The VA Prioritizing Illegal Immigrants

As the border crisis intensifies, veterans are now calling out the VA's role in processing medical care for illegals. Yes, you heard that right. While those who fought to protect us wait to be treated. Concerned Veterans for America is one organization calling on lawmakers to investigate. Air Force veteran Darren Selnick is one of its senior advisors. He joins us now. Darren, nobody knows VA and VA health care better than you. This story is on foxnews.com right now. Break down what's happening. Is it really the case that when someone comes across the border illegally, in some way they're using the VA to get health care services? Hey Pete, thanks for having me on your show. Yeah, it's happening. And I gotta tell you, when I found out about this a few weeks ago, it made me mad. And everyone I've talked to it makes them mad. VA's mission is to serve veterans. It's not to help ICE and the Border Patrol, which we have the documents which are on their websites and from a memo. It's not to help them go ahead and process medical claims and pay medical claims and make it easy for the unauthorized migrants to get health care and dental care. So what is happening is, and look, as someone who's a former senior advisor in the Trump administration at the VA and advisor at the White House, I would have stopped this. We would have stopped this because it's not right. The mission of the VA is to serve veterans, not to serve unauthorized migrants. And so what's happening is, and we have this from the Undersecretary of Health, he's put out in a video which I've seen, hey, make it hard for veterans. Make it hard for veterans to go ahead and get community care. But at the same time, they are processing for 2022, 161,000 medical claims and paying those claims for unauthorized migrants. Meanwhile, veterans are having a hard time getting health care. They're literally dying because they can't get mental health in a timely manner. They can't get cancer treatment. Bills are being sent to them because they're not paying the providers on time. So it's make it hard for veterans. They've told the staff to do that. Only default to the VA community care when you have to. At the same time, they're helping Border Patrol and ICE make it easy button. Easy button for unauthorized migrants, hard button for veterans. It's got to stop. Congress needs to investigate this. Last year, Mayorkas said in testimony that they were working with the VA to go ahead and expand this, possibly in medical centers. We don't know exactly how deep this is. It's got to be investigated. It's got to be stopped. That VA employee you're talking about said, press the easy button less for vets with community care. They want vets stuck inside VA facilities and not able to go outside to get care if they're waiting too long. This is a bill that was passed intentionally to fix what VA is doing so terribly. Here's a source, by the way, for this story. It's an ICE agent and a vet talking to Fox News Digital. He said, we served in the military in this country and we have these benefits to use in the VA. I pay an exorbitant amount of taxes to this country and I can't even get seen for basic needs. But illegals can. They can literally cross the border with all these pre-existing medical injuries or illnesses or whatever they have going on. And they literally walk right into a primary care doctor or specialty care doctor and get whatever services they need. And what we're learning now, Darren, is that the VA is part of facilitating the reimbursements and the payments for this. VA is denying they're involved in this, of course, but there's a VA in front of the process by which these health care providers get reimbursed for the care they're providing for illegals. No, absolutely. I mean, the documents are true. I mean, you can take a look at these documents, anyone online. There's a portal online at the ICE, which directs them to go to the VA. The VA, you know, documents show from ICE that they processed, had 161,000 medical claims. ICE says that every provider that they take the unauthorized migrant to, that the provider has to send their MedPAR, their claims, to the VA. VA is processing them. Look, VA processes it for community care. They should be spending all their time processing the claims for veterans, not for other agencies, not for unauthorized migrants. It's a fact that they are doing it. And because of that, veterans are suffering and they are the ones getting bills and providers are leaving the system. It's totally corrupt and it's got to be investigated. It's got to be stopped. You're making my blood boil just hearing that when you consider how difficult it is for a vet, first of all, to be seen at a VA facility, then to get authorized to go outside for care, then to get actually reimbursed for that because that system is so dysfunctional. Instead of focusing on making that work for vets, we're facilitating payments for illegals in this country to get medical and dental. And then the VA says nothing to see here, nothing to see here. Thank you for doing the work on this. Folks can check out the story at Foxnews.com. And I hope Congress does investigate. They need to. Darren Selnick, God bless you. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.