(Headline USA) New documents reveal the federal government has agreed to shell out exorbitant rates to house tens of thousands of illegal immigrants in hotels.
The Washington Examiner reports that the U.S. government agreed to pay $352.64 per hotel bed for roughly 80,000 migrants who are apprehended by border officials. Those stays include nights at Hilton Hotels, Choice Hotels, InterContinental Hotels Group and Best Western International.
From the Washington Examiner:
The $352 price tag also factors in recreational activities for each family in their room, meals, medical and mental health services, laundry, cultural and legal orientation, and the cost of staff who are trained to work with people who have been through trauma. Immigration documents given to families by the Border Patrol and ICE will be explained by interpreters, and translators will be available to explain the legal process in addition to lawyers. Families are enrolled in ICE programs that allow people to remain out of detention.
So Biden is spending $86,000,000 to purchase hotel rooms for 1,200 illegal alien families for six months.
By that math, he’s spending around $395 a night per room.
How many of you have stayed in a $395/night hotel room?
— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) March 22, 2021
Axios reported last month that the Biden administration had secured a contract for $86 million to pay for hotel rooms for migrants on the southern border.
“Here is an important point to keep in mind,” wrote Andrew R. Arthur, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies. “Such speedy releases … with little more than some fingerprinting and a future court date — into the interior of the United States is far and away “the major ‘pull factor’ that will encourage even more adult migrants to risk their lives and their accompanying children’s on the trek to the United States in the future.”
The growing need for rooms, and the high price for them, only highlights President Joe Biden’s growing problem at the southern border.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported 172,000 encounters with illegal immigrants in March, a sharp increase from 101,000 in February.
Over the weekend, CBP apprehended several men with lengthy criminal records.
“U.S. Border Patrol agents in the Rio Grande Valley arrested three sexual predators and a gang member within 72 hours,” CBP said in a press release. “Record Checks revealed the subject, later identified as Guzman-Gomez, Nelson, was convicted in Harris County, Texas, for aggravated sexual assault with a child under 14 years old. Guzman-Gomez was convicted and sentenced to five years confinement.
“Friday afternoon, McAllen Border Patrol (MCS) agents apprehended a group of 14 illegal aliens near Hidalgo, Texas,” CBP continued. “During processing, agents discovered that one subject, a Honduran national, had a prior arrest by the Brooklyn Park Police Department (BPPD) in New York in 2018. BPPD charged the subject with criminal sexual conduct, a 3rd degree felony. The subject was convicted and sentenced to 15 months confinement. Within the group was a child traveling by himself.”
