Regular readers of PJ Media may recall that as far back as last year, we were talking about how a federal agency had been at best negligent and at worst complicit in the matter of human trafficking of minor illegal immigrants. Specifically, we told you the story of Tara Lee Rodas. Project Veritas featured two pieces about Rodas, who worked with the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity & Efficiency. She also volunteered by assisting Health and Human Services (HHS) with the Unaccompanied Children Program.
Rodas alerted HHS about how children were being sent to foster homes where they were being trafficked for labor and sex. She alerted HHS executives and was told, “‘Tara, I think you need to understand that we only get sued if we keep kids in care too long. We don’t get sued by traffickers. Are you clear? We don’t get sued by traffickers.” You can read those stories here and here.
Related: Project Veritas: HHS Complicit in Human Trafficking
It would appear that HHS is not the only agency that has had problems with the issue of child labor and illegal immigration. Bloomberg Law reports that the U.S. Department of Labor is now facing an investigation by its Office of Inspector General. The site released an August 21 memo from Carolyn Hantz at the OIG to Jessica Looman, who is the Principal Deputy Administrator for the Wage and Hour Division:
Please be advised the Office of Inspector General is initiating a review to determine the Wage and Hour Division’s efforts to curtail child labor law violations, as well as the cause for rising child labor law violations. We will contact your audit liaison to schedule an entrance conference to discuss the audit’s objective, scope, and methodology.
We plan to begin work immediately after our meeting and would appreciate your notifying appropriate agency officials of our plans. If you have questions, please contact Tracy Katz, Audit Director, at (xxx) xxx-xxxx or [email protected].
In the article, author Rebecca Rainey notes that the Department of Labor concluded 765 cases involving child labor over the last ten months. Those cases involved 4,474 children, including those in the country illegally. According to the piece, child labor violations have seen a 69% increase from 2018 to 2022. The issue involving the DOL and child labor violations has come under increasing media scrutiny. The Biden administration blames understaffing at the division and underfunding. Conversely, Republicans point toward Biden’s handling of the border situation and a lack of effort on the part of the Department of Labor.
Were this issue confined solely to the DOL, one could possibly attribute the situation to a case backlog and a lack of staff. But in light of the behavior of people at HHS, a trend seems to be emerging. To be clear, I am not implying or alleging that the people in these agencies are profiting or otherwise benefiting from these problems. There has been no evidence for that. Rather, it would appear that this administration is dedicated to keeping the borders wide open, either to create more left-leaning voters, to put the nation permanently out of balance, or simply because it is considered the “progressive” and therefore, the “right” thing to do.
The administration has been focused on letting illegal immigrants in and not on what will happen when they get here. Ask New York, Chicago, or any border town about that. Combine that with a bloated, sluggish federal bureaucracy, and you have the perfect situation in which kids become numbers and disappear between the cracks. One of the evils of unfettered immigration is that people are essentially stockpiled and turned into data. Their safety and their humanity are no longer a concern. They are bodies, even products, but not people, which, sadly enough, is part of the mindset of human traffickers.
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