Using U.S.-supplied funds, the United Nations is helping illegal immigrants with money and tales of woe to get into Mexico and the United States, according to a series of new reports.
In what could be viewed as an end-run around U.S. border rules, the world body is giving illegal immigrants cash cards to pay for stops to the border and providing psychologists to help migrants “recover repressed memories” from back home that could sway U.S. asylum reviewers, according to reports.
Based on interviews and physical evidence, three reports from Todd Bensman on behalf of the Center for Immigration Studies show how deeply the U.N. is involved in the global immigration movement that steered 2 million illegal immigrants to the U.S. border last year.
In the reports, Bensman detailed how U.N.-backed groups and nongovernmental organizations are working overtime to help the migrants.
In one, the U.N. was cited as the source of cash cards used to fund lodging, food, and medicines on their journey from Mexico to the U.S. border. Those payments have recently drawn the ire of some Republicans in Congress angered over the efforts and costs.
Texas Rep. Lance Gooden likened it to an “invasion” fund and joined with others to draft legislation that would bar the U.S. “contribution” of $3.8 billion to the U.N. from being spent on the cash cards.
Bensman reported some families receiving $400 every 15 days to use as they wish.
In another report Monday, Bensman said U.N. groups are providing migrants with psychological help to pull stories of torture and abuse from their memories. Those stories are often needed to win temporary asylum passage into Mexico and eventually the U.S.
“At least two U.N.-funded nonprofits with operations in the southern border states of Chiapas and Tabasco pay stables of clinical psychologists to help migrants recover ‘repressed memories’ of government persecution and other hardship stories that qualify migrants for Mexican asylum and a residence card, allowing an eventual trip over the U.S. southern border,” the report said.
The report quoted an official involved who said migrants make the mistake of claiming their goal of getting into Mexico is economical, which is not an asylum reason. Once they get through the Mexican asylum process, they are granted a residency card.
“Most immigrants in Tapachula highly value Mexican refugee or asylum status (terms often used interchangeably in Mexico) because it qualifies them for residency cards that allow travel out of the southern border states,” Bensman’s report said.
He added, “The government has endeavored to keep them bottled up in the southern states at the behest of the Biden administration, which hopes to lower record-breaking, and politically damaging, border apprehension numbers. With the residency cards, many holders make a beeline straight to the U.S. southern border and throw them away.”
