DHS Spent $21 Million on Conferences at the Expense of Border Security

While shocking stories were appearing in the news of Mexican cartels controlling hundreds of square miles of U.S. territory up to 70 miles north of the border, the Department of Homeland Security was spending millions of dollars on employee conferences — and hiding the total amount it was spending from government overseers.

According to an audit report by the Office of Inspector General, DHS spent $21.8 million on conferences in 2014 and 2015 combined. It failed to report more than half of the conferences on which it spent more than $100,000, as it is required to do under federal regulations.
“The mammoth agency created after 9/11 to prevent another terrorist attack fails miserably to protect the southern border, to bust dangerous visa overstays, and to remove criminal illegal aliens — but it knows how to throw a party for employees and ‘stakeholders,'” conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch wrote in a press release on July 25.