(WATCH) Republican Congressman Confronts Biden Official Over Reports Of Biden Flying Illegals Across Country (VIDEO)
During a hearing with the Biden Administration’s Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), Xavier Becerra, Republican House Budget Committee Leader Jason Smith (MO-08) questioned the Biden Administration over reports that taxpayer funding was spent to transport illegal immigrants across the country via plane.
Watch the video below:
The full transcript of the video is:
Congressman Smith:
Since I do want to talk about resources that were delegated to the HHS in that spending bill, let’s jump to that. Can you can you tell us how much funding your department has spent over the past year plus to fly illegal immigrants from the border to various communities across the country?
Xavier Becerra:
If you’re asking for the last 365 days, that might be more difficult. But I can give you an idea generally of what we have done with some of the money that we’ve received.
Congressman Smith:
Did you use any of the money in the HHS budget to fly illegals from the southern border to other communities in the country? Yes or no?
Xavier Becerra:
We have an obligation, Congressman, to make sure that those those migrant children who are unaccompanied by an adult have a safe place to stay while they’re temporarily going through their immigration process. So you did? We house some of those immigrant children until we’re able to find a sponsor, if we’re able to find a sponsor, who will house that immigrant while the child is waiting for its hearings.
Congressman Smith:
So can you tell me within this budget, show me in this budget, where you are planning to use taxpayer dollars to fly illegal immigrants from the border to various communities throughout this country? And how many taxpayer dollars do you estimate you’ll spend in the months to come in such flights? Where’s it at in the budget?
Xavier Becerra:
You can find the information under the organization, I’m sorry, the office of refugee resettlement that deals with the unaccompanied migrant children. And what we are obligated to do by law is take possession and custody of a child once they’ve been placed in the hands of Department of Homeland Security, they are only allowed to keep those children for a short amount of time.
Xavier Becerra:
We must then take them and we place them in a facility that is able to care for children. Not all those facilities are there on the border in American communities along the border. So we do make sure we place them, if we can, in a licensed care facility that is able to care for children.
Congressman Smith:
Also, there’s been a lot of conversation about money being transferred. $2 billion, in fact, that was taken from the strategic stockpile and for COVID testing that was used with illegals at the southern border. Where was the the authority to do that?
Xavier Becerra:
So I’m not sure where you brought the strategic stockpile in. But what I can tell you is that the COVID moneys that we have used, including some of the moneys to address the needs of those migrant children because of COVID, they were not immune from getting COVID. And we would have to do the the systems and the processes necessary to make sure that they were tested, make sure that they were not COVID positive so they would not infect others around them, including the children.
Xavier Becerra:
And so we did use some of the COVID money made available through Congress to address the COVID related concerns and services necessary for migrant children.
Congressman Smith:
I see my time’s running out in 7 seconds. Secretary, thank you for being here.
Stay tuned to The Scoop for any updates.
