Ben Berquam, Todd Bensman, Oscar El Blue, and others all confirm HIAS and other NGOs support and aid illegal migration to the U.S. Blue predicted in 2017 political parties would use illegal immigrants to vote to "promote a particular political agenda." Blue also cited local Mexican articles that unequivocally report that HIAS and other NGOs are using aliens to vote in U.S. elections. He went on to explain the parties will use mail-in voting as a vehicle to insert illegal votes in 2024.
HIAS is a powerful Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) whose mission is to aid in the resettlement of illegal aliens here in the United States. The organization partners with countless organizations, including the United States government and the United Nations, to push for open borders. HIAS boasts of being one of the oldest nonprofits helping refugees, asylum seekers, and "stateless persons." According to its website, HIAS' mission is to "bring our experience, history, and values to our work across five continents, ensuring that refugees today receive the vital services and opportunities they need to thrive."
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, HIAS and more than 200 other NGOs "dole[d] out $1.6 billion in cash debit cards, food, clothing, medical treatment, shelter, and even "humanitarian transportation" during 2024 to millions of U.S.-bound immigrants in 17 Latin American nations and Mexico." HIAS has "pledged $17.1 million in aid to immigrants in at least seven Latin American nations during 2024." All this is under the 2023-2025 "Framework for Cooperation Between The United States Department Of State, Bureau Of Population, Refugees And Migration And The Office Of The United Nations High Commissioner For Refugees." The table of contents below provides a window into the United States' shared agenda with the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNRA).
Mayorkas and Biden Administration Push Open Borders Policies
The Biden administration could not be more transparent about its intentions. This administration is doggedly committed to flooding the zone through its policies, E.O.s, and personnel hires. A former board member of HIAS in 2020, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas of the Department of Homeland Security is an avid proponent of refugee resettlement programs and open borders. He and others associated with the Biden administration have been pursuing policies related to open borders for decades.Robin Dunn Marcos is the deputy assistant secretary for humanitarian services and the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Before her current position, Marcos was the Senior Director of Resettlement, Asylum, and Integration programming for the International Rescue Committee. The organization aids in the flow of immigration to the U.S. border.
Katie Tobin served as a Senior Border Advisor on Biden's National Security Counsel. Tobin previously worked for the Annunciation House, a prominent Catholic NGO in El Paso, Texas. The NGO is now being sued by the State of Texas. Attorney General Ken Paxton announced plans to "revoke their registration to operate in Texas" after reviewing information suggesting the organization "engaged in legal violations such as facilitating illegal entry to the United States, alien harboring, human smuggling, and operating a stash house."
Mayorkas, a Cuban refugee himself, has presided over the largest influx of illegal aliens across the southern border in our country's history, almost 10 million in number, not including the gotaways, according to U.S. Border Patrol and Office of Field Operations numbers. The chart below, updated on Apr. 15 from the Heritage Foundation, visually summarizes the data.
On Tuesday, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) took Mayorkas to task for his role in the border crisis, highlighting the potential effect of open borders on future elections. Greene and many others believe the Biden administration, under Mayorka's leadership, has pushed open borders to win elections. Like HIAS, Mayorkas has actively promoted the idea of protecting the "stateless" as part and parcel of his homeland security policy.
In a Dec. 15, 2021 statement Mayorkas stated his sympathy for a "significant number of stateless individuals" who live in the United States. He went on to say "that such individuals face an assortment of serious challenges and obstacles, such as a lack of identity documents. The actions announced today will reduce barriers to accessing legal immigration status and associated benefits." Biden administration policies prompted the U.S. House to impeach Mayorkas because of his lawless border policies that continue to put countless Americans at risk.
HIAS showed little interest in remaining neutral and donned its lobbyist hat on Mayorkas' behalf. The NGO issued a statement lamenting his impeachment and urged Congress to consider instead "comprehensive immigration legislation necessary to protect our borders while ensuring a just, humane, and orderly process for vulnerable people seeking protection in this country."
Biden's 2021 Executive Order (E.O.) 14019, "Promoting Access to Voting," according to True the Vote founder Catherine Engelbrecht, "weaponized all agencies of the federal government to push voter registration in populations where eligibility statuses cannot be effectively tracked, like students, prisoners, and non-citizens." On Apr. 4, Senate Democrats led by Illinois Senator Dick Durbin, who more than 20 years ago introduced the Dream Act, sent a letter to expedite Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) renewals to USCIS. Durbin has long wanted to facilitate a pathway to citizenship for the nation's "Dreamers." Engelbrecht worries another E.O. may be on the horizon, one that offers amnesty and citizenship to illegals.
