Some $80 million in U.S. Department of Health and Human Services grants went to extremist groups with terror ties between 2010 and 2026, according to a Middle East Forum report.
Gregg Roman, executive director of the think tank, told JNS that it’s “high time” for the Trump administration to “act to not just identify these grants, the large supermajority of which were made under the Biden administration, but to see the true purpose behind it.”
“We go into extreme detail on that,” he said.
The report states that 65% of the money went to refugee services, primarily to refugees from Afghanistan and Iraq, and that 87% was allocated during the Biden administration.
Benjamin Baird, report author and director of MEF Action, an advocacy project of the think tank, told JNS that the funding was “all rushed in the aftermath of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
“Some of the most radical and extreme organizations in America were then responsible for vetting and providing community services for people who are from a high-risk country and prone to radicalization already,” he said.
Since some were cash assistance programs, “basically they could choose to give cash to Afghan or Iraqi refugees, and then the government would reimburse them for their services,” Baird told JNS.
Other funding went to programs related to the pandemic, medical research and renovations, according to the report.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has been “dogged by allegations of extremist connections,” received more than $42 million in grants from the federal agency between 2022 and 2025, per the report. CAIR, which blamed Israel for being attacked shortly after Oct. 7, got monies from the agency for Afghan refugee resettlement and was the top recipient among the groups identified in the report.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., U.S. secretary of health and human services, said that the department is reviewing grants to CAIR after some House Republicans wrote to the department citing the group’s “deep and enduring connections to the Muslim Brotherhood and its Palestinian branch, Hamas,” per the report. (JNS sought comment from CAIR).
The letter also stated that there are allegations that CAIR’s California chapter has misused federal funds.
“In June, HHS requested a review of allegations involving CAIR National and its affiliates, CAIR-California and CAIR-Washington, regarding the use of federal grant funds,” Emily Hilliard, senior press secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, told JNS.
“Americans deserve full transparency when taxpayer dollars are involved, and HHS will take appropriate action whenever there is evidence of fraud, abuse or other violations of federal requirements,” Hilliard said.
The need for a ‘holistic review’
The report states that the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Va., received nearly $1.2 million in grants from the federal agency from 2021 to 2024 and that officials associated with the center have been linked to Hamas. (JNS sought comment from the center.)
The center has a “revolving door of resident sheikhs and imams known to promote jihadist and extremist views,” such as Anwar al-Awlaki, who was “an imam who later became one of Al-Qaeda’s most prolific recruiters before his death from a 2011 U.S. drone strike,” the report states.
Baird told JNS that the mosque received money for vaccines during the pandemic “to promote it among communities that maybe don’t have access to the vaccines.”
The center had a “coronavirus and faith” webinar series in 2020, where an imam “talked about how the coronavirus was divine punishment for Americans and Israelis, or powerful nations for attacking lesser nations,” Baird said.
The imam “even compared it to how the Quran punished Jews, for instance, for being corrupt and loaning people money, usury, that kind of stuff,” he told JNS.
The Muslim American Society Sacramento received $90,000 from the federal agency in 2024, per the report.
“The Muslim American Society, which is a Muslim Brotherhood-linked group here in the United States, received money to promote women’s health with Afghan women, Afghan newcomers,” Baird told JNS.
“Their secretary-general had to resign as an imam at a mosque for basically promoting female genital mutilation,” he said. “The Muslim Brotherhood itself has a history of promoting female genital mutilation, so not the best grant partner to talk about women’s health.” (JNS sought comment from the society.)
That secretary-general, who served from 1997 to 2004, resigned as imam of the Dar al-Hijrah Islamic Center in 2017 after his remarks on female genital mutilation and made the pandemic remarks in 2020, according to the report.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also sent $14 million to five overseas organizations, which the report described as extremist.
One organization mentioned in the report, Aligarh Muslim University in India, received $389,810 in grants from the federal agency for cancer research from 2016 to 2017. (JNS sought comment from the university.)
Baird told JNS that “there’s recent history of multiple terror cells that have been discovered at the school,” including “multiple ISIS cells and a Hizbul Mujahideen cell.”
Hizbul Mujahideen, a U.S.-designated terror organization, is the Kashmiri wing of Jamaat-e-Islami, which is “a violent Islamist movement,” per the report.
According to Baird, one possible solution is debarment. The report defines it as a federal action allowing agencies to “immediately prohibit funding while officials investigate whether certain conduct should disqualify an entity from receiving government grants and contract awards across federal agencies, for a period up to three years or longer.”
Another solution is “limitation riders,” he said.
“Every year in every appropriations bill, you can put in prohibitions on spending,” Baird told JNS. “Congress needs to pass something in the next HHS appropriations bill that says that specific groups that meet certain criteria should not be funded by HHS, and that would handle the problem indefinitely.”
Roman told JNS that many regulations aren’t being enforced.
“There has to be a holistic review of these organizations, not from what they say but from what they do when they’re acting as an agent of the federal government carrying out programs which are for the public interest,” he said. “That’s not being done right now.”
