Grassley, whistleblowers allege Biden program places migrant children in harm’s way

Iowa U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley and federal whistleblowers are raising alarm over the government’s alleged complicity in human trafficking at the nation’s southern border.

Grassley on Tuesday led a roundtable discussion on Capitol Hill over what he says are glaring failures by President Joe Biden’s administration over its handling of unaccompanied migrant children at the southern border for lacking proper vetting of foreign nationals, leading to exploitation and abuse of children.

Speakers highlighted the need for greater oversight and accountability from the federal government to ensure their safety and well-being.

They allege Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) supervisors ignored warnings that children were being trafficked in an effort to prevent crowding at the southern border. They claim U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials overlooked and repeatedly overrode concerns from lower-level workers and knowingly placed unaccompanied migrant children with harmful sponsors, including potential labor traffickers and individuals with criminal records.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that the administration knowingly placed unaccompanied migrant children with harmful sponsors in the United States as it struggled to cope with a sudden influx of unaccompanied migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border.

HHS and White House officials did not respond to a message seeking comment Wednesday afternoon. Democrats and HHS officials did not participate in Tuesday’s roundtable.

Republican lawmakers heard from HHS whistleblower Tara Rodas. Rodas served as a federal volunteer at the Pomona Fairplex Emergency Intake Site in Pomona, California, where she helped place unaccompanied migrant children with sponsors in the United States.

Rodas said HHS prioritized speed over safety in handling migrant children. She said she saw firsthand how a lack of transparency and oversight, flawed policies and deficiencies in the Unaccompanied Children Program resulted in children being placed with suspicious sponsors and suspected trafficking rings.

Grasslsey on Thursday released internal HHS records purporting to show the department knowingly sent two unaccompanied migrant children to a household with established connections to the violent MS-13 gang.

Grassley also made public a referral he shared with federal law enforcement of evidence of potential child trafficking facilitated by HHS’ Unaccompanied Children (UC) program. Grassley, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, acquired the records through legally protected whistleblower disclosures made by former HHS UC program staff.

The records show Rodas sent an “urgent do-not-release advisory” in September of 2021 warning HHS officials and a federal contractor used to resettle unaccompanied children not to release a 13-year-old boy and his 14-year-old female cousin to the boy’s mother due to “possible current connections to gang member in the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) Hollywood clique.”

Rodas wrote the boy’s parents have MS-13 gang affiliation, and that his father was serving a prison sentence in El Salvador for crimes related to his involvement in the gang.

The mother alleged she was falsely accused of participating in organized crime and not cooperating with policy officers because she refused to tell police about gang members.

The HHS records show a case manager determined “there were no identified red flags in respect to abuse/neglect/safety concerns”

“The worker has observed a well-established relationship between the (14-year-old girl) and the sponsor,” according to the case manager’s release recommendation. “The minor appears to be joyful and calm while speaking to the sponsor. The caseworker has noticed a positive connection while they talked on the phone.”

The report also notes “a family session was completed by clinicians who agree with the case manager on reunifying” the unaccompanied migrant children, who were being held at separate emergency intake sites.

Lawmakers also heard from Deborah White, a federal employee detailed to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement.

White said she and Rodas first discovered a case of trafficking involving minors crossing the border in June 2021, but even after reporting it, “children continued to be sent to dangerous locations with improperly vetted sponsors.”

“Children were sent to addresses that were abandoned houses or nonexistent in some cases,” White said. “In Michigan, a child was sent to an open field, even after we reported making an 911 call after hearing someone screaming for help, yet the child was still sent.”

  Buy Photo

White said ORR officials never met with sponsors face-to-face and that fraudulent documents were “rampant.”

"This is the biggest failure of government that I have ever witnessed,“ she told lawmakers. ”... I plead with you to give these exploited children a fighting chance."

Rodas described sponsors who obtained children under suspicious circumstances, and sponsors who have known criminal histories to include gang affiliation.

She described the case of a 16-year-old girl from Guatemala, whose sponsor claimed to be her older brother.

“He was touching her inappropriately. It was clear her sponsor was not her brother,” Rodas said, noting that the girl “looked drugged” and as if “she was for sale” on her sponsor’s social media postings.

Rodas said the sponsor had other social media accounts containing child pornography.

“Now what keeps me up at night is wondering about the safety and well-being of children,” she said.

The pair also referenced reporting from The New York Times claiming Health and Human Services could not reach more than 85,000 children between 2021 and 2023. Overall, the agency lost immediate contact with a third of migrant children, The Times reported.

An HHS spokeswoman told The Times the agency wanted to release children swiftly for the sake of their well-being, and continually ensure that a placement is in the best interest of the child.

At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the safety of unaccompanied migrant children, the director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Center for Countering Human Trafficking testified that “HSI responds to every instance of human trafficking that [it is] made aware of as soon as [it is] made aware of it.”

Republicans have blamed the ongoing crisis on President Biden’s immigration policies, which they say have encouraged illegal migration and for parents to put their children into the hands of smugglers.

Democrats — and even Grassley — have noted that the issue predated the Biden administration, and the White House has pointed to efforts to increase oversight of sponsors, along with new task forces, greater information sharing and calls for greater funding. The administration has launched the Unaccompanied Children Office of the Ombuds, an independent office created to address concerns about government actions in the UC Bureau.

Grassley accused HHS of obstructing his investigation into child trafficking.

“The United States Congress must demand that silence be broken,” Grassley said. “I won’t tire in seeking those answers. … And as part of our next steps together, my colleagues and I’ll be requesting that Government Accountability Office conduct updated work to ensure that the HHS Unaccompanied Children program has proper internal controls. … These children deserve nothing less than our maximum effort.”

Comments: (319) 398-8499; tom.barton@thegazette.com