An anti-ICE group at last weekend’s pro-illegal immigrant protest-turned-riot in Los Angeles received a grant of nearly a half-million dollars - from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, Los Angeles (CHIRLA) – which seeks to end all deportations, regardless of immigration status – held a rally Thursday, on the eve of the weekend’s violent, destructive anti-ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) protest that continues to ravage the city.
While CHIRLA denies organizing the protest and inciting the riots, it does admit that it was there, at local immigration courts and detention centers, from Friday through Sunday.
In 2023, CHIRLA received a grant of $450,000 from the very government organization it despises. In all, during the Biden Administration, the radical group was awarded three grants worth a total of $754,068.07, for “citizenship education and training.”
CHIRLA has been raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from DHS for more than a decade, The Washington Examiner reports:
“Grant records show the Department of Homeland Security, the federal agency CHIRLA is protesting, has awarded the anti-deportation group with several six-figure grants since 2014 as part of a citizenship and assimilation program that financially supports organizations ‘actively working to remove barriers to naturalization.’”
In March, under the Trump Administration, DHS cancelled the contract with CHIRLA, rescuing more than $100,000 of taxpayer money yet to be paid to the pro-illegal immigration activist group.
Since the contract’s cancellation, DHS has successfully fended off lawsuits from CHIRLA, as attorney Laura Powell explains in a social media post, noting the pernicious irony of the Biden-era grant:
“With $100,000 remaining on CHIRLA’s contract, DHS froze the remaining funds in February. CHIRLA responded by suing. The court denied their motion for a preliminary injunction on May 29. This is one of two lawsuits CHIRLA filed against DHS this year. The other was dismissed for lack of standing and is on appeal. To sum up how this works: Your tax dollars fund an organization that organizes efforts to directly interfere with the federal government’s lawful exercise of authority. Then, through its lobbying arm, that organization helps get Democrats elected to office, who then repay the favor by ensuring increased funding. This is the nonprofit industrial complex at work.”
Through all state and federal grants combined, CHIRLA received nearly $34 million in Fiscal Year 2023 – nearly triple the $12 million it got the previous year.