Two federal agencies routed taxpayer dollars to terror-linked charities, new reports find

Two federal agencies gave taxpayer dollars to charities with ties to terrorism, new reports show.

The State Department worked with World Vision to distribute $2 billion in global health foreign assistance even though an Israeli court convicted the nonprofit’s Gaza affiliate operations manager of sending up to $50 million to Hamas in 2022. Separately, the Health and Human Services Department (HHS) provided nearly $80 million to 14 organizations linked to terrorism and extremism.

HHS and CAIR-aligned terrorist organizations

The Middle East Forum (MEF) recently reported that 14 terror-linked and extremist organizations, led by CAIR, collected nearly $80 million from HHS through the Refugee Resettlement, Health, and Mosque Renovation grants. Through this fund, the Council on American-Islamic Relations' (CAIR) California chapter received the most of any Islamist group, collecting $42.2 million in funding from the HHS to provide legal and social services to Afghan refugees.

"All contributions and grants that CAIR-CA receives are fully reported, accounted for, and used strictly for their intended purposes, subject to rigorous internal and external auditing and reporting. This transparency is why both private and public funders have worked with us and continue to do so," CAIR-CA told Just the News in a statement. “We are proud to serve and defend the rights of American Muslims and immigrants—communities that greatly enrich our nation and contribute to its economic success.”

CAIR has a long history of ties to terrorism, as The National Review has reported. The organization might not drop bombs, but it has a history with Hamas, a terror group designated by the U.S. government, having accepted money from a Hamas front group and raising money for that same group after 9/11.

Since 2009, CAIR has included a statement on its website stating: “We unequivocally condemn all acts of terrorism, whether carried out by al-Qa’ida, the Real IRA, FARC, Hamas, ETA, or any other group designated by the U.S. Department of State as a ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization.’”

In 2004, CAIR settled a lawsuit it initiated while acknowledging that statements made by an anti-CAIR group were accurate, including that CAIR is a terrorist supporting front organization that receives some money from terrorists, and that the organization has links to and was founded by Islamic terrorists.

Further, at least seven board or staff members of CAIR have been arrested, indicted, pleaded guilty, or convicted of terrorist charges or denied entry into the U.S. due to terrorism charges. CAIR was also famously named as an “unindicted co-conspirator” by federal prosecutors in a criminal conspiracy to provide financial support to Hamas. This led to the FBI ending contacts with CAIR out of concern for its terrorist ties. CAIR did not respond to a Just the News inquiry prior to press time.

Other groups that received HHS funding include the Islamic Circle of North America’s (ICNA) humanitarian wing, ICNA Relief, which collected $10.6 million, while representing the American branch of an Islamist group that has caused violence in South Asia. The Muslim American Society’s (MAS) Sacramento chapter received $90,000 to promote women’s health literacy, even though the MAS was called an “overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America” by a federal appeals court. The Muslim Brotherhood is known for supporting female genital mutilation, a barbaric procedure supported by Muslim-majority societies.

Another organization, Dar Al-Hirjah, received $340,000 in HHS sub-grants to promote coronavirus vaccines. Dar Al-Hirjah is a mosque in Northern Virginia that helped two of the 9/11 hijackers find housing.

Five of the organizations that received the funds from HHS were overseas groups, which received $14 million between them. These included a pollster with links to Palestinian Islamic Jihad and a West African college with a history of homophobic mobs attacking suspected gay students receiving funds to study homosexual Muslim men with HIV.

The MEF’s report found that 87% of the funding was approved under the Biden administration.

“Washington took the most vulnerable people on earth, refugees who fled the Taliban, and delivered them into the hands of the organizations most likely to radicalize them,” said Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum. “That is not compassion. That is a recruitment pipeline built at public expense, and every official who signed these awards owns it.”

The State Department and World Vision

As the Jewish News Syndicate reported, the Senate Finance Committee investigated World Vision in 2019 and found that the charity in 2014 transferred a $125,000 USAID-backed sub-grant to the Islamic Relief Agency, which the Treasury Department sanctioned in 2004 for ties to terrorism.

The Islamic Relief Agency, also known as the Islamic Africa Relief Agency and the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA), along with five of its senior officials, had their U.S. accounts blocked, as well as funds and assets in the U.S.

At the time the sanctions were issued, the Treasury Department reported that the IARA’s international offices provided direct financial support for Osama bin Laden and cooperated with the al-Qaeda terrorist leader to raise and spend additional funds. The IARA purportedly worked with an institute controlled by bin Laden that provided assistance to Taliban fighters.

Some "Islamic relief agencies" have pleaded guilty

In 2016, the Islamic American Relief Agency shut down after the organization admitted in federal court that it illegally provided $1.4 million to Iraq, violating U.S. sanctions, the Associated Press reported at the time. A representative for the organization pleaded guilty in Jefferson City, Missouri, where the organization was headquartered, to conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The organization also pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit money laundering and one count of obstructing the administration of internal revenue laws.

Despite its history, the State Department announced earlier this month that it would partner with World Vision and others to provide global health and humanitarian assistance to countries in need.

“This historic announcement is the largest allocation of global health foreign assistance to faith-based organizations in over 20 years,” the announcement said. “It underscores the Trump Administration’s commitment to partnering with organizations that demonstrate faith in action and have proven their ability to deliver health and humanitarian assistance in the world’s most difficult environments.”

But a senior Trump administration official told JNS that “World Vision is severely compromised by ties to Islamist terrorists and a radical left-wing climate change agenda,” and questioned the decision to partner with them to distribute billions of taxpayer dollars.

The State Department, however, denied any suggestion that the Trump administration was allowing foreign assistance to be funneled to terrorist organizations.

“[A]ny implication that the Trump administration is permitting the diversion of U.S. foreign assistance to organizations with ties to terrorism is baseless,” a spokesman told JNS.

“No administration has held Hamas and other radical Islamist terrorist organizations more accountable than the Trump administration,” the spokesman added.

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