PHILADELPHIA, July 22, 2026 – The Middle East Forum has published the results of a pioneering study (click here) of Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) grants to terror-linked and extremist groups, exposing nearly $80 million in taxpayer-funded grants to a cohort of foreign and domestic Islamist organizations. “Health and Human Services Hidden Handouts: Exposing Millions in Federal Funding to Radical Islamist and Terror-Linked Organizations” is MEF’s third report in a series of audits that have uncovered systemic federal grant abuses, resulting in congressional hearings, debarment investigations, and massive funding cuts across executive branch agencies.
HHS, the largest grant-making agency in the federal government, is a cabinet-level department responsible for administering healthcare policies and essential social services. The agency manages a vast social welfare portfolio, distributing competitive grants to local organizations, which fill critical service gaps in medical care, welfare, and job and family programs. Historically, modern Islamist factions exploit government shortcomings in social services, building political power by establishing health clinics and community centers, and by using these parallel state structures to recruit and radicalize generations of Islamist followers.
In the United States, HHS has subsidized this system of community dependence, granting $79,045,396 to 14 Islamist organizations for programs ranging from refugee assistance and coronavirus vaccinations to substance abuse therapy and mosque renovations.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) was the top recipient among Islamist groups, MEF found, collecting $42.2 million in HHS-originated funding to provide legal and social services to Afghan refugees. In June, HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. announced a debarment investigation against CAIR to determine whether the nonprofit should be prohibited from federal funding. HHS’s probe followed months of MEF advocacy and outreach urging the agency to review CAIR’s terror links and alleged grant abuses tied to the Afghan resettlement program.
Among the 14 Islamist groups in MEF’s report, 65 percent of HHS funding was allocated towards refugee services, mostly to Afghan and Iraqi refugees. The Islamic Circle of North America’s humanitarian wing, ICNA Relief, also collected $10.6 million from HHS, much of it to help refugees, in some cases as part of cash assistance programs. Alarmingly, ICNA represents the American branch of Jamaat-e-Islami, a theocratic Islamist movement responsible for violence across South Asia.
Many of HHS’s awards to extremists defy logic. The Muslim American Society’s Sacramento chapter received $90,000 to promote women’s health literacy. A federal appeals court has called the Muslim American Society the “overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America,” a global Islamist movement whose leaders have promoted Female Genital Mutilation, the removal of external female genitalia in honor-based Islamic societies.
Dar Al-Hijrah, a Northern Virginia mosque that once helped a pair of 9/11 hijackers find housing, received nearly $340,000 in HHS sub-grants to promote coronavirus vaccines among ethnic communities experiencing healthcare disparities. Yet, the mosque held a “Coronavirus and Faith Series” in 2020 where Shaker Elsayed, a former imam, taught that COVID-19 caused “less damage than the flu” and was divine punishment that was “earned” by “powerful nations,” in the same way that the Quran promised “severe and painful torment” for “the injustices of the Jewish community.”
For an agency tasked with domestic health policy, HHS sends a substantial amount of funding to overseas groups, including $14 million to five extremist organizations highlighted in MEF’s study.
For an agency tasked with domestic health policy, HHS sends a substantial amount of funding to overseas groups, including $14 million to five extremist organizations highlighted in MEF’s study. Taxpayer funds went to a Palestinian pollster with historical links to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. News reports later showed that the pollster’s data may have been corrupted by Hamas militants. HHS handouts went to a West African college to study the plight of homosexual Muslim men living with HIV; the same Senegalese university recorded at least ten cases over four years of homophobic student mobs hunting down suspected gay students.
“Despite their noble-sounding missions, these grants provide radical organizations with legitimacy, resources, and access to vulnerable populations, including newly arrived refugees from high-risk regions,” said Benjamin Baird, the author of the report and director of MEF Action at the Middle East Forum. “American taxpayers should not be subsidizing groups that undermine the very values of safety and well-being HHS claims to uphold.”
The report notes that 87 percent of the identified funding, or $68.5 million, occurred between 2022 and 2025, grants approved under the Biden-Harris administration. MEF’s study concludes with urgent policy solutions built on the Forum’s Four Ds framework: Debarment, Delisting, Derisking, and Designating. The federal government must immediately suspend and debar every organization named in this report under 2 CFR § 180 and ban them from federal grants and contracts government-wide. Congress and the states must delist terrorist-supporting nonprofits, stripping their tax exemptions and, on the Tennessee model, their corporate registrations. Regulators must defend the derisking tools banks use to catch terror finance and reject the pro-Islamist lobby that seeks to dismantle them. The Treasury and State Departments must designate the foreign movements behind these charities, from Jamaat-e-Islami to the Amal Movement, and force their American proxies to sever ties or face sanctions. With 70 percent of the funding routed through sub-grants and pass-through agencies, MEF also demands mandatory terrorism vetting at every tier of the award chain before another taxpayer dollar moves.
“Washington took the most vulnerable people on earth, refugees who fled the Taliban, and delivered them into the hands of the organizations most likely to radicalize them,” said Gregg Roman, executive director of the Middle East Forum. “That is not compassion. That is a recruitment pipeline built at public expense, and every official who signed these awards owns it.”
In February 2025, MEF published the results of a study exposing $164 million in U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) foreign assistance grants to radical, terror-linked groups. MEF’s findings led to congressional hearings and contributed to the Trump administration’s decision to effectively shut down USAID. Next, MEF produced a report detailing $25 million in Department of Homeland Security grants to extremists, many with ties to terrorism. One month later, DHS announced $8 million in cuts to 49 grant programs, attributing the decision to MEF’s report.
“American taxpayers should not be forced to bankroll Islamist networks that exploit refugee programs, spread dangerous misinformation, and undermine the very health and security HHS claims to protect,” Roman added. “It is time to defund these extremists and reclaim our government from radical capture.”
Read the full report: https://www.meforum.org/mef-reports/health-and-human-services-hidden-handouts
About the Middle East Forum
The Middle East Forum is a Philadelphia-based applied policy research organization. The Forum promotes American interests in the Middle East and protects the West from Middle Eastern threats.
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