Under the Biden administration, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) was asking for and accepting private donations for illegal aliens in federal custody. The Trump administration just realized it had never officially ended that directive, so it did so this week to remove any lingering confusion.
CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott confirmed to Fox News correspondent Bill Melugin on Wednesday that he issued a memo officially axing the policy. Scott offered as an excuse for its creation that the “elevated number of aliens encountered, processed and held in our facilities” during the Biden-Harris era necessitated private supplements to the billions of taxpayer dollars spent on trafficking criminal foreigners into America.
But times have changed, thank goodness. “This order is no longer needed or appropriate. With the significant decrease in encounters and apprehensions, CBP no longer requires private donations or gifts for distribution to aliens in custody,” Scott observed. “Additionally, this order does not align with the Trump administration's enforcement posture at our borders. For these reasons, I am withdrawing CBP from DHS Delegation 07107, effective immediately.”
John K. Tien, Joe Biden’s deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, inaugurated the controversial policy in May 2022. CBP told Melugin that agency leadership did not recall that the policy existed until a recent reminder. That’s probably partly due to changes in top leadership since Donald Trump took office.
The Biden Administration manufactured a crisis at our southern border — allowing millions of unvetted criminal aliens to flood our towns and neighborhoods. With our southern border now secure thanks to President @realDonaldTrump, @CBP and @DHSgov, ICE will continue to remove these illegal aliens from the interior. Our work to Defend the Homeland continues.
— U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (@ICEgov) February 17, 2026
Related: An Illegal Alien Killed a Texas Dad, But Activists Are Busy Protesting for a Criminal
Even the title of the newly terminated policy is so obviously Democrat: “Delegation to Solicit, Accept and Utilize Gifts Related to the Care of Undocumented Noncitizens in CBP and ICE Custody.” Calling illegal alien criminals “undocumented” is a favorite Orwellian term among wokies, as if the aliens innocently forgot to complete some unnecessary paperwork.
What Joe Biden and the Democrats did to our country is unforgivable: "Fed Reserve working paper suggests Biden illegal immigrant wave caused 30% of home price increases" https://t.co/d1RnUOESRk
— White House Press Office (@PressSec) July 8, 2026
Watchdog estimates indicate that the Department of Health and Human Services — responsible for trafficking over 320,000 children — alone spent some $22.6 billion on illegal aliens during the Biden era. In early 2024, Newsweek reported that illegal immigration was costing the U.S. $150.7 billion annually across federal, state, and local governments.
And yet, despite all that, CBP says it still needed supplementation from private funds. That is the scale of the mass illegal alien invasion of our country during the Biden administration.
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