(NewsSpace.com) – The United States has a real immigration problem. Since President Joe Biden took office, millions have crossed the border and been released into the country’s interior. There’s another problem, too: unaccompanied minors. When these children come to the border, they are placed with a sponsor, typically a family member already in the US. However, according to whistleblowers, that’s not exactly what’s happening and now there are reportedly 85,000 missing minors.
Whistleblowers Testify
On Tuesday, July 9, government whistleblowers Tara Lee Rodas and Deborah White testified before a Senate panel and detailed what they saw while working at the border, where they were assigned to process minors. They said that children were being placed with people who were not relatives and that there was evidence of abuse.
Rodas, who volunteered to go to the border because she speaks Spanish and wanted to help the kids, said what she encountered was a series of red flags. She worked at the Pomona Fairplex Emergency Intake Site, where she processed more than 8,000 minors. One of them was a 16-year-old girl named Carmen from Guatemala who was sent to her “brother,” who Rodas says not only posted incriminating explicit pictures of children but also posted one of himself touching Carmen. She said it was clear the sponsor was not her sibling and that the girl “was for sale.”
Rodas also detailed how she sent out a do-not-release advisory that was ignored. The child in question was released to a known MS-13 gang member despite her warning. When she reported the case, she said she was retaliated against.
White echoed Rodas’ statements, saying the kids “were being trafficked with billions of taxpayer dollars by a contractor failing to vet sponsors and process children safely, with government officials complicit in it,” an experience she says will “haunt” her for the rest of her life. White also notes how there were never any face-to-face meetings with sponsors and “fake documents were rampant,” yet when she questioned this, she was told she was “not a fake ID expert” and investigating sponsors was not part of her job description.
The New York Times Exposé
This isn’t the first time there have been rumblings of minors going missing or being exploited. In February 2023, The New York Times published an exposé detailing how minor children who came to the US unaccompanied ended up working in jobs that violate child labor laws.
Additionally, the publication reviewed data that showed HHS couldn’t get in touch with 85,000 children it had reunified over the past two years. That prompted Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) to send a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, asking a series of questions.
Becerra denied that any children went missing, saying he wasn’t privy to such details and that it sounded made up. However, the whistleblowers say that once children are placed with sponsors, they are no longer under HHS authority and many went missing after they were placed.
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