A Daily Telegraph review found that Washington state funneled more than $1 million in taxpayer funds to an American Muslim group suspected of having links to radical Islamic terrorists.
Since January 2023, the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Washington State (CAIR-WA) has received nearly $1.3 million in federal funding to help Afghan refugees immigrate to the United States. The funds, awarded by the state as part of the federal refugee resettlement program, have spurred the growth of CAIR’s Washington chapter.
“When I arrived here in December 2020, our team had six employees,” CAIR-WA executive director Imraan Siddiqi wrote in the organization’s 2025 annual report. “Fast forward to today, we will be at 20 employees in 2026.” Siddiqi noted that the organization plans to expand even further, “hiring a deportation defense attorney and a detention coordinator to help fight back against unjust detention cases.”
CAIR is the largest Muslim group in the United States, with 25 chapters across the country. In 2008, the Justice Department named the group an “unindicted co-conspirator” of the Hamas front group the Holy Land Foundation. Late last year, the governors of Texas and Florida declared CAIR a terrorist organization. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who opposed CAIR in Congress, claimed at a 2025 hearing that the organization was formed to support the Muslim Brotherhood and that “many individuals associated with CAIR actively assist in terrorist and criminal activities.”
A spokesperson for CAIR told The Telegraph the organization does not receive any funding from the federal government. When asked about the group’s links to the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, it referred The Telegraph to its “Clear Rumors About CAIR” page, which states that “efforts to link CAIR to the so-called ‘Muslim Brotherhood’ memo are pure McCarthyism” and that “CAIR has always condemned violence against civilians – including that of October 7”.
Nihad Awad, the organization’s co-founder and executive director, said he was “pleased” to see Hamas attack Israel on October 7, 2023, a statement that led the Biden administration to remove CAIR from its “Combating Anti-Semitism” task force.
The contract between CAIR-WA and the Washington Department of Social and Health Services was signed in July 2022 and extended to September 2026, according to a contract amendment reviewed by The Daily Telegraph.
Total federal funding provided to CAIR-WA is $1,351,897.67. Approximately 90 percent of the funds are used to pay for services and administrative costs, including hiring immigration attorneys, immigrant rights administrators, and immigration legal assistants. The contract stipulates that CAIR-WA will hire new employees to fulfill the contract requirements.
CAIR-WA called “salary and benefits for our talented employees” its “largest expense to date” in its 2023, 2024 and 2025 annual reports.
Screenshot of the contract between CAIR-WA and the Washington Department of Social and Health Services
The state fiscal transparency website shows that since January 2023, CAIR-WA has received $1,286,859 from Washington State. The organization reported total annual revenue of $1,154,807 in 2023 and $1,416,078 in 2024, according to public financial documents. According to the Fiscal Transparency website, in 2023, CAIR-WA received $406,157 from the Washington Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), accounting for more than 35% of its annual revenue; in 2024, CAIR-WA received $429,917 from the Washington Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS), accounting for more than 30% of its annual revenue.
The funds come from the Afghanistan Supplemental Appropriations Act, which is intended to help Afghan evacuees resettle in the United States after the Biden administration’s disastrous troop withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021. The Biden administration is bringing some 76,000 Afghans to the United States for resettlement as part of Operation Welcome Allies, a program that has come under scrutiny for allowing Afghan nationals to live in the country without proper vetting.
A 29-year-old Afghan national who entered the United States through the Operation Welcome Ally program in 2021 shot and killed two National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C., in November 2025. The terror attack influenced President Donald Trump’s move to freeze all Afghan immigration. A September 2026 report from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General found that there was a 40% error rate in the adjudication of Operation Welcoming Allies (OAW) asylum files it reviewed. The report found that most errors involved incomplete files or missing aliases.
CAIR-WA contracts with the state of Washington to provide “direct immigration-related legal services” to Afghan immigrants, which includes determining clients’ eligibility for services and completing intake forms for review by the Department of Health.
“Contractors providing direct client assistance must conduct the following activities: conduct initial interviews with applicants and complete consent forms, preliminary case evaluations, and intake forms to collect necessary personal information and determine eligibility for services,” the contract states. “Contractors will provide their own case evaluation and intake forms and share them with DSHS for review.”
CAIR-WA’s initial contract was to provide immigration-related legal services and recruitment to 60 participants, pro bono legal services to 150 participants, and “outreach and education services” to 500 people. During the life of the contract, the deliverables of the contract were modified multiple times.
A contract update in September 2025 shows that the performance target has been changed to provide 140 sets of “direct immigration-related legal services” to 80 individuals. A “service unit” is defined as “a single interaction with a program participant on a variety of immigration-related legal services topics, including all case management activities, completion and submission of all applications, all family reunification activities, and all other eligible activities.”
According to its website, CAIR-WA currently operates an “Immigration Justice Project” that provides legal services “specifically to Muslims in Washington state” who need help dealing with deportation and security issues or who are seeking affirmative asylum.
The Daily Telegraph asked CAIR-WA whether immigration justice program staff were paid with taxpayer funds, but received no response.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote in a June 2026 X post that his agency had requested a review of CAIR’s use of federal funds.
“In June, HHS requested a review of allegations involving the use of federal grant funds involving CAIR National and its affiliates CAIR-California and CAIR-Washington,” a department spokesperson told The Daily Telegraph. “Americans deserve full transparency when it comes to taxpayer dollars, and HHS will take appropriate action whenever there is evidence of fraud, abuse, or other violations of federal requirements.”
HHS has requested a review of allegations involving @CAIRNational and its affiliates @CAIRCalifornia and @CAIRWashington regarding the use of federal grant funds. Americans deserve complete transparency when it comes to taxpayer dollars. We will take action if there is evidence of fraud, abuse of power or links to designated terrorist organizations.
I have shared these concerns with @SecRubio and encourage @StateDept to conduct a full review of any information related to this matter.
Accountability is not optional. It is our responsibility to protect the integrity of federal programs.
— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) June 9, 2026
The Washington State Council on American-Islamic Relations did not respond to The Daily Wire’s request for comment. The Washington State Department of Social and Health Services did not provide comment to The Daily Telegraph.