Anselmo Villarreal, nonprofit CEO who raked in $3B in Biden grants for migrant kid housing, has won $800K at high-stakes poker

He knows when to hold ’em — and when to fold ’em.

The leader of a nonprofit that cashed in on $3 billion in grants from the Biden administration and became the largest harborer of migrant kids — before President Trump yanked funding last week — is a nationally ranked poker player with upward of $800,000 in winnings.

Southwest Key Programs CEO Anselmo Villarreal, whose salary grew by 139% during the first three years of Biden’s term, boasts $801,484 in total table earnings — good for a ranking of 2,000th in the US, according to the poker database website Hendon Mob.

Nearly half of Villarreal’s pot — $398,541 — was won between 2021 and 2024 after he was appointed president of the Austin, Texas-based nonprofit.

Villarreal, who favors no-limit Texas Hold ‘Em, won his first World Series of Poker Circuit game in May 2006 at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, taking home $14,667.

The card shark went on to nab the top three slots in more than a dozen tournament championships as of 2024.

Villarreal’s biggest victory came at the DeepStack Extravaganza in February 2021, when he finished second overall with winnings of $253,441, per data on Hendon Mob and the Global Poker Index — the latter of which puts his national rank at 13,557th.

At the same time, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) was starting to dole out billions to Southwest Key to shelter the record-breaking number of unaccompanied migrant children coming into the country.

Several of the nonprofit’s executives saw their six-figure salaries double, with Villarreal’s pay surging from $491,642 in fiscal year 2021 to $1,174,551 by the end of fiscal year 2023 — a 58% increase.

Other records obtained exclusively by The Post revealed that at least a dozen other top employees had pay increases of between 10% and as high as 112% from 2021 to 2022 under former President Joe Biden.

The nonprofit had already been dinged in September 2020 by HHS’ Office of Inspector General for improperly using taxpayers’ money to boost pay and bonuses.

Biden’s Justice Department sued Southwest Key last July, alleging its employees had been sexually abusing migrant kids since 2015, but the Trump administration dropped that civil complaint last Wednesday and pulled the children out of the group’s 27 shelters in Texas, Arizona and California.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) had previously heard testimony from whistleblowers about the organization moving the migrant children off to live with unvetted sponsors in the country after leaving their shelters.

Some were thrust into “possible child-trafficking rings” and at least one resided at a house with “likely MS-13” gang-affiliated members, Grassley wrote in a February 2024 letter to Villarreal.

In a statement last Wednesday, HHS said: “Out of continuing concerns relating to these placements, HHS has decided to stop placement of unaccompanied alien children in Southwest Key facilities, and to review its grants with the organization.”

A rep for the group, who did not respond to The Post’s follow-up requests for comment, announced the same day that it was “pleased” about the DOJ dismissing its sex abuse case and “strongly denied the claims relating to child sexual abuse in our shelters.”

“There is no settlement or payment required,” the Southwest Key spokesperson said, before pointing to a Trump-imposed federal funding freeze for 5,000 layoffs at the organization.

Before working for Southwest Key Programs, Villarreal served as president of La Casa De Esperanza (the House of Hope), a Waukesha, Wisconsin-based nonprofit helping Spanish speakers with English language tutoring.

His salary in his final year at La Casa, another HHS grantee, was $253,282, fiscal year 2020 tax filings show.

Before that, Villarreal served six years as a Wisconsin-based representative on an economic commission of his native Mexico, focused on “issues related to commerce, community reinvestment, consumer protection regulations, consumer credit, financial privacy and security, electronic banking and general financial services,” according to Southwest Key Programs’ website.