During a recent House subcommittee meeting, members on both sides of the aisle agreed that more needed to be done to stop a recent surge in unaccompanied children crossing the southern border, but each side blamed the other for the situation.
The House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement conducted a hearing Wednesday to investigate the surge and how open-border policies contribute to their exploitation, titled the “Biden Border Crisis: Exploitation of Unaccompanied Alien Children."
Committee Chairman Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) said the Biden administration’s response to the situation “basically is, don’t know, don’t care.”
McClintock cited a New York Times investigation, which found that over the last two years, one month after placing children with an adult, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “could not reach more than 85,000 children” and the “agency lost immediate contact with a third of migrant children,” according to information shared by Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee. The report also quoted The New York Times that managers at the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) were “worried that labor trafficking was increasing” and that the office had become “one that rewards individuals for making quick releases, and not one that rewards individuals for preventing unsafe releases."
McClintock also noted that a 2008 bill mandates “while children from Mexico and Canada are immediately sent safely home, all other children are admitted. That’s a tremendous incentive to send unaccompanied children to the border,” he said.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) expressed doubt of those numbers.
“Are those children actually lost?” she asked witness Bob Carey, former director of ORR, who responded that “upwards of 70% were going to their parents.”
Witness and former HHS worker and whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas said that often times, migrant children are placed with "sponsors" who are ostensibly relatives, but in reality the sponsors are more than likely facilitators who brokered their trafficking. Rodas, a Federal Inspector General employee, said many children are smuggled at a cost, then are forced into unsafe jobs “working overnight shifts” to “pay their debts to smugglers.”
Carey said that frequently, when an HHS worker calls to confirm a child’s well-being, many of those calls go unanswered or unreturned.
“I don’t believe not answering a call constitutes a lost child,” Carey said.
Under the Biden administration, officials are focused on moving children out of government care, and the system emphasizes "speed over safety," Rodas said, adding "speed is the wrong performance measure when dealing with children."
Carey noted that with the budget crisis, the possibility of cuts to HHS or the ORR would be damaging, as both departments need more funding to accurately follow migrant children who enter the country. Rodas said that as of now, HHS has "no authority … to hold the sponsor accountable."
While each side blamed the other over the crisis, Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-TX) said the argument was moot because of its divisive nature.
“Let’s not pretend this is a serious hearing wanting to help children," she said, adding that “any system is imperfect, but it’s balancing the need" between border security and giving aid to migrants who do cross the border that is at stake, and finding a bipartisan solution is the only option.
Other witnesses included Sheena Rodriguez, founder and president, Alliance for a Safe Texas; and Jessica Vaughn, director of policy studies, Center for Immigration Studies.
