President Trump’s administration halted flow of $11 million dollars in federal funding to a Catholic Charities program run in Florida that serves unaccompanied migrant children – raising questions about the organization and it’s Maine chapter.
The decision targets the organization’s facility in Miami Shores which houses 81 children and provides replacement programs for minors, after Archbishop Thomas Wenski confirmed the program is set to close within three months.
Since the federal government formed a long-standing partnership with the Catholic Charities organization during Operation Pedro Pan decades ago, the funding shutoff comes amid public feud between President Trump and Pope Leo XIV.
Trump recently got into it with the Pope after he criticized U.S. actions in the Middle East and called for the United States to be nice to Iran. President Trump responded, “We don’t like a pope that’s going to say it’s OK to have a nuclear weapon. We don’t want a pope who says crime is OK in our cities. I don’t like it. I’m not a big fan of Pope Leo.”
The administration has not provided detailed specification into the termination beyond citation of reduced volume of minor influx, with the funding cut defended by local Department Health and Human Services representatives.
“The ORR is closing and consolidating unused facilities as the Trump Administration continues efforts to stop illegal entry and the smuggling and trafficking of unaccompanied alien children,” said press secretary Emily G. Hilard.
Two years ago, a Florida Statewide Grand Jury examined the organization where it identified multiple compliance and accountability deficiencies.
In documents located under Florida Case No. SC22-792, Catholic Charities in Miami was found operating unlicensed shelters in direct violation of state law, with authorities directing staff to report red flags to federal officials rather local law enforcement. Further testimony disclosed the organization’s high dependency on federal grants that made up nearly all their revenue, with exponential compensation and grants given to foreign entities.
While well south in Florida, the funding cut underscores broader fiscal accountability issues within the organization’s broad network, including documented instances in Maine where affiliates appear to have given cash grants to familiar nonprofits like Gateway Community Services.
Last month, the Maine Wire reported that Catholic Charities of Maine failed two separate audits tied to Medicaid billing and MaineCare claims. In 2020, an audit found the organization failed to provide required records and documents, with repayments ordered initially, then substantially reduced through state appeal. This was tandem to a separate audit that found alleged overbilling for drug tests, leading to forced repayments, also reduced through state appeal.
Mirroring the facility closure in Miami, a Catholic Charities Maine affiliate was ordered to shutdown operations at the Greater Bangor Refugee and Immigration Services center in 2025. Between 2019 and 2024, Catholic Charities of Maine received $19,722,082 in taxpayer funds through Medicaid programs.
Per IRS filings in 2024, Catholic Charities Maine provided money to nonprofits like Gateway Community Services, Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services, and the New Mainers Public Health Initiative. Out of the 18 grant recipients, these specific non-profits stand out in a list of local schools that received funding from Catholic Charities Maine, respectively.
According to an IRS Form-990, it shows the Maine Immigrant and Refugee Services received $824,727 from Catholic Charities Maine for language services, supplemental housing, refugee medical promotion, and youth mentoring.
Gateway Community Services went on to receive $77,672 dollars intended for refugee health promotion and youth mentoring.
Trailing last was the New Mainers Public Health Initiative who received just under $50,000 for refugee health promotion.
Interestingly, the New Mainers Public Health Initiative website features addresses at both 124 Lisbon Street and 276 Lisbon Street in Lewiston, which appeared in a local article that identified the address also leased to the Democratic Party through November 2020.
The associations indicate federal and state resources intended for those in need flowing to vast networks of interconnected nonprofits operating without sufficient oversight.
The Miami facility closure affiliated within the same umbrella network operating facilities in Maine forms patterns in a state facing daunting nonprofit-related issues.
All vulnerabilities remain, as the 501(c)(3) beast in Maine’s economy continues its growth under Gov. Janet Mills (D) policy and advocacy for the same groups bankrolling the taxpayer game.
Good .
The Catholic Church is among the richest operations in the entire world .
Let them fund their own pet projects .
Ever heard the term “ separation of church and state “ ?
Ring any bells ?
Catholic Charity, the irony of the words is disgusting, the abuse of trust that the church has used for decades. That trust will be tainted for a long time
Catholic Charities – in my experience – is a corrupt or at least irresponsible organization. I owned an apartment building in Lewiston and accepted a “special program” tenant who was under their watch under anger management care. I ended up providing him with living necessities that should have been provided by them. He was under supervision of a caseworker who was overburdened with case loads which led to the tenant exhibiting destructive behaviors including destruction of property and dealing drugs. I would never recommend engaging with Catholic Charities again.
“Catholic Charities and its affiliated organizations have received billions in federal funding for
migration and refugeeillegal immigration services over the past decade, with a significant increase during the Biden administration.According to data from USAspending.gov and audited financial statements, Catholic Charities branches collectively received over $2 billion in federal grants from 2021 to 2024, primarily through the Department of Health and Human Services ($1.93 billion), with additional funds from the Department of Homeland Security ($156 million) and Housing and Urban Development ($138 million). “
(My bold for emphasis.)
