Details are emerging of the 2025 Fiscal Year budget rammed through the State House of Representatives in the wee hours of Thursday morning. Among them is a $1 million taxpayer-funded appropriation that pays for attorneys who represent the influx of illegal immigrants into Michigan.
According to a statement from State Rep. Cam Cavitt, R-Charlevoix: “The Labor and Economic Opportunity budget includes $1 million for illegal immigrants to hire taxpayer-funded attorneys. The Democrats also approved an undesignated amount of funding to support the Office of Global Michigan, which is facing scrutiny for giving hand-outs to illegal immigrants.”
However, the Michigan Senate Republicans specified on X that the budget includes $44 million for the OGM.
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“The Office of Global Michigan gets $44 million dollars to help non-citizens,” Rep. Tom Kunse, R-Clare, told The Midwesterner in an email. “Again, why not help the people of Michigan who are struggling?”
Kunse continued: “It also allocates $1 million to the Michigan Advocacy Program, an organization that funds the Michigan Immigration Rights Center, which facilitates legal services to illegal aliens. We should be taking care of Michiganders who are struggling.”
As noted by Capitol Confidential, the OGM was launched earlier this year with $39,127,500 in taxpayer money. That money, the online newspaper noted, was 98% of federal money. “Only $758,000 of that came from [Michigan’s] general fund.”
It’s unclear how much of the alleged $44 million appropriated to the OGM in Michigan’s Fiscal Year 2025 budget will derive from federal funds.
Under the cover of darkness, Lansing Democrats passed a budget that increases funding to Gov. Whitmer's controversial agency that may be providing $500 monthly rental subsidies to illegal immigrants.
No wonder they waited until the middle of the night to vote… pic.twitter.com/ydCM6PT4GL
— MI Senate Republicans (@MISenate) June 27, 2024
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Nor is it clear whether there are guiderails for the $1 million appropriated for illegal immigrants’ attorneys. For example, legal services to navigate the complexities of immigration paperwork aren’t the same as attorney costs to defend the growing number of illegal immigrants charged with felony crimes in Michigan.
Among the aforementioned are “asylum seeker” Jose Medina-Hernandez, who has been charged on two counts of a moving violation causing death in Shelby Twp.; and two murdered women in Grand Rapids, with an illegal immigrant convicted in one case and another charged in the second.
The murder cases involve Brandon Ortiz-Vite, who was bound over for trial for the murder of Ruby Garcia after police allege he repeatedly shot the 25-year-old with an illegally purchased handgun. Witnesses testified Ortiz-Vite then dumped the woman’s body alongside US-131 and fled in her car. Garcia’s murder occurred a little over a month after illegal immigrant Luis Bernal-Sosa pleaded guilty to gunning down the mother of his child, 22-year-old Leah Gomez, in her car as then 1-year-old sat in the back seat.
In the months since Garcia’s murder, other illegal immigrants have been arrested for soliciting sex from minors in Shiawassee County, sexual conduct with a 15-year-old Livingston County girl, multiple sex assaults in Ann Arbor, a fatal hit-and-run in Grand Rapids, and breaking into a home in Sturgis to molest two girls under the age of 13. Three Romanian women earlier this month were transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody following arrests last week in a string of thefts from stores in Auburn Hills and Bloomfield Township.
Illegal immigrants are organized and stealing millions of dollars from high-end homes in Michigan.
Police suspect a crime syndicate from South America is behind the burglaries.
— Citizen Free Press (@CitizenFreePres) February 15, 2024
“Democracy dies in darkness – and the Dems passed a budget in the dead of night,” Kunse said. “We were given a 1,500-page, $79,000,000,000 budget and expected to vote on it with only a few hours to review the document. It passed along party lines with ZERO Republicans in the House or Senate voting for the bill,” Kunse said, adding, “The Democrats are taking money from the taxpayers of our State and using it to push their extreme agenda with the hope of buying future votes and creating a population dependent on government handouts.”