Can Non-Citizens Vote?
To be clear, it is true that "non-citizens, including permanent legal residents, cannot vote in federal, state, and most local elections." However, it is also true that the Biden administration's illegal expansion of Humanitarian Parole has gifted millions of asylum seekers and refugees with Employment Authorization Documents (EADs) documents. EADs allow illegal immigrants to get a driver's license, a social security number, and many forms of federal assistance because of organizations like HIAS. As a result of these policies, whether Mayorkas and Merrick Garland want to admit it or not, many more illegal aliens will end up on U.S. voter registration rolls– and they will vote.Our election system is poorly equipped to track average numbers of illegals who might inadvertently appear on state voter rolls, let alone the 10 million or more who have now crossed into the interior United States. The states handle voter registration rolls in the United States and not the federal government, posing real challenges in tracking and purging those who do not belong on the rolls. No national database tracks illegals who might register to vote or whose identities might be used to vote. As such, illegals and non-citizens can land on voter registration rolls in a variety of ways, some of which are not purposeful or nefarious.
Unfortunately, elections and the state of our nation's voter rolls have inappropriately become politicized by this administration in a number of ways. On Apr. 1, Engelbrecht posted an informative Locals podcast on the potential negative effect of current immigration policies on future elections. Among the points discussed are the ways states are unable to verify voter registrations, especially those of illegal aliens.
Engelbrecht has also discussed numerous times how lawfare can impact non-citizen voting. She has been the target of groups who repeatedly sue to prevent what they often disingenuously call voter suppression. These highly politicized legal maneuvers can lead to the blocking or abandonment of authentic and well-vetted efforts to maintain clean voter rolls, throwing a real wrench in the most foundational building block of free and fair elections.
Martinez Fischer v. Whitley, for example, argued a voter roll purge in Texas unfairly targeted naturalized citizens and violated their constitutional rights. According to Engelbrecht, other lawfare has limited methodology used for "data comparison and collaboration with agencies like the Department of Motor Vehicles to verify citizenship status. The State agreed to use no data source other than DMV to verify citizenship status, ceding all other available data outlets that would have offered a more thorough assessment" by cross-checking databases.
Illegal aliens are often the unwitting victims of our poor system of tracking voter registrations. When applying for a driver's license, a non-citizen immigrant might, in error, check the box that indicates they would like to register to vote. Language barriers and, most recently, NGOs that encourage illegals to vote for Biden naturally—and maybe even purposely—confuse aliens about their eligibility to vote through no fault of their own. Rest assured, the DMV alone is an inadequate way to verify the eligibility to vote or use it as a database to purge illegal registrations.
There are many ways non-citizens may end up voting in a U.S. election. One recent complication resulted from Congress passing Section 611 of Title 18 of the U.S. Criminal Code in 2000. It allows a person who believes he is a citizen but cannot provide proof when registering to vote to register to vote in federal elections by signing a sworn statement affirming their citizenship under penalty of perjury. What could go wrong? According to Engelbrecht, other ways non-citizens vote are:
- Through misunderstanding or lack of information. Many non-citizens pay taxes, have green cards, or have been in the country for years. Confusion arises because they lack information, and according to Engelbrecht, "their confusion is supported by the numerous organizations that mail out voter registrations and absentee ballot request forms.
- Errors in voter registration processes, such as the example above, when an illegal applies for a driver's license and checks off the "register to vote" box.
- Assuming eligibility because of local laws. Some jurisdictions allow non-citizens to vote in local elections under specific conditions but are not permitted to vote in federal elections.
- Intentional illegal voting to influence the outcome of an election.
- Misrepresentation or fraud. According to Engelbrecht, non-citizens "might deliberately misrepresent their citizenship status to register and vote in elections." This type of behavior is illegal and subject to severe penalties, but it often goes unpunished, which in turn encourages the behavior to continue.
"Border security is national security, and the current vetting process puts both Americans' safety and their VOTING RIGHTS at significant risk. When a person crosses the border and cannot provide any physical identification, they are asked to verbally provide a name, birthdate, and country of origin. If the information provided is not found in Border Patrol's databases, our government accepts this information as their true identity and issues them an identification card, further cementing this potentially false identity."
When NGOs are taking taxpayer money to push mass migration and when our government has no clue whether those same people are on our rolls or not, it makes for a problematic 2024 election indeed. One can only hope that the soldiers in the grassroots organizations stay the course and continue to insist that our voter rolls be investigated and election security legislation and measures are fervently pursued.
