Coming on the heels of the New York Times reporting about widespread child labor aided and abetted by the Biden Administration, and particularly by Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra, a statewide Florida Grand Jury investigation comes with more receipts for the cost of the Biden Administration’s abuse of unaccompanied alien children (UACs). We are hearing a lot right now about how no one is above the law in the United States, and if that is still true, there should be some people lawyering up in Biden’s inner circle. The full report must be read to be believed, but let’s highlight some of the lowlights:
“If one reads no further, we hope this will make our findings clear. If any resident of Florida exposed U.S.-born children to this process, they would be justifiably arrested for child neglect or worse. We do not think children should be less-protected simply because they were born outside our borders and brought here by a government agency.”
This is just the Grand Jury’s opening statement! If you or I treated children how the Federal government is treating them, we would be indicted. Are our U.S. attorneys listening? Is the media? Is…anyone? Let’s try and amplify the findings for those in the back of the room:
“ORR [Office of Refugee Resettlement] is facilitating the forced migration, sale, and abuse of foreign children…This process exposes children to horrifying health conditions, constant criminal threat, labor and sex trafficking, robbery, rape and other experiences not done justice by mere words.”
I feel like South Park’s memba berries, but “memba kids in cages?” Apparently, Biden officials were literally only worried about the cages because they subjected these children to all kinds of atrocities to avoid the cage. Hey kids, you may be subject to horrifying health conditions, criminal threat, labor and sex trafficking, robbery, and rape, but at least you aren’t in a cage!
How did this happen? It is quite simply because the Biden Administration’s HHS created an assembly line of quick release of UACs with minimal vetting of their “sponsors”:
“The jurors discovered that more than 250,000 unaccompanied minors entered the U.S. since Biden became president. These children are immediately shipped to a federal facility. Then there is “incessant pressure on case managers to process UAC speedily with minimal, if any, scrutiny of sponsors or questionable documents, addresses, or stories told to them.”
So this laundry list of atrocities can be placed directly at the feet of those putting pressure on HHS case managers to push kids out the door. Let’s take a closer look at the product of the pressure campaign for mass release of children:
“A report showed HHS and the U.S. Department of Justice received thousands of allegations of sexual abuse; Testimony of UAC revealed that a minor was ‘pimped out’ by their ‘aunt’ (whom they did not know prior to arriving in the U.S.), some UAC ran away from sponsors for being sold for sex, and ORR placed a teenage girl in the house of unknown men with no private bedroom”.
If you’re wondering how the teenage girl was placed in a house with unknown men and no private bedroom well…:
“ORR discouraged close checking of addresses of sponsors and some sponsors utilized addresses in Jacksonville including a strip club, empty lots surrounded by stacked shipping containers or open fields[.] During the Biden [A]dministration, case managers are only performing home studies in approximately 4.5% [of] placements and discretionary home studies in less than one percent of cases. One case manager reported having to release a teenage girl to a male sponsor with multiple other unknown males living in the same residence—all unidentified. The presentment stated this is not an isolated incident. Criminal history, lack of citizen status and even total refusal to submit to a background check does not disqualify sponsors from receiving a UAC. One sponsor was given custody despite having been to Florida prison before for battery on a child; A disturbing pattern emerged with sponsors applying to receive multiple UAC. One address in Texas showed 44 children sent to a single residence. One contractor testified that it placed 598 UAC with only 132 sponsors or each sponsor receiving 4.5 UAC;”
Helpless unaccompanied children being shipped to strangers by the bundle did not seem to raise red flags for the Biden Administration. They function as the wholesale distributor of victims to the assorted criminal underworld. Keep in mind this is all going on under the banner of making the immigration system more humane. Where are the breathless media reports of the heartless Biden immigration policy like we saw during the Trump Administration? If cruelty is not the point here, it is certainly the end result. With thousands of examples you would think we would have thousands of stories instead of largely crickets from the Fourth Estate.
Oh and about that totally secure border we hear about from President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas:
“The Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) published a survey in July, 2022, in which they interviewed 49 UAC (of the more than 13,000 brought in that year) in just two Florida placements. They stated:
The children interviewed knew very little about the individuals that transported them during their journey to the border [and] disclosed that the individuals who transported them were “Coyotes.” One child disclosed that during her journey several members of her group were robbed, attacked by gang members, decapitated, and raped. The child disclosed that she was one of the victims of rape.”
This is not cherry picking of facts. We have known about the sexual abuse of children at the border for years. The Biden Administration doesn’t seem to care. It certainly will not lift a finger to actually deter migrant flows because that would be inhumane.
The Grand Jury also points out that the Federal government was pushing to cover up the extent of its crimes. Many organizations contracting with HHS refused to answer questions from the Grand Jury because of their contracts and pressure from their government benefactors. Why is the Federal government concealing information about child abuse, as opposed to trying to help prevent it?
“We issued subpoenas and requests for documents and information to several Florida organizations doing business with ORR. We took care not to request any information about UAC themselves (including their identities or points of origin) We received, instead, a response from the organizations that they would be purposely ignoring some of those requests under orders from ORR, with whom they have a contractual relationship. The organizations and their officers likewise refused in-person demands for information.”
Calling all members of Oversight Committees in Congress! The Federal government is covering up child abuse and I do not know of a better use of Congressional oversight than a fact-finding hearing to protect the most helpless among us. The Grand Jury attempted to get ORR to testify and defend itself and was dismissed. What is ORR hiding? Difficult to imagine it could be worse than what we already know, but their cover up suggests they are not hiding facts that show they are actually doing a good job.
One thing is clear, they cannot lie their way out of this forever. The sheer numbers of UACs pouring over the border make it harder and harder to dismiss. As the numbers rise, so do the tragedies of abuse through President Biden’s incompetence and/or intentional callousness. In the past two years of the Biden Administration we have witnessed them deny there was a crisis, while they continued to dismantle border enforcement. In the name of empathy, they released hundreds of thousands of children with the same lack of oversight they have demonstrated at the border. The country and the children have paid a heavy price for the sake of the President’s virtue signaling. Hopefully, Congress will find some time to introduce some accountability to the Executive Branch before the next batch of children is fed to the lions.
JARED CULVER is a Legal Analyst for NumbersUSA
