Durham Reporter

The president of the League of American Workers (LAW) urged members of the U.S. House Financial Services Committee to ask the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) director if he supports U.S. financial institutions providing mortgages to illegal aliens.

“Does CFPB Director Chopra work for American citizens or for illegal aliens?” LAW president and founder Steve Cortes told Durham Reporter. “He must be asked about taxpayer support for mortgages for non-Americans.”

Rohit Chopra, director of the CFPB, will testify before the U.S. House Financial Services Committee this Thursday in his “semi-annual report” to the committee.

His testimony comes two weeks after Restoration News reported that the North Carolina-based Latino Community Credit Union (LCCU), a tax-exempt 501(c)(14) nonprofit that has received over $11 million in taxpayer-funded grants from the federal government during the last decade, is providing mortgages to illegal aliens.

“Restoration News spoke directly with a LCCU representative about what would be needed for an ‘undocumented immigrant’ to obtain a mortgage,” reported Victoria Manning. “We were provided with this link and were informed the client would ‘need to have at least a tax ID’ and they even offered to process the tax ID on behalf of the client.”

LCCU Co-Founded by Self-Help Credit Union

LCCU was co-founded in 2000 by a number of North Carolina organizations, including Durham-based Self-Help Credit Union. 

Vicky Garcia, LCCU’s current president and CEO, also served on Self-Help’s board of directors from January 2018 to January 2020, according to her LinkedIn profile. 

Self-Help was founded by Durham resident Martin Eakes, who also is the CEO and founder of the Center for Community Self-Help, Self-Help Ventures Fund, and Center for Responsible Lending (CRL).

CRL has received more than $2 million from left wing political activist George Soros, and more than $25 million from a foundation started by a North Carolina couple who Time Magazine ranked among “25 people to blame from the (2008) financial crisis.”

Eakes is the registered agent for at least 65 different single-member limited liability companies (LLCs) in North Carolina. Many of the LLC have near identical names, such as Self-Help Investor III, Self-Help Investor IX, and Self-Help Investor X, and so on. 

Collectively, Eakes’ non-profits received $502,198,329 through the various awards programs run by the U.S. Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund), reported Durham Reporter on March 14. 

Self-Help Ventures Fund alone received $277,989,503 in federal awards for 107 separate projects through just one of the CDFI programs, called the New Markets Tax Credit program, between 2004 and 2020.

LCCU also received funds via the CDFI program, reported Restoration News, in teh form of a $99 million low-interest loan granted through the U.S. Treasury Department’s Emergency Capital Investment Program. Those loans are only available to entities approved through the CDFI program.

The CFPB and Illegal Alien Mortgages

U.S. Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and Republican members of the U.S. Senate Banking Committee last November sent a letter to Chopra and U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland urging Chopra and Garland to “reconsider” their joint statement that encouraged financial institutions to provide mortgages to illegal aliens.

“Financial institutions are right to be concerned that they may never see a return on loans issued to illegal immigrants,” said Vance in a statement. “If someone is deported to their home country, how is a bank in Ohio supposed to recoup the loan it was forced to issue? The federal government should be cracking down on illegal immigration – not encouraging more of it.” 

Cortes said that a non-profit, such as LCCU, that provides mortgages to illegal aliens after receiving $11 million in taxpayer funding, “is outrageous and unjust.”

“Hard working Hispanics who are American citizens - whether native born or legally naturalized - will never accept this kind of preferential treatment for people who jumped the line and trespassed into America,” said Cortes, whose father emigrated to the U.S. from Colombia.

Chopra’s testimony before the U.S. House Financial Services Committee is scheduled to take place this Thursday, June 13 at 10 a.m. Eastern.