved. Judicial
Watch has been investigating it for years, specifically the huge amount of
taxpayer dollars that go to “voluntary agencies”, known as VOLAGs, to provide a
wide range of services for the new arrivals. Throughout the ongoing probe
Judicial Watch has found a striking difference on how government lawyers use an
exemption, officially known as (b)(4), to the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
to withhold records. All the cases involve public funds being used to resettle
foreigners on U.S. soil and Americans should be entitled to the records.
The (b)(4) exemption permits agencies
to withhold trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from
a person which is privileged or confidential. Depending on the government
agency and the mood of the taxpayer-funded lawyers handling public records
requests, that information is exempt from disclosure. In these cases, the Department of Health
and Human Services (HHS) disclosed a VOLAG contract to resettle tens of
thousands of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) that entered the U.S. through
Mexico under the Obama administration while the State Department withheld large
portions of a one-year, $22.8 million deal to resettle refugees from Muslim
countries. Most of
the UACs came from El Salvador,
Honduras and Guatemala and the Obama
administration blamed the sudden surge on violence in the three Central
American nations. The agency responsible for resettling the minors and issuing
contracts for the costly services is HHS.
See the JW post for
the details of where your money went for the ‘children.’
JW continues….This has become a
heated issue for the government which may explain why other agencies aren’t as
forthcoming in providing specific figures, thus abusing the (b)(4) exemption. The State
Department, for instance, redacted huge portions of records involving contracts
with VOLAGs to resettle refugees from mostly Muslim countries. The files
illustrate the disparate redaction treatment given by different government
agencies to the same types of records. The State Department paid a VOLAG called
United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) a ghastly $22,838,173 in
one year to resettle refugees that came mostly from Muslim countries. Unlike
HHS, the agency redacted information related to what the USCCB charged the
government for things like furniture, personnel, equipment and other costs
associated with contracts to resettle refugees. Why did one government agency
hand over the same types of records that another agency claims are trade
secrets? Judicial Watch is challenging the State Department’s (b)(4) exemption
and will provide updates as they become available.
I don’t know if JW’s FOIA request
was an older one to the Obama State Department. If it was, it would be
interesting to see how the Trump State Department handles such requests. If this was from a new FOIA (post
Trump inauguration), then we know that the Trump DOS is going to be as
secretive as Obama’s was.
As we said yesterday, the Trump Administration in FY18 is going to continue to
spend billions on these foreign nationals.
Just so you know, Baptist
Children and Family Services,
that is getting the millions for the UACs is not one of the nine federal
resettlement contractors calling themselves VOLAGs. It doesn’t resettle
real refugees through the US Refugee Admissions Program.
It is, of course, a federal
contractor just as the nine which monopolize resettlement in America are. Here
is an example of a research project someone should undertake—-figure out how
much federal money goes to BCFS every year.
The nine VOLAGs comprise a closed little click and I suspect they are
not happy that BCFS has wormed its way in to their pots of (your) money.
Two of the nine (possibly more now) have been getting payola from HHS
to care for ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children’ for years (in addition to resettling refugees) and the two are
the US Conference of Catholic Bishops and Lutheran Immigration and Refugee
Service.
For new readers, in government-speak
the word VOLAG
stands for Voluntary Agencies which I have said is such a joke
because they are mostly paid out of the US Treasury to do their ‘charitable
good works.’ Go here at HHS where they list the nine so-called VOLAGs. See
them here below:
Just so you know, when I started
writing RRW in 2007, there was a tenth VOLAG. It was the state of Iowa.
To break in to this closed group, a wannabe government contractor must show
they have experience resettling refugees. Maybe BCFS is hoping to get in
on the refugee resettlement action by first ‘resettling’ the children from
Central America. I’ve also hypothesized that the Mormon Church in Utah
might at some point try to break in to this charmed circle.
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