During a House Homeland Security Committee hearing Tuesday, Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-OK) spoke about NGOs involved in border security.
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NewsTranscript
00:00To block law enforcement, every Biden-era DHS immigration policy can be categorized
00:05as waste, fraud, or abuse.
00:07Thank you, and I look forward to answering your questions.
00:12Thank you, Mr. Block.
00:13Members will be recognized by order of seniority for their five minutes of questioning.
00:17Additional rounds of questioning may be called for.
00:19All members have been recognized.
00:21I now recognize myself for five minutes of questioning.
00:27Mr. Howell, you encouraged Congress just a minute ago relative to the NGOs, non-governmental
00:35organizations, and what we could do in particular to having the Office of Inspector Generals
00:42look into the NGOs.
00:44I really am intrigued by that because I think it's something that committees are going to
00:49be lacking on if we don't do that.
00:52I think it's a great idea.
00:54So I'm going to take your idea.
00:55I'm going to pivot to a former lead official within the Office of Inspector General, Mr.
01:02Roth.
01:03How would Congress be able to approach the Office of Inspector Generals to be able to
01:06do the granular element of trying to find how the NGOs ... We know we have an issue
01:14of financial management, which came up minimal in the previous panel, where we're under Homeland
01:19Security financial management of controls of tracking monies.
01:23What did you see?
01:25What can we do in your estimation, quickly, to be able to accomplish this goal for accountability
01:32with these NGOs?
01:36In my experience, IG's offices are extraordinarily sensitive to requests from their committees
01:41of jurisdiction.
01:42So the fact that you are the chair of a subcommittee of Homeland Security means that typically,
01:48at least in my experience when I was IG, we would take that very, very seriously.
01:53So my advice, for what it's worth, is that I would have your staff call their staff,
01:59engage in some discussions, and then perhaps follow up with a formal recommendation as
02:03to ... Or a formal request as to the scope of the work.
02:08In terms of NGOs and their ability to ... Given the financial management element, we know
02:13that we're under high risk under Homeland Security right now.
02:18Were you able to find things within NGO funding after it had been let to the NGOs that were
02:25on your radar screen when you were a part of the Inspector General's office?
02:28Not in the immigration context, we weren't.
02:31I am unfamiliar with the source of this funding to the NGOs, whether it was like a Department
02:35of Homeland Security grant or some other federal agency.
02:39Obviously, we'd only have jurisdiction over ... That is, my old office would only have
02:44jurisdiction over a Homeland Security grant.
02:47I want to pivot back to you, Mr. Howell, because you talked ... I mean, you're adding these
02:50NGOs into what you call the border industrial complex.
02:54You mentioned that $6 billion were spent under the Biden administration that was specific
03:00to the NGOs, as I understand you correctly on that.
03:02Yes.
03:03And that there are 230 different NGOs involved.
03:08Can you name five?
03:09You don't have to do five, okay?
03:12But a number of NGOs, just right offhand, that you feel like were the most egregious
03:16offenders?
03:17Right.
03:18So at DHS, there used to be a board that kind of oversaw the distribution of the funding,
03:22and on that board sat some of ... We'll call them the name brand national charities, and
03:27those would include people like Catholic Relief Services or Catholic Charities, USCCB, one
03:32variation of that, Lutheran Relief Services, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, all these kind
03:37of mega organizations that play in the disaster space, sat on that board that distributed
03:43money through a web of nonprofits.
03:45I'm sure the number far exceeds 230, but there's a reason why the left did it this way.
03:51It's so that you couldn't get at who actually ended up with the money and how they spent
03:55it.
03:56It is doing the government's work outside of government to evade this type of oversight.
04:00And so I'd encourage you guys not to rely on the IG community who has not shown an interest
04:05at all in this $6 billion, who sat by and watched the worst border crisis in history
04:10happen in front of them, but to go get the information yourself, which is your constitutional
04:14duty with your subpoena power to these nonprofits.
04:17Make them turn over financial documents, records of illegals, have them answer questions, and
04:22so forth.
04:23So you mentioned, though, engaging the inspector generals in this process, so in addition to
04:26what you just laid out, how would you see engaging the IG's office in this effort?
04:32Yes.
04:33Frankly, I don't think they're going to be that willing of a partner because they haven't
04:35shown an interest in the border crisis over the last four years.
04:38I think it's certainly worthwhile to ask, but I don't think Congress should absolve
04:42themselves of the constitutional responsibility by a request to the IG.
04:46I'd even be looking at law enforcement.
04:48A lot of this activity borders on criminal.
04:50That's good.
04:52It came up, Mr. Shuby, a minute ago, you got 30 seconds between you and I, about NGOs,
04:57non-governmental organizations, and how they were the ones that, under the ability of what
05:03was supposed to be a network of information protection, stop our electric grid from being
05:09taken down.
05:10They were farming out internet policing to these NGOs.
05:13You've got 15 seconds.
05:14What do you want to say in terms of what we can do to get to the bottom of that in the
05:18process?
05:19You know, I didn't mention this in my remarks, but I think the same suggestion.
05:21I think the IG community or DOJ could look into which NGOs were benefiting from this
05:26financially and what they were doing with that money.
05:29Thank you all very much.
05:31With that, we'll open it up to questions.