Trump takes any criticism personally and tends to lash out at any perceived “enemy”. The pope has pressed the U.S. to work towards peace rather than war. Trump retaliated by cutting funds to Catholic charities.
I said it before, I’ll say it again. When John Paul left this world…..(you fill in the rest)
Catholic Charities is a human trafficking operation using our tax dollars. Did the Pope have anything to say about the thousands of Iranian people executed by the Iranian government?
Did the Israel first president defund the Jewish community alliance of Maine too!??
Thank you President Trump for beginning to limit the crooked activities of Catholic Charites which has flooded Maine with illegal aliens. Perhaps it will be possible to force Catholic Charities to hand over the records of these “new Mainers” so they can be put on a plane or boat back to from whence they came.
Bunch of dumb commentators here.
Trump’s attempt to defund catholic charities has nothing to do with immigration. He’s a fat rich narcissist. Worship Trump or else.
I think it’s called the Johnson doctrine. Tax exempt status for Christian churches dependent on not protesting Israel’s genocidal wars.
Jewish alliance of S.Maine importing illegal migrants. This rag will never tell you that.
Iranians are our cousins. Aryan. Jews are not They are inbred semites.
Trump build that wall yet? Nope. Trumps ice round up’s were show. Really. One family at a time? Dumb. Also, didn’t work. Trumps and ice ran out of Minneapolis. The ice Barbie fired for being a dumb girl that can’t kill a dog humanly.
Also, Trump and his Semite handlers are getting humiliated by aryan Iran.
If you want to see who is funding what check out Data Republican, see how your tax dollars are funding no Kings protests, etc. She has it all mapped out.
What’s really amazing about this, and quite depressing, is that all of this is happening in a Catholic Church that dealt with (and was nearly bankrupted by) scandals over what it had done in the 50s 60s and 70s.
And as we go into the 2030s, it will again deal with scandal, the consequences of what I did the 2010s and 2020s
The last round of scandals hurt the church badly, to pay the damages in the lawsuits. It had to close churches, schools and hospitals, and a lot of parish has walked away out of disgust in what was done in the name of the Lord.
And now, a generation later, we have a new round of scandals that could well involve a great deal of money. Why shouldn’t/wouldn’t the Catholic Church have to repay all of the money that is essentially stolen from the US taxpayers? And what will be the consequences of having to do this?
Will there be yet more closings of churches, schools, and hospitals because of this? Unlike other cases of fraud, there are resources here for the government to seize to recover money that appears to a sense of been stolen from the US government.
and what the hell have it happened to the vow of poverty……
And don’t believe that this is retaliation for the asinine things that Pope Leo has said.
The nice thing about finance is that numbers don’t lie. Money may be fungible, but it still leaves a trail. The evil orange man did not essentially embezzle all this federal money over the past 20 years, the evil orange man did not spend it for all of the questionable things that it appears to have been spent for the past 20 years, and the evil orange man did not pay his people to six figure salaries out of the public till.
It doesn’t really matter what the evil orange man’s motivation is when he blows the whistle that says stop stealing from us. Between this and the sexual abuse scandals of 25-30 years ago, the Catholics are starting to make the Scientologists look respectable.
I’ll pay attention to a Pope that publicly prays for all the children whose futures have been destroyed by the officials in the church that molested them.
The man with the big nose, wearing the white yarmulka, in the picture has a rather self-satisfied look on his face.
Is the Vatican running low on funds ? Let them fund their own “charity”.
Adding illegal immigrant to funding before assisting Maine families in need of assistance is hypocritical of the intent of the charity. “Real Mainers” in need of financial assistance should always come first, in my opinion.
NGO’s are the Cash Laundering Industrial Complex.
The term “Charity” and Government funding with coerced taxpayer dollars are polar opposites.
Every time someone cites a biblical passage mentioning we should care for the needy, they try to use it to rationalize Government obligations, rather than individual believers who should be inspired to do so. I have the feeling that if someone did a deep long term study, they’d find that the creation “great society” programs by LBJ severely reduced charitable giving by individuals who viewed that the government was now doing it for them, and at the same time, eliminating personal judgement as to worthiness of the need and the individual local charities administering their funds.
Some time ago I decided to look into the formal connections between Catholic Charities and the Roman Catholic Church formal Global Organization. I could not find any, and concluded that the term catholic by itself is a subtle grift to imply formal connections that in fact did not exist.
The word catholic appears in various forms of Protestant Creeds where it signifies “the Christian Church universal” in the general sense, as distinct from the Roman Catholic Church, which is the one presided over from the Vatican.
I just did a bit of looking again, and what I found was a lot of very carefully constructed language which neither confirmed or denied any connection with the Roman Catholic Church proper, and my guess is that is intentional. That allows them to add authenticity for the more gullible, and deny legal connection when that works best.