WASHINGTON, D.C. –– The House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement Chairman Clay Higgins (R-LA) and Subcommittee on Oversight, Accountability, and Investigations Chairman Dan Bishop (R-NC) will hold a hearing on November 19, 2024, at 2:00 PM ET, to hear from experts on how the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement’s (ORR) processing of unaccompanied alien children (UACs) has led to an increasing number of missing and exploited children. An HHS whistleblower will testify about the deeply flawed, inadequate process by which HHS places UACs with “sponsors” around the country and the coordination and information-sharing between DHS and HHS. This hearing was originally scheduled for Thursday, September 26, 2024, at 2:00 PM ET.

Under the Biden-Harris administration, Customs and Border Protection has encountered more than 500,000 UACs at the Southwest border. In August, DHS investigators released a heart-breaking report concluding that since Fiscal Year (FY) 2019, more than 291,000 UACs out of nearly 450,000 transferred from DHS custody to HHS, were not given Notices to Appear. The more than 32,000 who received notices failed to appear for their immigration hearing. Of those 291,000, more than 90,000 were encountered in FY 2021 alone. 
 
“The Biden-Harris administration has failed every step of the way in protecting these children from victimization amid this historic, self-inflicted border crisis, effectively enabling human trafficking and exploitation of countless innocent children,” Chairmen Higgins and Bishop said. “President Biden and Vice President Harris’ open-borders policies have caused real trauma and human suffering––from the dangerous journey these children make to our borders in the hands of criminal cartels to the abuse they face once released into the interior. It is unconscionable that HHS continues to fail to properly vet sponsors, and that the Biden-Harris administration has simply lost track of over a hundred thousand of UACs. The American people deserve to know the true human cost of the Biden-Harris border crisis. Our witnesses this week will reveal the extent of this administration’s failure to protect the most vulnerable among us.”

DETAILS:

What: A joint hearing by the Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement and Subcommittee on Oversight, Accountability, and Investigations entitled, “Trafficked, Exploited, and Missing: Migrant Children Victims of the Biden-Harris Administration.”

When: November 19, 2024, at 2:00 PM ET

Where: 310 Cannon House Office Building
 
WITNESSES:

J.J. Carrell
Private Citizen, retired Deputy Patrol Agent in Charge, U.S. Border Patrol

Alicia Hopper
Private Citizen, Consultant on Human Trafficking, Sadulski Enterprises, LLC

Kathy Larin
Director of Education, Workforce, and Income Security, United States Government Accountability Office

Tara Rodas
Private Citizen, former Deputy to the Director of the Federal Case Management Team, HHS

Witness testimony can be found here. The hearing will be livestreamed on YouTube and will be open to the public and press

BACKGROUND:
 
Following the revealing August 2024 DHS OIG report of the Biden-Harris administration’s poor handling of UACs, Chairman Green subpoenaed HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra on September 26, 2024, for documents and information regarding the screening and vetting of sponsors for UACs. The documents produced by HHS in response did not fully satisfy the requests of the subpoena. 

A September 2022 HHS OIG report found that in 2021, “basic safety measures” had been removed “from the sponsor screening process in an effort to expedite children’s release from care.” Another HHS OIG report in February 2024 found that in an audit of case files from March and April 2021, 16 percent of those cases “did not contain any documentation” showing “required safety checks for sponsors were conducted.”  
   
An April 2021 report from the Washington Examiner quoted an official familiar with ICE’s testing procedures at the border who stated, “[The Biden-Harris] administration wants these families and kids released quickly. That is their No. 1 goal, so they are not going to do anything to slow that process down.” According to a Florida grand jury investigation, “In one memorable instance, a federal employee was told by an ORR attorney to stop asking questions about potentially unsafe sponsors because doing so caused delay, and ‘[W]e only get sued for keeping them too long. We don’t get sued by traffickers. Are we clear?’” 
 
In some cases, the Biden-Harris administration has released scores of UACs to the same sponsor. The administration sent more than 100 children to the same address in Austin, Texas, while other Texas addresses received 44 and 25 minors. One sponsor in Florida had multiple UACs sent to multiple addresses, and “he applied using different versions of his hyphenated surname.” Last year, the Department of Labor revealed that nearly 6,000 children were employed in violations of law in the United States, which reflects an 88 percent increase since 2019.  
 
From May to September 2023, the Committee conducted transcribed interviews with eight chief patrol agents and one deputy chief patrol agent to acquire more information about operations in their sectors and how the crisis has impacted the safety and security of the United States. Sector chiefs told the Committee that not only has a lack of consequences for crossing the border illegally led to more children in danger at the border and in the interior, but the resulting influx has made it much more difficult for DHS to properly investigate and prevent abuse and trafficking––one of their most important missions in the field.
 

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