Chip Roy

A group of Republican lawmakers urged the Trump administration on Monday to ban the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim advocacy group, from receiving grants.

The 14 House members, led by Texas’s Chip Roy, asked the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to suspend and suggest banning CAIR from non-procurement programs. The organization, the lawmakers claimed, is associated with terrorists and misuses federal grant funds.

“CAIR’s status as a federal grant recipient not only jeopardizes public funds but also threatens national security by subsidizing an entity aligned with terrorist groups and extremist movements,” the Republicans wrote in a letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. “Immediate suspension is essential to prevent further harm, followed by formal debarment proceedings to bar CAIR from all federal non-procurement programs.”

The National News Desk hasn’t been able to confirm the lawmakers’ allegations. It requested comment from CAIR but hasn’t received a response.

Roy, along with other members of the group, have previously targeted Muslim activists they say are harming the U.S. The Texas Republican introduced a bill last week that would expel anyone from the U.S. who advocates for Islamic fundamentalism, communism or socialism.

The act, which is called the Measures Against Marxism’s Dangerous Adherents and Noxious Islamists (MAMDANI) Act and is named after New York City’s first Muslim mayor, would stem the “mass importation” of Islamists, Roy said.

“Why do we continue to import people who hate us? Not just for the last six years, but for the last 60 years, our immigration system has been cynically used to disadvantage American workers’ competitiveness in favor of mass-importing the third world,” the congressman claimed. “This has not just led to higher crime and lower wages, but also the promulgation of hostile ideologies fundamentally opposed to American values.”

The Pew Research Center has found that Muslims make up a small share of U.S. immigrants. Four percent of Americans born outside the U.S. told the research firm during a 2023-2024 survey that they follow Islam.

Other studies show that immigrants, most of whom assimilate to the U.S., benefit the national economy and have little effect on crime rates. Researchers with the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank on economic inequality, determined in a 2025 review that immigration grows the demand for goods and services.

“Immigration does not make the job of ensuring that there is enough demand to keep the available labor supply fully employed much more difficult because new immigrants who join the labor force also create growth in demand, which, in turn, helps create jobs,” the researchers said. “In other words, immigrants are potential workers, but they are also consumers who increase the demand for goods and services, expanding the overall economy.”