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CBP Used Funds for Asylum Seekers’ Food & Medicine to Buy Dirt Bikes & Riot Helmets

HeadlineJun 12, 2020

In immigration news, a newly published Government Accountability Office report says Customs and Border Protection used portions of a $112 million emergency humanitarian fund — meant to buy food, medical supplies and hygiene products for immigrants in their custody — to purchase all-terrain vehicles, dirt bikes, boats, dog food and even riot helmets. The findings come after Congress urged the GAO to examine CBP’s books to determine how the agency had spent emergency funds allocated in 2019 after a surge of asylum seekers arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border and after reports of people being held in overcrowded, squalid CBP processing cells.

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