The Daily Signal - Veterans Affairs Resources Are Being Diverted to Help Illegal Aliens. Veteran Explains

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

Federal Veterans Affairs resources are being used to serve illegal aliens, says Army veteran Derick Carver. “Essentially, what's happening is, the VA was caught moving processors from the VA to support [Immigration and Customs Enforcement Health Services Corps] processing detainee medicals,” he says.  “We're talking over 1.1 million people,” said Carver, who currently serves as a graduate fellow in the Allison Center for National Security at The Heritage Foundation.  “We're talking hundreds of thousands of initial medical exams, with follow-up exams, hundreds of thousands of prescriptions being filled, dental appointments, vision appointments,” he added. “I mean, the care that the detainees are getting is better than a lot of what the veterans are getting and without … the hoops to jump through, because they just have access to this once they're detained.”  After being severely injured in Afghanistan in 2010, losing his left leg, part of his right leg, and a number of fingers, Carver became acutely aware of the issues with VA hospitals.  “I've stopped receiving care at VA [hospitals] because of just how negligent they are at times, especially with someone with my injuries and the levels of injuries that I have. It's just not feasible to receive proper care at a VA, or even at a private hospital for that matter,” Carver said. Instead, the veteran said he visits either Walter Reed Army National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, or Brooke Army Medical Center at Fort Sam Houston in Texas—neither is a VA hospital—to receive care.  Carver joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to share his personal story, discuss needed reforms for VA hospitals, and explain what steps should be taken to ensure U.S. veterans are receiving the physical, mental, and emotional care they need and deserve.  Enjoy the show! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Monday, August 12th. I'm Virginia Allen. Veterans Affairs resources are being used to serve illegal aliens. That's according to Army veteran Derek Carver. Carver served in Afghanistan and was injured. In 2010, he lost a leg and multiple fingers and had multiple shrapnel injuries. Well, his experience with Veterans Affairs was less than ideal, and he described some of those challenges.

on today's show and also explains why he believes that veterans affairs in some ways are placing illegal aliens over their own veterans. Stay tuned for my conversation with Derek Carver after this. This is Rob Lewy from The Daily Signal. In today's media landscape, it's more important than ever to have a trusted source of news and conservative commentary. That's why we are asking for your support. Your donation helps us continue our mission of delivering accurate, factual reporting on the issue that matter most to you. Whether it's $5 or $500, every contribution makes a difference. Visit dailysignal.com slash donate to help us keep Americans informed and fight for conservative values. The Daily Signal is your voice for the truth. I am so pleased to welcome to the show

today, Army veteran Derek Carver. Right now, he serves as a graduate fellow in the Allison Center for National Security at the Heritage Foundation. Derek, thanks so much for being this today. No, it's wonderful experience. Appreciate you having me. I would love to start by hearing a little bit of your background. How long did you serve in the U.S. military? I was in the Army for almost eight years. Eight years. I was medically retired in 2012 after being medevacked from Afghanistan in 2010. Okay. So you served in Afghanistan. Did you serve in Iraq as well? No, I didn't make it to that rode. I was in Afghanistan with 82nd. We deployed. That was my first deployment in about five, six months in. I had a bad day. Okay. Tell me a little bit about that. We were actually, I was a

Patoon leader at the time, and I was taking my element to actually reopen a school that the Taliban had closed. The village elder had let little girls be taught there, and the Taliban decided to make that decisive point for our AO area of operation. So we decided to reopen that school. We were going to implant a security detail. We went to clear it from IEDs, and we were actually ambushed on the way in. It was a complex ambush initiated with IEDs, and then small arms fire followed. Okay. Yeah.

So I ended up losing my entire left leg, part of my right leg, index finger on the right hand, two fused fingers on the left hand, soft tissue injury on my left arm, and then about three or four hundred pieces of shrapnel left. How long was your recovery? Technically it was like until last year because I had osteointegration, which means they do an implant into the amputated limb and do an affidated limb and they have, they have, fix a piece of metal that sticks out of the bottom that you can direct connect in. I'm in a chair because I actually broke the femur. Wow. Yeah, it doesn't happen a lot. But if it's a possibility, it'll happen to me.

Jeez. So, yeah, that was, you know, the initial recovery was 14 months inpatient. I was in the coma for a little bit, had ended up having, I lost count, but I think I'm around 70 total surgeries. 70 years. Yeah, 70 total. I had like 50 initial surgeries in the first four months, three or four months. And then after that, over the last 14 years, it's kind of, you know, basically every year I have a surgery or two.

