A U.S. House committee hearing grew heated Wednesday, with Republicans pledging to “come after” non-governmental organizations that contributed to the border crisis under former President Joe Biden and Democrats stonewalling with various motions and calls to subpoena members of the administration.
NGOs are non-profits whose missions often align with government goals, but they remain independent entities. They regularly specialize in the kinds of humanitarian issues the government attempts to address and are frequently contracted to carry out specific government programs.
Whether they contract with the government, receive federal grants or both, taxpayer dollars can become essential to an NGO’s operations and even comprise nearly all of its funding. Despite their close relationship however, NGOs are not subject to the kind of oversight and accountability that government is supposed to be held to.
The hearing, held by a House of Representatives subcommittee on Homeland Security oversight and investigations, focused specifically on the role NGOs played in the border crisis, but it’s one of several that Republican-led committees have held in recent months delving into NGOs’ relationship to government.
The expert witnesses called by the committee described a kind of “border industrial complex” of government and non-governmental alliances that facilitated mass illegal immigration under the Biden administration.
Ali Hopper, a counter-human trafficking expert and policy advocate, testified to a system of government agencies and NGOs “hijacked by criminal networks” that hid behind both the “scale and the mismanagement” of illegal immigration at the border.
Hopper has visited the border and interviewed incarcerated traffickers and others in her research and said that processing cases with speed was prioritized to the detriment of care and caution.
“A cartel operative in Tecate Mexico explained to us how children were routinely kidnapped and funneled into the US for profit. Cartels infiltrated NGOs along those smuggling routes, turning humanitarian pathways into trafficking pipelines,” Hopper told the committee. “Weak sponsor vetting worsened this problem. An HHS audit later found that 70% of sponsor applications were fraudulent, making proper post-placement welfare checks nearly impossible.”
Though the situation at the border has been transformed under the second Trump administration, there are hundreds of thousands of children that effectively went missing under the Biden administration – Immigration and Customs Enforcement lost track of them. ICE is working to find and rescue these children.
Hopper gave an example of an NGO called Endeavors that she said was found to have resisted working with ICE under the Biden administration, even though most of its revenue (over $1 billion in 2022) came from federal contracts, according to Hopper. At least one of its locations also engaged in other questionable behavior, Hopper added.
“Our interviews with contracted auditors at endeavors Pecos, Texas, facility revealed disturbing findings. Male staff had been found inside female dorm rooms. An employee had led 150 teenage girls in sexually explicit routines, dance routines, teaching them how to twerk on multiple occasions. A female over 18 had been shielded from ice. Others nearing 18 were released early to avoid transfer to ice, and auditors were blocked from reviewing child sponsor placements,” she said.
Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., displayed outrage over the abuses children have suffered as a result of the border crisis, a crisis which he believes some NGOs exploited.
“We fed a pipeline of tender age children into sex trafficking and slave labor into our country” through NGOs, said Higgins. “We’re locating these children, we’re rescuing these children, and we’re building out criminal files based upon the testimony of these young teenagers and the documentation of fraudulent vetting.”
“Many of these NGO employees are going to find themselves wearing orange. It’ll be their new favorite color,” he added.
Meanwhile, Democrats, who have repeatedly said that Republicans are indulging a conspiracy theory with NGOs to avoid addressing real problems, attempted to shift the spotlight to questioning the administration.
“Republicans sent out 215 letters falsely accusing organizations of wrongdoing, even though most of the organizations don’t receive federal dollars or provide direct services to migrants. This is a scare tactic, plain and simple,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss. “Republicans’ so-called investigation in today’s hearing, are shameful abuses of congressional power to bully people for how they choose to exercise their religion and help their fellow man.”
Democrats made motions challenging testimonies in the hearing and called for the subpoenas of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, other leaders in ICE and DHS and Attorney General Pam Bondi, among others. They also criticized Republicans for not calling members of the administration to testify in congressional hearings.
“We’ve been here since January 20. We’ve had one administration witness come before this committee, one, and that was the FEMA administrator. We haven’t seen anybody else in the third-largest government agency,” Thompson said.
Though they reconvened later in the day, the hearing was at one point called to recess after Republican acting committee chairs suspended the hearing multiple times to wait for other Republican committee members to arrive or return to vote.
