Illegal migrants coming of the U.S. border with Mexico are exploited from the moment they leave home, a nonprofit think tank policy analyst reported last month.
Kristen Ziccarelli, policy analyst at America First Policy Institute and founder of Respect Perspective, referred to congressional testimony in a post to the institute's website.
"Congressional testimony by Border Patrol Chief Gloria Chavez in 2023 revealed that illegal aliens are trapped in a system of exploitation from the moment they leave their country of origin (House Oversight, 2023)," Ziccarelli said in the post. "Cartels extort and exploit them for safe passage to the U.S., and the most vulnerable are often trapped in indentured servitude for years or the rest of their lives. Policies that encourage children’s unlawful entry benefit the extortionists, traffickers, and smugglers along the border, who line their pocketbooks as a result of the increased demand for UACs across their territory."
America First Policy Institute is a nonprofit research institute founded in 2021.
A disturbing number of migrants coming over the boarder the last two years have been children, referred to as "Unaccompanied Alien Children," UACs.
"In the past twenty-eight months, the number of UACs coming to our Southern border has skyrocketed: more than 360,000 have been apprehended overall, marking a two hundred percent increase from the two years prior," Ziccarelli said.
The 2008 Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), which connects UACs from countries other than Canada and Mexico with "sponsors" upon arrival in the US, is one of the primary problems at the border.
"Though this policy was a well-intentioned attempt to protect UACs from exploitation, it acted as a magnet for even more families to send their children to the border unaccompanied, effectively guaranteeing more business to smugglers and traffickers," Ziccarelli said.
Health and Human Services (HHS) isn't vetting sponsors so much as before President Joe Biden was elected, Ziccarelli said.
"HHS is now subjecting 'sponsors' to significantly fewer vetting procedures compared to previous administrations, and the Biden Administration is the first administration to release UACs to sponsors who refuse to submit to a background check," Ziccarelli said. "This irresponsible policy makes it easier for traffickers to pose as sponsors as HHS blindly hands UACs over to their abusers."
The Heritage Foundation backs up that assertion, reported President Donald Trump's administration authorized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to conduct DNA tests at the border on immigrants and children identified as "familial units” to combat child trafficking. More than 6,000 cases of fraudulent families resulted due to this initiative.
President Biden's administration chose to terminate the program, Ziccarelli said in the America First Policy Institute post.
"The New York Times reports that HHS caseworkers 'say they rush through vetting sponsors' and that over the last two years, the agency 'could not reach more than 85,000 children' and 'lost contact with a third of migrant children'," Ziccarelli said.
In a review on the film “Sound of Freedom” published this month by the Daily Caller, news and commentary writer Kay Smythe said the film carries a important message for our time.
The film "tells one of the most important true stories of humanity right now," Smythe said. "Aside from being well-worth the watch, the message within 'Sound of Freedom' is irrefutable: God's children are not for sale.”
It's a solid message that's hard to ignore, Smith said.
"I think you have to have something fundamentally wrong with you to walk away from 'Sound of Freedom' and not want to scream its importance from the rooftops," she said.