And then like the walking and the going back for additional treatment kind of extended it. But the initial was 14 months inpatient and then another two years outpatient. I returned to duty and I was a ranger instructor at 4th RTB for like a year and a half finishing my recovery with the Army. Given that journey, all of those surgeries, 70 surgeries, what role did Veterans Affairs play in your journey in providing resources or lack thereof? So initially when I was still active in the military at Walter Reed, there was actually a good infrastructure of personnel there that actually helped mitigate a lot of the nonsense that you get from the VA. Since then, especially post-COVID, it's gotten pretty bad. VAs are very hit and missed based on where you're at in the country and what VA you attend. Certain departments aren't as bad as others.

I've had issues with prostate. Full disclosure, I've stopped receiving care at VAs because of just how negligent they are at times, especially with someone with my injuries and the levels of injuries that I have. It's just not feasible to receive proper care at a VA or even at a private hospital for that matter. So we usually go back to an MTF, which is either Walter Reed, Army National Medal, Center or BAMCC out of San Antonio, which is the Brooks Army Medical Center. Is your experience pretty similar to other veterans that you talk to where they feel like the care that they're receiving in a VA hospital is not up to par?

I get more negative feedback than positive feedback. My father, for example, is a Navy veteran. He's in New York up in the Oneon area, and he likes his VA. He doesn't have problems with it. He also doesn't have any significant injuries or a high rating. So his care is more basic and routine. Whereas the guys in my situation that I've discussed, no one's ever raved about their VA care. I mean, Walter Reed, BAMC, they do a better job. But, you know, there's still even care. You can't get mental health treatment as a veteran at BAMC. You have to go off-site through the VA. So there's a lot of nuance to each of the hospitals and how you, you know, you get your care and how you go about it.

Eventually what happens is guys will establish pathways and then tell other guys about it that use the pathways. So you find one gold, like one diamond in the rough. And that's the diamond that everybody calls to get something done. Yeah. You have your VA person for prosthetics. You have your VA person for clothing allowance and all of these things that come up year over year that you have to renew with the VA in order to receive your benefits.

You have recently just written a piece here at the Heritage Foundation on concerns over resources, VA resources being redirected to serve illegal aliens. What is happening here? So it's, there's a lot of, there's, I guess Senator Tuberville said it the best. There's a lot of word saluting going on, but essentially what's happening is the VA was caught moving processors from the VA to support HSC, which is the ICE Health Services Corps. Okay. And basically processing detainee medicals. And I mean, they're like, oh, that doesn't sound like a lot, but just in 2002, because we don't have the 2003 numbers. We're talking over 1.1 million people. We're talking hundreds of thousands of initial medical exams with following exams, hundreds of thousands

of prescriptions being filled, dental appointments, vision appointments. I mean, the care that the detainees are getting is better than a lot of what the veterans are getting, and without, especially without the hoops to jump through because they're just, they just have access to this once they're detained. Wow. Yeah. Well, so in response, you have the VA saying, no, no, no, we're not diverting resources for our veterans towards illegal aliens, but you're saying, no, no, that's actually not exactly what they said. They said, we're not diverting money or health care professionals. They were very precise because they are diverting administrative resources, but they're not diverting medical resources. And when they say that it doesn't impact veterans care,

the Terrence Hayes, the deputy secretary for the VA, also stated, it's only like 10 people. It's like, well, we have 300 plus thousand backlog, which is over 125-day delinquent claims for military and veteran personnel transitioning, plus 964,000. It might be 963, 794, but I don't want to be, like, pending. So those are within the first 125 days that'll become delinquent because there's still delinquent from the last set. Wow. So it's a lot of like smoke and mirrors, but essentially what's happening is they're taking resources generally from the VA and allocating them towards, you know, non-citizens because it's more than just illegal immigrants. It's also Afghans that we pulled out for, of Afghanistan

in 2001 when Biden brought them over. They closed an entire hospital floor at Walter Reed and put families in there and redistributed the it was typically a veterans floor, wounded warrior floor, and they put us throughout the remainder of the hospital. And we couldn't even go on that floor. Jeez. Yeah. What kind of message does that send our veterans? Well, it shows you where the priorities are for this administration.

And when you have things like recruitment going on where you're having a hard time getting the numbers and 80% of new recruits come from military or veteran families, like you're seeing the downstream effects of this neglect and this prioritization. Yeah. It's, there should be more people upset about it. Well, thankfully, you're not the only one who's upset about it. We've seen last year, the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee member, Tommy Tuberville, he introduced a bill called the No VA Resources for Illegal Aliens Act.

