By Gabe Kaminsky
President Joe Biden’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) awarded millions in tax dollars to a George Soros-backed nonprofit that’s suing Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other officials after the state flew illegal migrants to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
Alianza Americas is “focused on improving the quality of life of all people in the U.S.-Mexico-Central America migration corridor.” The membership-based group, which Soros’ Open Society Foundations network (OSF) sent almost $1.4 million to between 2016 and 2020, was awarded a $7.5 million CDC grant in February 2021, according to a grant listing reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. (RELATED: Soros-Backed Immigration Group Suing DeSantis Over Martha’s Vineyard Flights Called To ‘Defund’ Border Patrol, ICE)
The grant aims “to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and mitigate impacts among Latinx and Latin American immigrants,” according to the listing. It is being disbursed between Feb. 1, 2021 and Sept. 9, 2025, and is part of a program called “Protecting and Improving Health Globally: Building and Strengthening Public Health Impact, Systems, Capacity and Security.”
“The CDC grant is another example of Biden abusing tax dollars to promote illegal immigration and to enrich his liberal friends, under the guise of increasing ‘awareness’ of an emergency even Biden admitted is over,” Brian Harrison, who under former President Donald Trump was chief of staff for the Department of Health and Human Services, the agency that oversees the CDC,” told the DCNF.
Biden declared that the COVID-19 pandemic is “over” in a “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday.
Alianza Americas on Tuesday filed suit with the advocacy law firm Lawyers for Civil Rights on behalf of illegals DeSantis flew to Martha’s Vineyard Sept. 14. Liberal activists and Democratic lawmakers have labeled the governor’s move “inhumane,” and Alianza Americas’ suit alleges DeSantis “intentionally targeted only individuals who are non-white and born outside the United States.”
So far, the CDC has granted roughly $2.6 million to Alianza Americas through its program. In total, the program has awarded $1.5 billion to roughly 500 U.S. and foreign groups to “improve health, including disease eradication and elimination targets” and “strengthen health systems and their impact.”
The program relates to a wide variety of diseases and treatments, and not solely COVID-19. Recipients are intended to implement programs “focused on protecting and improving health globally,” according to the program listing, and work on the “prevention” of “public health emergencies.”
Alianza Americas, which has called to “defund” Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), alleges in its suit migrants were given misleading information about housing and financial assistance as well as employment services upon traveling to Martha’s Vineyard.
Migrants were informed that their destination was Martha’s Vineyard prior to boarding flights, according to documents obtained by the DCNF Sept. 16.
“The transportation of the immigrants to Martha’s Vineyard was done on a voluntary basis,” a spokeswoman for DeSantis told the DCNF. “The immigrants were homeless, hungry, and abandoned – and these activists didn’t care about them then. Florida’s program gave them a fresh start in a sanctuary state and these individuals opted to take advantage of chartered flights to Massachusetts.”
Alianza Americas and the CDC did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment. OSF did not respond.
