by Eric Lendrum
On Wednesday, a whistleblower is set to testify before Congress with bombshell claims that the federal government has essentially become a “middleman” in a child trafficking ring along the southern border, an operation that is allegedly worth billions.
According to Fox News, the hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement will be titled “The Biden Border Crisis: Exploitation of Unaccompanied Alien Children.” The focus of the hearing will be the spike in the number of “unaccompanied children” (UACs) during the border crisis under Biden’s watch.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics indicate that the number of UACs has risen from just 33,239 in fiscal year 2020 to over 146,000 in fiscal year 2021, and 152,000 in 2022. Currently, fiscal year 2023 has already seen over 70,000 UACs encounter border authorities.
The Biden Administration’s current policy with UACs is to immediately transfer them over to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), before handing them over to the home of a sponsor, often a parent or family member who is already in the country.
The whistleblower who will testify at the hearing is Tara Lee Rodas, an HHS employee who previously served in an inspector general’s office. Also testifying are Sheena Rodriguez, the founder and president of Alliance for a Safe Texas, and Jessica Vaughn, the director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), a group that supports greater restrictions on immigration.
“Today, children will work overnight shifts at slaughterhouses, factories, restaurants to pay their debts to smugglers and traffickers. Today, children will be sold for sex,” Rodas is set to say in her written testimony. “Today, children will call a hotline to report they are being abused, neglected, and trafficked. For nearly a decade, unaccompanied children have been suffering in the shadows.”
“I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes,” her testimony continues. “Instead, I discovered that children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with being recruited in their home country, smuggled to the U.S. border, and ends when ORR delivers a child to a sponsor – some sponsors are criminals and traffickers and members of Transnational Criminal Organizations.”
“Some sponsors view children as commodities and assets to be used for earning income,” Rodas reveals. “This is why we are witnessing an explosion of labor trafficking.”
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Eric Lendrum reports for American Greatness.