The bill has not been passed yet, but what exactly would this do? So what that would do is it's basically an attempt by Congress to kind of pull back the power of the purse and direct spending on what its intent is and not allow for the bureaucracy to have some wiggle room with funding or resources otherwise allocated to another population. It sounds like it would be bipartisan. It is bipartisan. There's actually veterans issues is one of the few things that Americans seem to be able to come together over this day and age.

And it's not as intense as it was previously, but the fact that it still exists shows that people still care and constituents still care about veterans. You know, it just takes one person to stand up and say this isn't right. Yeah. One of the things that you raised in the piece that you wrote for Heritage was suicide rates and concern over suicide rates being really high among veterans and why that's such a need for those resources and to make sure resources for veterans are going to veterans and not to other groups like illegal aliens.

Talk a little bit about that need to make sure we're caring not only for the physical needs of our veterans, but also the mental health needs. I mean, we're 21, 21, 20 plus years out from the start of the GWAT, the global war on terror. And the suicide rate from essentially 2003 through now is never dipped below 6,000 veterans successfully attempting suicide. So if you look at those numbers, you're up in 140,000, but that number doesn't even tell the complete picture because you have different classes. classifications for veterans' death that the VA uses, and you have essentially a non-suicidal self-injury that results in death, where it's typically an OD. That's another 20 veterans dying a day.

So even if they're not intentionally committing suicide, they're still a part of that cohort of individuals having their lives cut off really because of their service. So, I mean, when you look at numbers like that, you're talking hundreds of thousands more than they're claiming that just aren't being accounted for. That's not even taking into consideration the way that states record suicides in the veteran communities. What requirements are necessary to actually do diligence to determine whether that person is a veteran, why they suicided, and what the process was bringing them to that point.

Is there any sort of assessment that's done for our service members when they're getting out to say, okay, let's look at not only how you're doing physically, but how are you doing mentally and then are they given if it's shown okay you definitely have PTSD you're definitely struggling these are resources available for you is that made clear so it it exists however it's not made clear and it's kind of a check the box process especially for and it's on both sides you know the military personnel share some blame because when they're out processing they're like hey I just want to get out like they go through ACAP they go through all of the the med board processes to get their ratings and their assessments on their physical

mental and emotional well-being. But no one understands the process. It's convoluted. There's no clear answers as far as what resources they're going to have available to them once they, ETS, exit terminal service. Once they exit military service, they get to wherever they live. If they have, if their VA or their extended network have that capability, then they can use it. If not, then they have to travel in order to get it. In some instances, the VAs won't have a prosthetics department, which means you have to bypass that one and go to the next VA. That's not even accounting for, is it a good VA? Like, do you have a job? Do you have a family? Like, do you have a life? And these are all things that it's just the background to that individual getting the care that they need.

It's one more obstacle preventing them from getting that. So what are the core things that right now, if you were sitting down with members of Congress, members of the Biden administration to say, hey, these are the core things we really need to tackle to make sure our veterans are getting the resources that they need. I think the no VA resources for illegal aliens is a good act. I think supporting that, I think increasing accountability and decreasing the bureaucracy within the VA system will go a long ways. And I think the more choice that you can push down to the individual.

the better the better the care will be because I mean essentially a bureaucrat dictating care to an individual versus an individual understanding of care that they need are two different things and two different approaches to the problem and right now we're doing a lot of the former so I think that any time that you have a veteran who's probably been to war probably led men in combat and or fought in combat and like lives this this experience every day is the best place to start. Yeah. Yeah.

That's critical. Well, Derek, thank you. Really, really appreciate your time today. Appreciate the work that you're doing here at the Heritage Foundation. I want to encourage everyone to check out your work at heritage.org. Any final thoughts, Derek, before we let you go. Hey, look, there's a lot going on in the world, and there's a lot of reasons for people to feel divided.

I think that causes, like, veterans issues for the individuals that sign the blank check and volunteer. to go fight our nation's wars regardless of how you feel about them, like we made a promise to those people and we should ensure that we're maintaining and keeping that promise to them because as said, there are secondary impacts to not keeping that promise. Never mind the recruitment numbers, never mind the all volunteer force being at risk, but you have, you have people's lives at stake that depend on this that went and made a sacrifice that are essentially being for. forgotten. And the further we get from each of these, each of these different conflicts,

the more likely that is to happen. And we just have to make sure that we're there for those people. Army veteran and graduate fellow at the Heritage Foundation, Derek Carver. Derek, thanks for time. Oh, appreciate it. Thanks for much. With that, that's going to do it for today's show. Thanks for joining us here on the Daily Signal podcast. Make sure to be back with us at 5 p.m. for top news where we bring you the top news of the day. These are the headlines that you don't want to miss to stay informed on what's happening in our world. And if you would, hit that subscribe button so you never miss out

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