ISSUE BRIEF
No. 5329 | August 30, 2023
BORDER SECURITY AND IMMIGRATION CENTER

President Biden’s Ukraine

Supplemental Request
Is a Border Trap
Lora Ries and RJ Hauman

T
he Biden Administration’s $40.1 billion sup-
KEY TAKEAWAYS
plemental request1 centered on Ukraine and
disaster relief is a non-starter. It is a massive
Congress should not consider a separate spending increase that would evade budget caps and
supplemental request during the ongoing complicate an already contentious battle over funding
appropriations process. the federal government.
While most congressional Republicans recog-
nize that the White House is trying to force them to
The Biden Administration is requesting choose between their support for disaster victims
additional border funds because it spent and sending additional taxpayer money to Ukraine,
billions of taxpayer dollars to enable, not given eroding public support for the war, many
prevent, a self-inflicted border crisis.
observers are ignoring an additional request in the
same supplemental for nearly $4 billion to “manage
House Republicans must demand inclu-
the Southwest border safely and effectively.” In other
sion of H.R. 2 as part of any spending words: to entice, guide, process, transport, house, and
agreement that is needed to avert a gov- provide social services to even more illegal aliens with
ernment shutdown in late September. the assistance of open-borders nongovernmental

This paper, in its entirety, can be found at https://report.heritage.org/ib5329

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ISSUE BRIEF | No. 5329
heritage.org  August 30, 2023 | 2

organizations (NGOs). The Biden Administration has been paying NGOs,

such as Catholic Charities, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services,
Church World Services, and others, billions of dollars in taxpayer grants to
receive illegal aliens from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and
transport, house, and provide them with myriad other services. President
Joe Biden is now back for more money for these NGOs.
Alarmingly, Senator Patty Murray (D–WA) and Senator Susan Collins
(R–ME), Chair and Vice Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee,
respectively, put out a joint committee statement essentially endorsing the
border component of the Biden Administration’s supplemental request—bil-
lions that will be misspent—saying that “critical resources to stop the flow of
fentanyl and address needs at the border” are important priorities.2 The Sen-
ators added that they are “committed to craft a bill that will pass the Senate.”
Putting the irresponsible connection of Ukraine with disaster relief
aside, the White House is effectively laying a trap for funding that it claims
addresses border security and fentanyl but does nothing of the kind. It is a
trap that lawmakers, congressional staff, and American taxpayers should
not fall into.

Supplemental Request Highlights

Following are highlights of the supplemental request that pretends to

address the border crisis:

l $1.4 billion for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), centered
on “border management” (processing) as well as shelter and social
services for illegal aliens released from custody. This figure includes
a whopping $600 million to be transferred to the Federal Emergency
Management Agency (FEMA) for open-borders NGO grants, as well as
$606 million for the CBP to reimburse the Department of Defense for
“border security support.”

l $759 million for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—

not to enforce the law in the interior of the country, but mainly to
“respond to migration surges” along the border, such as transporting
aliens towards release into the U.S.

l Nearly $800 million for various agencies to research and target illicit
drugs, such as fentanyl, and expand access to addiction care. While
acceptable at face value, this provision mistakenly funds downstream
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effects of an open border. Shutting down the border would prevent

throwing good money after bad.

l $100 million for the Department of Health and Human Services—

through September 2025—to give NGOs grants for “culturally and
linguistically appropriate services, including ‘wraparound’ services,”
housing, medical assistance, legal assistance, and more for illegal
aliens entering the U.S. The Administration’s explanatory language
states that this money would be used to provide Ukrainians paroled
into the U.S. resettlement assistance, but nothing in the Administra-
tion’s suggested statutory language mentions Ukrainians. Rather, the
supplemental request seeks to bind the next Administration into
paying NGOs to facilitate mass illegal immigration. This request also
seeks an extension of the Additional Ukraine Supplemental Appro-
priations Act of 2022 for public benefits such as the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program, Medicaid, and Supplemental Security
Income, as well as refugee resettlement benefits, to Ukrainians arriv-
ing in the U.S. during fiscal year 2024.

l $700 million for the State Department to provide migration assistance

to Ukrainians in Ukraine and in nearby countries.

