The Division of Veterans Affairs is getting some flak for serving to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) course of well being care therapy for unlawful immigrants regardless of a rising backlog of U.S. veterans.
Underneath the association, which has been round for greater than 20 years, ICE pays for the VA’s Monetary Service Middle (FSC) to course of medical claims for ICE’s Well being Providers Corps (IHSC), in addition to different authorities companies. IHSC is simply answerable for authorizing healthcare companies and acquiring suppliers to ship the well being care.
In fiscal 12 months 2021, FSC processed $74 million value of claims budgeted by IHSC. The next fiscal 12 months, FSC budgeted greater than $94 million in ICE funds, in accordance with a Division of Homeland Safety report on “Healthcare Prices for Noncitizens in Detention.”
It comes amid a rising backlog of advantages claims by veterans. As of December 2023, that quantity stood at 378,000 claims.
The division has attributed the rising variety of claims to the PACT Act, which it says accounted for a surge of profit functions — surpassing earlier data by almost 40%.
The rise within the variety of functions, the VA stated, has led to a rise in utility time. In some circumstances, processing can take longer than 125 days, and the division anticipates that the backlog will develop in 2024.
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A Wednesday report from The New York Put up highlighting the VA’s association with ICE, cited veterans and Republican lawmakers who criticized the deal, given the circumstances.
GOP Rep. Derrick Van of Wisconsin, a retired Navy SEAL on the Home Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, referred to as the association “despicable” and stated it “must be stopped instantly.”
Former Marine Chad Robichaux, who led civilian evacuation efforts in Afghanistan, stated it was a “large slap within the face to People and to the navy neighborhood,” that “thousands and thousands of taxpayer {dollars} [are being] taken from our veterans to as an alternative incentivize and take care of an invasion of unlawful aliens.”
A VA spokesman contacted by Fox Information Digital referred to as the report “extraordinarily deceptive,” and was emphatic that the division isn’t offering funds or healthcare to unlawful immigrants in ICE detention.
He distinguished veterans’ healthcare from veterans’ incapacity claims, which is a separate course of. The VA says it processed veteran advantages at a file charge in 2023, delivering $163 billion in earned advantages, together with $150 billion in compensation and pension advantages to greater than 1.5 million veterans and survivors.
VA Press Secretary Terrence Hayes stated the VA’s work for ICE is administrative in operate solely, entails not more than 10 staff, and is totally paid for by ICE. None of those staff have been diverted from different roles, and no assets for veterans are used for this settlement.
“[The arrangement] “has been in place for each administration since 2002,” Hayes stated in a press release. “Our job is to ship world-class care and advantages to our nation’s Veterans, and we’ll proceed to battle like hell to do precisely that.”
It remained unclear why, if ICE has the funds to pay the VA, it can’t — after 20 years — rent extra personnel of its personal to course of the paperwork inside the division.
ICE didn’t instantly reply to Fox Information Digital’s request for remark.
