U.S. Representative Glenn Grothman (R-WI-06) led a congressional hearing this week seeking answers on how the Biden administration could lose track of more than 85,000 unaccompanied children it allowed to illegally enter the U.S
Robin Dunn Marcos, director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, had a hard time answering basic questions, highlighting the administrative nightmare behind President Joe Biden’s disastrous border policies.
“President Biden’s open borders agenda has created a humanitarian crisis that encourages the trafficking of migrant children in the United States,” Grothman, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs, said in his opening statements Tuesday. The hearing was on “Oversight of the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Unaccompanied Alien Children Program.”
The Biden Admin's policies have led to historic encounters of unaccompanied alien children.
"A recent @nytimes report indicates that ~2/3 of all UAC work illegal full-time jobs."@RepGrothman opens hearing on how the #BidenBorderCrisis endangers migrant children.
WATCH 👇 pic.twitter.com/z0Zo7udHvj
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) April 18, 2023
Since Biden took office, there have been more than 4.8 migrant encounters at the southwest border, not including the approximately 1.3 million “gotaways” who slipped past law enforcement and entered the U.S. undetected, according to federal data.
In the fiscal year 2021, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security reported more than 1.7 million encounters with inadmissible aliens on the southwest border. That number soared more than 40 percent to 2.4 million encounters.
“This unprecedented national security and humanitarian crisis has overwhelmed federal officials and endangered the well-being of unaccompanied and migrant children as a result,” said committee member U.S. Representative Jake LaTurner (R-KS-02).
In declaring the Biden administration’s “catch and release” policy illegal, Florida U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell last month said the lax parole policy has “effectively turned the Southwest Border into a meaningless line in the sand and little more than a speed bump for aliens flooding into the country.” The judge blocked the continued implementation of the Department of Homeland Security’s memo authorizing “alternatives to detention” to ease overcrowding in detention facilities.
Drug cartels are making a killing off of the human misery, charging illegal border crossers exorbitant fees to move them through Mexico and, ultimately, into the United Sates. While most illegal immigrants are single adults, many are children — more than 250,000 in the past two years, according to federal officials. Many of those kids have been unaccompanied by a caring adult or guardian.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered a record 152,000 minors in fiscal year 2022, 334,000 in the previous 26 months, according to the agency.
Grothman noted a report from the Florida Department of Children and Family Services, in which agents interviewed unaccompanied children who were eventually connected with sponsor families by the Biden administration’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. One child said several members of her group — led by cartel coyotes — were attacked, robbed, raped, some murdered, some decapitated. The child disclosed that she was a victim of rape.
Other reports reveal poorly vetted sponsors exploited the migrant children in their care. A Florida grand jury identified several abuses of migrant children. They found evidence of unaccompanied children fleeing sponsor adults who were selling them for sex. One child was found to have been offered to men for sex by her “aunt,” a woman she had never met. One sponsor had previously served time for felony battery of a child.
“The Department of Health and Human Services has a statutory obligation to care for unaccompanied alien children referred into its custody by the Department of Homeland Security. They must be placed in the care of appropriate sponsors in the U.S. who are capable of providing for their physical and mental well-being,” Grothman said. “Too often that is not happening.”
Instead, reports indicate DHHS Secretary Xavier Becerra has driven a culture at the Office of Refugee Resettlement that “prioritizes assembly line speed in releasing unaccompanied children,” Grothman added.
The New York Times earlier this year reported that Health and Human Services lost track of more than 85,000 alien children.
“Could the 85,000 number be right that The New York Times has? We don’t know where 85,000 unaccompanied minors wound up?” Grothman asked Marcos. The Refugee Resettlement director began to say the agency “doesn’t track or monitor…”
“The answer is no,” Grothman broke in. “There are 85,000 kids who came across the border, we don’t know [where they are]. Is that right? Apparently, it is.”
Marcos offered a mealy-mouthed answer, saying her office “works within the statutes and authorities and resources provided.”
In his opening statements, the congressman said he was particularly aggravated by the media’s failure to cover the horrors going on with the unaccompanied alien children under the Biden administration’s care. He noted the full force of the press was “screaming about broken (alien) families” during the Trump presidency.
“Today I want to find out a little bit more how the unprecedented levels of illegal border crossings, incentivized by President Biden’s policies, have led to historic encounters of unaccompanied alien children that have overwhelmed ORR and endangered migrant children,” Grothman said. “Also I want to examine ORR’s efforts moving forward to ensure adequate care and safe discharge of these children into the care of appropriately vetted sponsors.”
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Glenn Grothman” by Oversight Committee.