l $26 million for the State Department—through September 2025—to

“address irregular migration within the Western Hemisphere.” Nearly
half of this amount would go to State’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere
for oversight, and the remaining $14 million would go to the Safe
Mobility Offices in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Guatemala and
for messaging activities. The supplemental request also seeks another
$532 million for the State Department’s Migration and Refugee
Assistance account to support “safe, regular, and humane migration
management” in the Western Hemisphere. This includes the estab-
lishment of the Safe Mobility Offices, which “provide protection
screening and increase access to lawful pathway options to migrate
where they are.”3 In other words, this is an infrastructure to schedule
their illegal immigration to the U.S. using the CBP Mobile One app
and be mass paroled through our ports of entry. The Administration
claims these activities would “reduce irregular migration” and “sup-
port migrants to access protection and other lawful pathways outside
of refugee protection,” but after 31 months of evidence, this money
would only encourage more illegal immigration to the U.S.
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l $50 million for the Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division to
“protect” unaccompanied children (UAC) who are encouraged to enter
unlawfully and $50 million to Labor’s Office of the Solicitor to enforce
child labor laws and prosecute companies alleged to be exploiting
child workers. Like fentanyl research and targeting above, child labor
violations are a downstream effect of policies enticing and rewarding
unaccompanied children who cross the border. Ending the UAC
pipeline ends child labor violations.

l $36 million for the Justice Department’s Executive Office of Immi-

gration Review to accelerate the hiring of additional immigration
judges—many of whom will be mass-migration attorneys hand
selected by Department of Justice political appointees. Simply
hiring more immigration judges would not reduce court abuse that
deportable aliens pursue through multiple continuances, motions,
and appeals to spend more time in the United States. Congress should
authorize immigration judges with summary judgment to quickly
dismiss frivolous cases and significantly limit administrative and
judicial review.

New Illegal Alien Housing and Social

Services Program Under ICE

One of the most egregious supplemental request provisions is disguised

as an additional $759 million for ICE. It contains a buried section titled
“Reprogramming Authority for Facilities and Support Services.” This
language would allow ICE to use not only supplemental funding, but any
funding provided in future spending bills, for the purpose of allowing “ref-
ugees, asylum seekers, or other migrants to be housed in community-based
residential facilities, depart unsupervised during certain hours, and be
provided medical care, legal programming, and other services through
contracts, grants, or cooperative agreements with non-governmental
organizations.”4
The language is clear: This is permanent reprogramming authority to
end ICE detention by shuffling essential law enforcement money to the
housing of illegal aliens and providing them with social services through
corrupt, open-borders NGOs.
A media outlet recently reported that ICE is visiting two sites of Endeav-
ors, an NGO, in Texas for potentially repurposing idle, temporary UAC
shelters for families who have recently crossed the border.5 These sites
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would be used as housing, not as a detention facility, in which residents

would be required to remain within a certain radius of the shelter as a
condition of release. Not only would this approach be very expensive, but
residents who leave the restricted area would face zero consequences. ICE
is clearly preparing to move forward with its non-detention housing plan
before Congress has even considered the Administration’s non-enforce-
ment proposal.
It is also worth noting that Endeavors is the organization at the center of
viral videos in which a former Biden Administration official talked at length
about his Endeavors contracts.6 In response, the DHS Inspector General
launched a yearlong investigation into the award from ICE to Endeavors.
The Inspector General concluded in April 2022 that the contract was unjus-
tified, and that Endeavors pocketed $17 million of funds it failed to use for
the intended purpose.7 Despite this bad behavior, Endeavors has been
awarded a whopping $2.1 billion by the Biden Administration since 2021.8
In a nutshell, this Administration seeks to line the pockets of one of the
most corrupt organizations in the border racket. Even worse, Biden officials
are doing it through ICE, an agency that was created to enforce the law.

FEMA Funding for Illegal Aliens

The supplemental request contains $600 million for FEMA’s Shelter

and Services Program (SSP), yet another expansion of a concerted effort to
facilitate the worst border crisis in American history by providing additional
social services to illegal border crossers. This SSP request builds on around
$1 billion that has been allocated to the program and its counterpart under
FEMA,9 the Emergency Food and Shelter Program (EFSP), which is run by
a board populated by agenda-driven charities seeking to enable the border
crisis and line the pockets of open-borders NGOs.10
In a recent bombshell report,11 the DHS Inspector General revealed
that NGOs receiving money provided by the American Rescue Plan of
2021 through the EFSP misspent at least $7.4 million, more than half of an
audited $12.9 million provided through the program. The organizations in
question failed to adhere to the law, submit receipts, and keep the required
documentation for their funding. The audit found that these NGOs spent
money on those who crossed the border illegally and are not lawfully pres-
ent in the United States.
It is important to remember that the misused funds reported by the audit
are only a small portion of the funds doled out in 2021. The audit reviewed
$12.9 million of $80.6 million that was awarded of a total of $110 million. It
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is safe to posit that the total fraud is far worse, considering that around $1
billion has been provided thus far to EFSP.
Such funding requests make a mockery of the current border crisis. They
do nothing to address the root of the problem. The solution to eliminating
humanitarian relief fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars is to defund the
NGOs doing the Biden Administration’s dirty work of illegal alien process-
ing, human smuggling, and incentivizing mass migration.
Most important, FEMA dollars should be spent on actual disaster relief
for American citizens—notably for the fire destruction in Maui and current
hurricane season.

