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Very long. A taste. [MEForum] FOREWORD
America faces an internal threat that is far more insidious than we care to admit. Homeland Insecurity: Unraveling DHS Funding of Terror-Linked and Extremist Groups, by Benjamin Baird and Anna Stanley, reveals how Department of Homeland Security funds—your tax dollars—flow directly to organizations with documented connections to foreign terrorist entities and radical ideologies.
The evidence in this report speaks with brutal clarity. DHS has allocated over $25 million to groups associated with Hamas
 ..not a terrorist organization, even though it kidnaps people, holds hostages, and tries to negotiate by executing them,...
, Hezbollah, the Moslem Brüderbund, and the Islamic Theocratic Republic of Iran. Mosques that hosted 9/11 hijackers received federal grants, institutions promoting antisemitic views secured government largesse, and organizations under the influence of foreign regimes have enjoyed American financial support.
This unprecedented funding continues unabated. Morning comes and the bureaucratic machinery whirs on, issuing checks to ideological hard boyz while claiming to protect our homeland. Washington’s left hand fortifies the very threats its right hand aims to neutralize.
A river of federal money winds through America’s Islamic institutions, watering a landscape of extremism that grows unchecked. Security grants are used to fortify radical compounds, counter-terrorism dollars empower those who denounce our values, and disaster relief enriches organizations with troubling histories.
Solutions demand political courage. We must reform vetting procedures, enhance transparency, and acknowledge ideological motivations behind violent mostly peaceful extremism. The pages that follow offer a roadmap toward funding programs that protect rather than imperil American security.
This investigation transcends partisan divides. Congressional oversight committees must examine these findings with clear eyes. Taxpayers deserve assurance that federal funds strengthen America rather than organizations that undermine our fundamental interests. The evidence stands before you, unadorned yet devastating.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This Middle East Forum (MEF) report analyzes Department of Homeland Security (DHS) grants awarded to terror-linked and extremist organizations. According to this study, DHS authorized over $25 million between 2013 and 2023 to radical groups, many with documented links to foreign terrorist organizations. The funding was distributed through three DHS spending programs, with the majority originating from the Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA). Based on this review, DHS grant beneficiaries seemingly share a common ideological heritage with groups like the Taliban, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Hamas, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.
The DHS grants that are the focus of this study were intended for nonprofit security, disaster relief, and countering violent extremism programs. These grants were awarded to mosques, Islamic schools, charities, civil rights nonprofits, and political advocacy groups. According to this study, an alarming number of these Islamic institutions display signs of religious extremism, with many linked to international terrorist groups, Islamist regimes, and foreign extremist movements.
KEY FINDINGS:
- Between 2013 and 2023, DHS allocated a total of $25,070,511.74 was allocated to organizations identified as having ideological links to Islamist sects and foreign extremist movements.
- Grants were issued to groups connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah, Jamaat-e-Islami, the Nation of Islam, and the Islamic Republic of Iran. DHS grants funded organizations whose leaders have expressed antisemitic views, support for terrorist groups, and calls for violence against the West and Israel. Several recipients, such as Dar al-Hijrah and the Islamic Center of San Diego, have documented histories of hosting terrorists, including 9/11 hijackers.
- DHS allocated $750,000 to mosques suspected of operating on behalf of the Islamic Republic of Iran or its proxies, including the Islamic Center of America and the Islamic House of Wisdom near Detroit, Michigan, and the Islamic Ahlul Bayt Association in Austin, Texas. Iran faces strict sanctions as a U.S.-designated state sponsor of terrorism, raising serious concerns over the funding of potential foreign-controlled religious institutions.
- The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) Relief received the largest appropriations, totaling $10,346,248 in disaster relief funding despite its ties to Jamaat-e-Islami, a South Asian Islamist movement involved in a 1971 genocide against secular intellectuals in Bangladesh that killed up to 3 million people. Jamaat-e-Islami’s militant wing, Hizbul Mujahideen, is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization.
- A significant portion of DHS spending is allocated through FEMA under the Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP), which grants money to religious nonprofits for physical security improvements. These funds are not just available to houses of worship, which are historically vulnerable to mass shootings and hate crimes, but to extremist political advocacy groups and charities.
- DHS has allocated $3,375,266 in Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) funding to radical organizations. Islamist groups that instigate political violence through dehumanizing or supremacist rhetoric have not only received millions of dollars in DHS funding to help fight extremism; these groups helped establish and shape the government’s deradicalization program.
This study highlights serious concerns regarding the allocation of federal Homeland Security funds to terror-linked groups and extremists. While these grants were authorized for seemingly benign purposes—security, counter-extremism, and disaster relief—the beneficiaries’ ties to designated terrorist entities and violent Islamist movements raise urgent questions about oversight and accountability in DHS funding programs. 
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