Today, children will be sold for sex. 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. [Emphasis added]
I must confess; I knew nothing about their suffering until 2021 when I volunteered to help the Biden administration with the crisis at the southern border. As part of Operation Artemis, I was deployed to the Pomona Fairplex Emergency Intake Site in California to help the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) reunite children with sponsors in the U.S. [Emphasis added]
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 delivers a child to a sponsors – 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. [Emphasis added]
We now know tens of thousands of these children have been caught up in massive child smuggling and child labor operations. I am sure you have seen recent reports in the New York Times that HHS has lost touch with as many as 85,000 migrant children. Thousands of these children are now the prey of child labor criminals. [Emphasis added]
The Biden administration is morally responsible for their fate. The President lifted Title 42 restrictions on unaccompanied children in early 2021. Reporting reveals that HHS loosened vetting processes for sponsors and retaliated against whistleblowers who raised these concerns. As a result, thousands of children have been handed over to modern-day slave traders. They are forced into factory work under punishing conditions. They are forced to make auto parts, process meat in slaughterhouses, and reroof houses. They are denied food, education, and sometimes fear for their lives. They suffer sexual violence. In a country that claims to value the rule of law and the protection of children, this is unconscionable. [Emphasis added]