What Should Be Done?

Congress must control the purse through the proper appropriations pro-
cess. When it comes to the border crisis, what the Biden Administration is
asking for as the end of the fiscal year approaches is a trap that lawmakers
should not fall into.
Congress must defund open-borders operations and allocate such funds
to real border security and immigration enforcement with stringent non-re-
programming provisions and hawkish oversight requirements, instead of
abdicating its responsibility to use American taxpayer dollars responsibly
and lawfully. House Republicans took a strong first step on this front, pass-
ing a DHS appropriations bill through committee that does the opposite of
what the Biden Administration is requesting in the supplemental.
The House DHS appropriations bill12—drafted with significant input from
Heritage Foundation analysts13—seeks to truly secure the border and ramp
up interior enforcement by:

l Providing $2.1 billion for construction of a physical wall along the

southern border and $496 million for 22,000 Border Patrol agents, the
highest level ever funded.

l Ensuring that not a single dollar is used for the CBP One mobile appli-
cation to facilitate the entry of aliens into the country.14

l Providing $3.550 billion for ICE custody operations, the highest total
ever appropriated, to fund an average daily detainee population of
41,500. This funding is critical for deterring skyrocketing levels of
illegal immigration and to support additional interior enforcement
actions for all removable aliens.
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l Providing $655 million to fund transportation and removal opera-

tions for illegal aliens, a critical ICE function that has dramatically
decreased under the Biden Administration.

l Ensuring that illegal aliens are properly monitored with GPS tracking
from the first encounter through the end of immigration proceedings
if immigration detention is not available.15

l Prohibiting funds for implementing Homeland Security Secretary

Alejandro Mayorkas’s16 and ICE principal legal advisor Kerry Doyle’s17
immigration enforcement memos, which encourage use of prosecuto-
rial discretion—the decision to not prosecute—rather than pursuing
removal proceedings for removable aliens.

l Prohibiting illegal aliens—including those unlawfully paroled or

otherwise inadmissible—from being transferred to the interior of
the country.

l The House DHS appropriations bill also cuts wasteful spending and
rescinds improperly allocated funds by:

l Rejecting countless Biden Administration funding requests for proj-

ects that encourage more illegal immigration, and

l Excluding the Biden Administration’s $4.7 billion southern-border

contingency slush fund that would have provided funds to process and
release even more illegal aliens into the country.

Once this DHS appropriations bill is passed by the House in September

with a handful of improvements to send a strong message in adherence to
the proper process, House Republicans must demand that their already
passed, historic border security measure (H.R. 2, the Secure the Border
Act)18 be attached to any spending agreement to avert a government shut-
down. It is their duty to use any means necessary to address the Biden
Administration’s open-borders agenda that not only undermines the rule of
law, but threatens national sovereignty, economic security, and public safety.
H.R. 2 is needed because it:

l Closes loopholes used for asylum fraud,

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l Fortifies border security by ending “catch and release,”

l Ends the illegal use of mass parole,

l Expands penalties for visa overstays,

l Reduces incentives for illegal immigration by mandating nation-

wide E-Verify,

l Closes long-standing loopholes in the processing of both accompanied

and unaccompanied alien minors,

l Resumes construction of the border wall, and

l Prohibits the Biden Administration’s purposeful reliance on left-

wing NGOs to process and transport illegal aliens into American
communities.

Conclusion

This supplemental request is a concerted effort by the Biden Adminis-

tration to hold disaster relief funds hostage to obtain more Ukraine war
money and prolong the crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico.19 The border
provisions in the supplemental are a cynical ploy to deceive Americans that
the Administration cares about national security, when in fact it does not
secure the border, and ramps up processing, housing, and social services
for an endless flow of illegal aliens that the Administration is unlawfully
shepherding into the country.
If Republicans want to truly address the border crisis, they must oppose
this radical supplemental request, and strengthen and pass the House DHS
appropriations bill in September. In the eventuality that Congress must
consider a short-term extension of federal funding through a continuing
resolution at the end of the fiscal year, Republicans must stand firm and
refuse to support any such measure that does not include H.R. 2.
If the federal government cannot perform the basic task of securing the
border, it should not be funded.

