(HorizonPost.com) – An HHS official who earlier this month testified at a Senate roundtable discussion, claimed that she faced retaliation after she reported her concerns that some unaccompanied minors were being placed with sponsors affiliated with the Salvadoran gang MS-13.
Tara Rodas was one of two HHS whistleblowers who appeared at a Senate roundtable discussion on July 9 to discuss the Biden administration’s loosening of background checks for potential sponsors for unaccompanied minors.
A 20-year employee of HHS, Rodas volunteered to go to the border when the administration called for additional manpower during the unprecedented border surge.
Rodas told the senators that unaccompanied minors were being funneled through various federal agencies, NGOs, and federal contractors, none of which were equipped to ensure that the children were not falling into the hands of human traffickers or abusers.
She described the fate of one 16-year-old girl from Guatemala who was placed with a sponsor claiming to be her brother. Rodas said that she reviewed the social media posts of the man after the girl was placed with him and found photos of him touching her inappropriately. Later, explicit photos of the girl showed up on his social media accounts.
In a July 17 interview on “Just the News, No Noise,” Rodas said she first discovered that some of the sponsors were members of MS-13 when a DHS whistleblower alerted them to it.
She said less than three weeks later she left her position “under threat of investigation.”
Rojas said she was stunned that she faced retaliation when the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s Unaccompanied Children program should have protected minors at the border. She said officials were aware that there was a problem and could have taken steps to ensure the children were safe but instead, “they decided to silence me when I brought these concerns.”
Rojas said federal officials had known since 2021 that members of MS-13 were sponsoring some of the children who crossed the border. She said despite the claim that the Unaccompanied Children program was a “family reunification program,” fewer than 40 percent of unaccompanied minors are going to a family member.
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