One of the most shocking and horrifying scandals of the Biden administration was its botched handling of unaccompanied minor migrants who flooded into the country amid former President Joe Biden’s open border chaos.
Government whistleblowers sounded the alarm that the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, under the prior administration’s leadership, failed to thoroughly vet sponsors, ushering children into unsafe homes.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed those findings on Thursday.
‘Children’s safety and security is nonnegotiable.’
The agency issued a press release announcing that it discovered “widespread abuse” and “exploitation” of some of the children whom the ORR placed with “improperly vetted sponsors.”
“As a result, these children were subjected to physical abuse and sexual and labor exploitation,” ICE stated.
President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security launched a nationwide effort in February to locate unaccompanied minors whom the ORR placed with sponsors. As part of this effort, agents from ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations are conducting welfare checks to ensure that children are safe from trafficking, exploitation, and abuse. They are also visiting the children and their sponsors to verify that they are receiving proper care, attending school, and complying with immigration proceedings.
RELATED: Trump admin pulls children from migrant shelters over sexual abuse claims
Photographer: Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images
While these welfare checks are not focused on immigration enforcement, in situations where ICE agents encounter illegal aliens, they are taking them into custody.
ICE stated that agents have already uncovered “alarming” cases, such as sponsors who had committed serious crimes, including hit-and-run, aggravated assault, larceny, counterfeiting, drug trafficking, prostitution, attempted murder, and possession of child sexual abuse material. Additionally, some sponsors reportedly forced children into labor and subjected them to unacceptable living conditions.
ICE also indicated that sponsors paid smugglers to bring children into the United States and falsely claimed to be related to the children.
“In some of the most disturbing cases, girls were pregnant with children fathered by their alleged sponsors — which highlights the grave failures of previous vetting procedures and the dangerous consequences of placing minors in unsafe environments,” ICE stated.
Photographer: Christopher Dilts/Bloomberg via Getty Images
ICE spokesperson Laszlo Baksay said that agents are working tirelessly to locate the children.
“Children’s safety and security is nonnegotiable,” Baksay stated. “The previous administration’s failure to implement meaningful safeguards has allowed vulnerable kids to fall into the hands of criminals.”
“This is the responsibility of any government, Republican or Democrat, but it was the Trump administration that insisted on rigorous sponsor screening and biometric verification. Those guardrails were dismantled, and we’re now seeing the consequences,” Baksay added.
Baksay urged the media to “focus less on political spin and more on the facts.”
“This is about the lives of children, and it’s time we treat it with the seriousness [it] demands,” Baksay remarked.
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