Lora Ries is Director of the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage
Foundation. RJ Hauman is Visiting Advisor in the Border Security and Immigration Center
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heritage.org  August 30, 2023 | 9

Endnotes
1. Office of Management and Budget, letter to Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, August 10, 2023, https://www.whitehouse​
.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/Final-Supplemental-Funding-Request-Letter-and-Technical-Materials.pdf (accessed August 29, 2023).
2. Statement, “Senators Murray and Collins Issue Statement on Biden Administration Supplemental Funding Request,” U.S. Senate Committee on
Appropriations, August 11, 2023, https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/news/majority/senators-murray-and-collins-issue-statement-on-biden​
-administration-supplemental-funding-request (accessed August 29, 2023).
3. Office of Management and Budget, letter to Kevin McCarthy, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.
4. Ibid.
5. Joseph Simonson, “Inside Biden’s Nearly $1 Billion Migrant Housing Plan,” The Washington Free Beacon, August 14, 2023, https://freebeacon.com​
/biden-administration/inside-bidens-new-migrant-housing-plan/ (accessed August 29, 2023).
6. Anna Giaritelli, “Biden Transition Official Caught on Camera Saying Border Crisis Is ‘Boom for Business,’” Washington Examiner, August 9,
2023, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/immigration/biden-transition-official-caught-border-crisis-boom-business (accessed
August 29, 2023).
7. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Inspector General, “ICE Spent Funds on Unused Beds, Missed COVID-19 Protocols and Detention
Standards while Housing Migrant Families in Hotels,” April 12, 2022, https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2022-04/OIG-22-37-Apr22​
.pdf (accessed August 29, 2023).
8. USASpending.gov, “Family Endeavors, Inc.,” https://www.usaspending.gov/recipient/145a4154-d747-d57b-bd6a-5c438e9f82d5-C/latest (accessed
August 29, 2023).
9. Erin Dwinell and RJ Hauman, “Congress Should Stop Funding the Biden Administration’s Open Borders,” Heritage Foundation Commentary, April 14,
2023, https://www.heritage.org/immigration/commentary/congress-should-stop-funding-the-biden-administrations-open-borders.
10. Anna Giaritelli, “Federal Funding Recipient Red Cross Gives Immigrants Maps to US–Mexico Border,” Washington Examiner, March 9, 2023, https://​
www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/immigration/red-cross-immigrants-maps-to-us-mexico-border (accessed August 29, 2023).
11. U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Inspector General, “FEMA Should Increase Oversight to Prevent Misuse of Humanitarian Relief Funds,”
March 28, 2023, https://www.oig.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/assets/2023-03/OIG-23-20-Mar23.pdf (accessed August 29, 2023).
12. H.R. 4367, Report No. 118–123, 118th Congress, 1st Session, https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/4367/text (accessed
August 29, 2023).
13. Lora Ries and RJ Hauman, “FY 2024 Homeland Security Appropriations Bill Is Strongest in Years, But Has Room for Improvement,” Heritage
Foundation Factsheet No. 252, July 14, 2023, https://www.heritage.org/budget-and-spending/report/fy-2024-homeland-security-appropriations-bill​
-strongest-years-has-room.
14. Lora Ries, “Biden’s Misleading New Asylum Rule Is a Gimmick Atop a Shell Game,” The Daily Signal, February 24, 2023, https://www.dailysignal.com​
/2023/02/24/bidens-misleading-new-asylum-rule-is-a-gimmick-atop-a-shell-game/.
15. Simon Hankinson, “‘Alternatives to Detention’ for Illegal Aliens: Effective with Mandatory Tracking for Entire Process,” Heritage Foundation
Backgrounder No. 3767, May 12, 2023, https://www.heritage.org/immigration/report/alternatives-detention-illegal-aliens-effective-mandatory​
-tracking-entire.
16. Alejandro Mayorkas, “Guidelines for the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Law,” Memorandum to Tae D. Johnson, U.S. Department of Homeland
Security, September 30, 2021, https://www.ice.gov/doclib/news/guidelines-civilimmigrationlaw.pdf (accessed August 29, 2023).
17. Kerry E. Doyle, “Guidance to OPLA Attorneys Regarding the Enforcement of Civil Immigration Laws and the Exercise of Prosecutorial Discretion,”
Memorandum for All OPLA Attorneys, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, April 3, 2022, https://www.ice.gov/doclib/about/offices/opla​
/OPLA-immigration-enforcement_guidanceApr2022.pdf (accessed August 29, 2023).
18. H.R. 2, Secure the Border Act, 118th Congress, 1st Session, https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/2/text?s=3&r=1&q=%7B%22search​
%22%3A%5B%22Secure+the+Border+Act+HR+2%22%5D%7D (accessed August 29, 2023).
19. Kevin Roberts, “Congress Must Not Hold Hurricane Funds Hostage for More Ukraine War Money,” The Hill, August 16, 2023, https://thehill.com/opinion​
/international/4149293-congress-must-not-hold-hurricane-funds-hostage-for-more-ukraine-war-money/ (accessed August 29, 2023).