EXCLUSIVE — Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) sent a letter Wednesday to the Department of Veterans Affairs pressing the agency on its use of resources for the healthcare of illegal immigrants.
Veterans Affairs has an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in which it processes medical claims on the agency’s behalf, but the VA emphasizes it does not provide illegal immigrants healthcare. ICE covers the cost of those claims.
The letter, addressed to Secretary Denis McDonough, expresses skepticism at that statement, asking if the agency checks citizenship status before approving veteran healthcare benefits and whether the Biden administration has given any directive on medical care for those migrants.
Blackburn cited a Department of Homeland Security report on fiscal 2022 that detailed “ICE spent more than $373.5 million on detained noncitizen healthcare.” The report also revealed that the ICE Health Service Corps monitored the healthcare of 120,500 illegal immigrants that year. This took place in 163 non-IHSC-run facilities and used more than 41,500 beds.
Blackburn wrote that while the VA is contracted to assist the IHSC, “veterans and their families are rewarded for their sacrifice with months-and-years-long waiting times for their claims to be processed.”
The VA’s claims backlog has risen from under 100,000 in 2019 to over 400,000 by the end of 2023.
“The VA was created to support those who have served and protected this nation, and now senior VA officials have seemingly placed these veterans on a tier below the flood of illegal immigrants that are crossing our porous border,” the Tennessee senator added, referencing the growing number of crossings at the southern border.
She called the use of VA resources for those in the U.S. illegally “unacceptable” and asked “that the VA immediately stop allocating its resources to the care and claims of illegal immigrants.”
In a statement to the Washington Examiner, VA press secretary Terrence Hayes said, “No VA resources are used to provide or fund any health care to ICE detainees.” He explained a payment processing agreement has existed since 2002 “in which ICE pays” for the VA’s Financial Service Center to “process payments for ICE-funded health care.”
According to Hayes, 10 employees are used for this and stressed the agreement “has no impact to Veteran care or services whatsoever.”
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Giving McDonough a deadline of Jan. 26 to respond, Blackburn additionally requested he respond to questions on the contract between the VA and the IHSC as well as the amount of funding designated for the healthcare of ICE detainees.
Blackburn recently co-sponsored the No VA Resources for Illegal Aliens Act, which was introduced by Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL). The legislation was proposed alongside a House bill brought forward by Veterans Affairs Committee Chairman Mike Bost (R-IL). The bills aim to end the VA’s lending of its medical claims processing services to the IHSC.