Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, is bringing attention to the billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars that are continuing to fund United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that work to aid and assist migrants in crossing into the country illegally.
In a recent article published by the Daily Wire, Bensman revealed that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and the UN International Organization for Migration (IOM) continue to be funded with billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to support migrants “engaging in transit and onward movements” to the U.S. southern border.
Bensman’s report is based on data published in the UN’s 2025-2026 Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan.
“There are hundreds of these organizations that have grown very fat with profit, even though they’re nonprofits, to aid, assist, and abet the mass migration to our border. A lot of them are U.S.-based, a lot of other ones are international, but the United Nations put together an organization of them, a coordinated group, a conglomeration, of NGOs and about 15 UN agencies together in Latin America in 2019 and every year they’ve been spending $1.5 billion handing out food supplies, cash debit cards, transportation, shelter, basically supporting the migration and even incentivizing some of that to our border – predominantly paid for by U.S. taxpayers,” Bensman explained on Wednesday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“They’re just being showered with U.S. tax money. That’s how this whole thing works,” Bensman added.
Bensman said taxpayer money funding the UN-based groups encouraging illegal immigration into the U.S. is still expected to flow under the incoming Trump administration in an effort to “induce failure” during the new administration.
“They’re still looking at $1.4 billion to support all of those migrants, to keep the pressure on the U.S. border, maybe to induce failure, this is my speculation, or just to not to give up and keep 2.5 million migrants, foreign nationals, sustained and on the trail pushing ever forward or to just wait out the Trump administration and hope a friendlier Democrat gets into office in four years. The point is, it’s still going on there,” Bensman said.
Bensman said the funding of such agencies is a “legitimate public policy debate” which Republican lawmakers – given their majorities in the U.S. House and Senate as well as the White House – should discuss.
“Maybe there ought to be some defunding. Maybe there ought to be some accountability or transparency. Maybe they ought to be rolled back, because the American people don’t like this. They don’t like this,” Bensman said.
Watch the full interview:
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
