Witnesses tell House panel U.S.-funded NGOs and U.N. programs helped migrants traverse Latin America; some testimony hedges on direct criminal collusion

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, told the House Oversight subcommittee that U.S. taxpayer funding flowed through a network of U.N. agencies and nongovernmental organizations that created a logistics corridor enabling migrants to travel from South America through Central America to the U.S. border.

Krikorian described that network as a "Regional Refugee and Migrant Response Plan" in which NGOs and some U.N. agencies provided food, shelter, travel information and other assistance at multiple staging points along irregular migration routes. He told the panel that the arrangement included "way stations" in northwestern Colombia such as Necoclí, services near the Gulf of Urabá and camps in southern Mexico near Tapachula.

Why it matters: Committee Republicans cited the accounts as evidence that U.S. foreign assistance funded services that had the practical effect of facilitating irregular migration. That claim, if supported by documentary…