CRISIS: Thousands of Migrant Children Being Sold Into Slavery—With U.S. Government as Middleman

According to a whistleblower who worked for the Department of Health and Human Services, the United States government has become a middleman in the multi-billion-dollar human trafficking industry at the border. And criminals are using the Biden administration’s politically-motivated policies to fill the quotas of slaves who are then put to work in slaughterhouses, factories, and restaurants to pay off their debts to the smugglers who brought them across the border.

“I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes. 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 [Office of Refugee Resettlement] 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 – this is why we are witnessing an explosion of labor trafficking,” whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas’s written remarks claim.

Understand that the process of vetting sponsors for these children radically changed in February 2021, shortly after Biden took office. The problem was one of optics. Unaccompanied minor children were showing up at the border in record numbers and the facilities just weren’t there to care for them. Biden’s solution was catastrophic for the children.

“They have been carelessly funneled through the custody of U.S. government agencies and contractors, and handed off to very lightly vetted sponsors (who are usually also here illegally) in our communities without regard to their safety and well-being,” Jessica Vaughn, director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies will testify.”There is no question that the system for processing minors who cross illegally is dysfunctional, and has been for some time, and needs to be fixed.”

The reason for the poor or non-existent vetting of sponsors was pure politics. The administration was terrified about the potential political fallout from having thousands of children appear on the news being held in filthy conditions, including some in cages. That is what happened when the Trump administration was faced with a similar crisis.

But Biden cared more about his political standing than the health and safety of children. And now, tens of thousands of them are slaving away for little or no pay, and the U.S. government is feeding the child labor pipeline for the cartels.

The Federalist:

Some HHS employees soon learned that “children were being released to adults who had lied about their identities, or who planned to exploit them,” the Times reported. “Adults were sponsoring multiple children, and minors were working instead of attending school.” Staff also became alarmed by how quickly they lost touch with migrant children’s whereabouts within a month of releasing them to their sponsors.

Once they were released, many migrant children (some are as young as 12) reportedly became indentured laborers. They were subjected to poor working conditions and grueling long hours in factories, fast-food restaurants, hotels, construction sites, and other business establishments throughout the United States. The only way these children could seek help was to call an HHS hotline. Consequently, reports of human trafficking to the hotline increased by about 1,300 percent over the past five years.

Up to 85,000 of these unaccompanied minor children or their sponsors can’t be contacted.

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra is trying to blame Congress for the crisis.

“I have never heard that number of 85,000, I don’t know where it comes from and … so I would say it doesn’t sound at all to be realistic, and what we do is we try and follow up as best we can with these kids,” he said.

“Congress has given us certain authorities. Our authorities end when we have found a suitable sponsor to place that child with. We try and do some follow-up, but neither the child or the sponsor is actually obligated to follow up with us,” he said.

Becerra isn’t the only administration official passing the buck. Susan Rice, who worked as Biden’s domestic policy advisor, claims that no one ever told her of any problems.

“We were never informed of any kind of systematic problem with child labor or migrant child labor,” she said.

That’s a lie, as the whistleblower and other witnesses will testify before the Judiciary Committee subcommittee today.