(HorizonPost.com) – Whistleblowers with the Department of Health and Human Services told lawmakers last week that federal officials have lost track of at least 85,000 unaccompanied minors who illegally crossed the southern border after they were placed with so-called “sponsors,” and suggested that many of those children could have been trafficked into forced labor or prostitution.
During a Senate roundtable hearing on July 9, co-hosted by Republicans Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, two HHS employees who were responsible for processing unaccompanied minors at the border, said the Biden administration’s loosened background checks on potential sponsors has resulted in the minors being released to people who were not relatives, leaving them at risk for abuse and trafficking.
According to the whistleblowers, roughly half a million migrant children were sent to the homes of sponsors who, in some cases, were strangers.
One of the women said that after she alerted her supervisors to evidence of abuse, the Office of Refugee Resettlement removed her from her position.
The Department of Homeland Security has loosened background checks on potential sponsors and its follow-up on the children consisted of a single phone call a month after placement. By that time, the whistleblowers alleged, many of the unaccompanied minors were already missing.
One of the whistleblowers, 20-year federal employee Tara Lee Rodas, volunteered to work at the southern border after the Biden administration asked for more manpower during the border surge.
Rodas was made Deputy to the Director of the Federal Case Management Team at the Pomona intake site.
She told the senators that one Guatemalan migrant teenager was placed with someone claiming to be her brother. But in reviewing social media posts of the man, Rodas saw photos of him inappropriately touching the 16-year-old girl. Not long after that, explicit photos of Carmen appeared on her so-called brother’s social media in which she looked drugged.
The other whistleblower, Deborah White, told lawmakers that HHS and the Department of Homeland Security were not equipped to investigate potential red flags. She accused federal officials of deliberately burying their heads in the sand.
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