The Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement held a hearing on Wednesday, April 26, to discuss child trafficking and the exploitation of unaccompanied alien children. Dubbed the “Biden Border Crisis,” the hearing was one of several the Republicans have planned to hold the president and his administration accountable for the surge of illegal aliens and the treatment of migrant kids under his watch.
Chair Tom McClintock (R-CA) came out strong in his opening statement, placing the blame solely in the commander-in-chief’s hands:
“On inauguration day, our border was secure, Remain in Mexico policy had slowed illegal immigration to a trickle, court ordered deportations were being enforced, and the border wall was nearing completion. By the afternoon of that day, Joe Biden had reversed these policies, producing the largest illegal mass migration in history.”
McClintock said that 1.5 million known got aways have entered the country illegally. “That is an additional illegal population larger than the entire state of Hawaii,” he explained. The committee chair then used Donald Trump’s administration to show just how poorly the Biden administration has handled the crisis. The policies in place under the previous presidency slowed encounters of unaccompanied children to 33,000, “the lowest level in eight years,” he stressed, adding that just in the last fiscal year, “a record 152,000 came across; that’s almost a five-fold increase.” And then to really drive the point home, McClintock said:
“Biden had exactly the same tools available to him as Trump, so it should be obvious that this is a deliberate policy that ignores not only the welfare of Americans, but that of the migrant children as well.”
Ranking Member Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) talked about how she came to the United States at the age of 16 and blamed the Republicans for laws that are too strict, saying they’re part of the problem. “Unfortunately, between the hearings that we have held and the cruel, extreme, and unworkable legislation that was marked up last week, this majority is once again showing that they are not serious about finding real solutions to fix our complex immigration system,” she said.
Witnesses Call for Action to Stop Child Trafficking
During the hearing, there were four people who gave testimonies, including whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas, a federal inspector general employee from the Department of Health and Human Services. She explained her first-hand experiences with how unaccompanied children were given to sponsors, many of whom had not been vetted and were actually part of human smuggling organizations. “I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes,” she said. “Instead, I discovered that children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with being recruited in home country, smuggled to the US border, and ends when ORR delivers a child to a sponsor – some sponsors are criminals and traffickers and members of transnational criminal organizations.”
Furthermore, she added:
“Whether intentional or not, it can be argued that the US Government has become the middleman in a large scale, multi-billion-dollar child trafficking operation run by bad actors seeking to profit off the lives of children.”
Jessica Vaughn, another witness, is the director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration studies. Like McClintock, she puts the blame on Biden for erasing many of the Trump-era regulations. “Not surprisingly, the number of illegal border crossers has exploded, in response to what the migrants call Biden’s ‘invitacion,’” she said.
Vaughn also accused the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) of “intentionally” reversing procedures that helped to ensure the migrant children’s safety, such as background checks on sponsors, monitoring after the child has been placed, and other investigative measures. She cited a report from the Grand Jury, saying “Some ‘children’ are not children at all, but full-grown predatory adults; some are already gang members or criminal actors,” adding others are forced into prostitution and some are “recycled to be used as human visas by criminal organizations.” She added, “Biden officials have been clear that they are more interested in moving UACs [unaccompanied children] through the system as quickly as possible than they are concerned about the safety and well-being of the minors in their custody.”
Sheena Rodriguez is the founder and president of Alliance for a Safe Texas. For two years, she traveled the Arizona and Texas borders and interacted with the immigrants. Rodriguez provided eyewitness testimony of several events around the border and said people are coming to the country because they are being sold the promise that they will easily be accepted, and many have “no fear of retribution or being turned away if they were with children.” She ended her testimony with a request that action be taken and responsible parties be held accountable:
“I am calling on Congress to investigate the actions of DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, and Border Czar Vice President Kamala Harris and to identify their role in facilitating the abuse of children through federal agencies and demand they be held accountable.”
Bob Carey was the director of ORR in the Administration for Children and Families in the DHHS for just under two years between 2015 and 2017. He suggested more funding for programs already in place and legal advice for unaccompanied children, which he said is especially crucial for those caught in workplace harassment or child labor exploitation.
While everyone agreed that something needed to be done to protect the innocent from child trafficking and other crimes, the ideas of how to accomplish that are vastly different. Republicans want stricter immigration policies while the left wants more money for programs already in place. Both, however, acknowledged the responsible parties should be brought to justice. Whistleblower Vaughn argued:
“When we reach the point where migrants understand that there is no point in entering an agreement with a criminal smuggling organization or a labor trafficker, or even attempting to illegally join a family member in the United States, because such illegal entry and employment will not be tolerated and result in the consequence of being sent home promptly, then the smugglers and traffickers will have few clients, and the government agencies will have a much greater ability to deal with a far fewer number of exploitation cases.”
