The Biden administration’s move to siphon money away from health programs to finance housing for the record number of migrant juveniles is putting a dent in the effort against COVID-19, the top Republican investigator in the House charged Thursday.
Rep. James Comer, the ranking Republican on the House Oversight Committee, led a letter to Health and Human Services demanding to know just how much money has been moved around and suggesting the shift was done without full congressional approval.
The members of Congress are particularly interested in $589 million reprogrammed within the HHS budget.
“We are at a critical juncture in fighting the pandemic and it strains credibility that these huge transfers will have no impact on HHS mission critical functions or the administration’s efforts in combatting the COVID-19 pandemic,” Mr. Comer and the committee’s other Republicans wrote to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra. The Washington Times is first to report on the letter.
All told, the lawmakers said, HHS has diverted more than $2 billion to handle the surge of migrant children. When children show up at the border without parents, HHS is charged with housing them while it searches for sponsors to take them.
Among those transfers were $850 million taken from COVID-19 testing and $850 million Congress allocated to restock the Strategic National Stockpile, which provided critical medical equipment to states at the beginning of the pandemic, Mr. Comer and his colleagues said.
The Unaccompanied Alien Children, or UACs as they’re known in government-speak, are the trickiest cases in the border debate, and they’re arriving in the U.S. at a record pace.
From February through August — when the Biden administration has had full control of the reins of government — more than 112,000 UACs were caught at the border. That’s by far the most in any year, overwhelming the budget HHS had for dealing with the children.
Analysts lay the blame at the feet of President Biden, who upon taking office dissected a Trump-era pandemic policy that expelled most immigrants who were in the country illegally back to Mexico. Mr. Biden argued that was too cruel to the UACs. He ordered they be allowed to enter and make claims to stay.
The predictable result was a surge of unaccompanied juveniles, rising from about 5,000 in December, the final full month under President Trump, to nearly 10,000 in February, the first full month under Mr. Biden. In July and again in August the number neared 19,000.
Mr. Comer and his colleagues asked Mr. Becerra to provide transparency on his budget calculations as well as reveal communications with Homeland Security as the UAC surge was developing. The lawmakers also sought any analysis HHS has done on how the funding shifts will affect the COVID-combatting mission.
The GOP letter comes a day after the Homeland Security inspector general reported that Customs and Border Protection bungled handling of COVID-19 amid the surge. Investigators said CBP does not do testing itself and the nonprofits it relies upon don’t have the power to quarantine those who do test positive, raising risks of coronavirus carriers blending into communities at large.
Inspector general investigators also said migrants themselves resist social distancing and mask-wearing, adding to the risks of spread.
HHS, meanwhile, has come under fire for its treatment of the UACs in its care. Even with the additional money, children have been kept in conditions some experts say fuel the trauma the children have already experienced.
A recent report by an HHS monitor said 14% of children in the HHS emergency shelters were COVID-positive. And the monitor said other diseases are an even bigger issue, naming chickenpox, strep throat, lice and scabies.
Congress regularly gives the administration power to reprogram money within departments, though controversy often follows.
The Trump administration reprogrammed money to increase detention bed space at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, drawing protests from immigrant-rights activists.
Now, even as Homeland Security has told a court it is locked in to ICE’s current bed funding for adults and families, the administration is moving money to house the migrant children.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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