During a House Homeland Committee hearing before the Congressional recess, Rep. Michael Guest (R-MS) responded to a claim from Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS).
00:00Well, for my five minutes of questioning, I want to respond to some of the allegations
00:09contained in the ranking member's opening statement. And Mr. Thompson, I'm assuming
00:15you didn't write that statement because you have known me for some period of time.
00:21I know you to be someone who that I have a longstanding relationship with and do not
00:27believe that you would write an opening statement attacking mine or the Christianity of any other
00:33member of this committee. I don't believe that you would weaponize my religious beliefs.
00:39I don't believe that you would criticize me because I choose to teach Sunday school in my church
00:44and to somehow say that because I'm a Sunday school, because I'm a Christian, that me being a
00:52part of this hearing somehow in some way flies in the face of my religious beliefs. Because what
01:00we're doing here today is we are not casting a broad net on every non-governmental organization,
01:06every non-profit. We are instead focusing this hearing on those who have profited off of the
01:15illegal immigration that we saw under the Biden-Harris administration.
01:19I have mentioned nothing in my statement about non-profits such as Red Cross, Catholic
01:27Charities, Samaritan's Purse, Doctors Without Borders, non-profits who actually take money and use
01:37it for the good, who are out there collecting money from their congregation, from members of the
01:44community who wish to give back. Instead, this hearing is focused on those handful of non-profits
01:51who received their money almost exclusively from grants from the federal government,
01:58but yet still claim to be non-profits. Ms. Hopper, you mentioned two of those in your written testimony,
02:05two that I referenced in my opening statement, those two being Endeavors,
02:14who, according to my information that I received, Endeavors received 97% of their funding from federal
02:27or local grants. They weren't out raising money. They weren't out there ringing the bell there at
02:33Christmas asking people to give money. They weren't in churches asking members of the congregation to
02:38please give to these organizations. They were instead an arm of the federal government in that they received
02:4597% of their funding. And then Southwest Key Properties was an NGO that blew past that. 99% of their funding
03:00came from grants from the federal government. And what did these organizations do with that? You talk about
03:10in your testimony, Ms. Hopper, you talk about Endeavor, that in 2020, Endeavor reported $52 million in revenue.
03:20That in 2021, they reported $658 million in revenue. A $600 million increase in a year with 97% of that money
03:34coming from the federal government. And that in 2022, they reported a record $1.18 billion from the federal government,
03:45or at least 97%, or at least 97% of that. You talk about how executives for Endeavor padded their pockets.
03:55That with this increase in revenue comes increase in salary. That the compensation for the CEO doubled.
04:03You talk about these particular CEOs that I mentioned. Instead of using that money to protect children, they were treating this
04:11money like venture capitalist. You also stated in there that an Endeavor's individual, someone within their organization,
04:21said that the border crisis was a boom for business. In an article from the New York Post, they talk about another one of these nonprofits.
04:33They talk about Southwest Key. The headline says Texas nonprofit housing migrant kids took $3 billion in grants from Biden administration
04:45and boosted executive salaries up to 139% to pull the plug. And so I am offended when people from the other side say that we're not being Christian,
04:59that we don't want to help people. We're not saying that all nonprofits are bad. Many of us support and give money and volunteer to those.
05:08But this hearing today is focused on those nonprofits which were government funded, which were used by the Biden-Harris administration
05:17to continue to continue to move people across the border against the will of the public and without the authorization of Congress.
05:31So with that, I yield back and I now recognize my friend from California, Mr. Carrera, for five minutes for his questioning of the witnesses.
05:41Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I do hope to continue to work with you as a friend here in this committee.
05:47I would also, though, want to point out that some are-
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