This week, the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement, led by Chairman Clay Higgins (R-LA), and Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability, led by Chairman Dan Bishop (R-NC), held a joint hearing to examine how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement’s (ORR) processes for handling unaccompanied alien children (UACs) who cross the Southwest border has led to an increasing number of missing and exploited children in the United States.
This hearing followed an August 2024 report by the DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG), which found that since Fiscal Year (FY) 2019, more than 291,000 UACs were not given Notices to Appear (NTA) in court. Of those 291,000, more than 90,000 were encountered in FY 2021 alone. Additionally, more than 32,000 minors who did receive NTAs failed to appear for their immigration hearing. Under the Biden-Harris administration, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has encountered more than 500,000 UACs at the Southwest border, compared to around 221,000 from FY 2017-2020.
At the hearing, Members heard from HHS whistleblower Tara Rodas about her experience with the vetting process of suspicious UAC sponsors and the lack of federal response to the concerns she raised about children being exploited by gangs, such as MS-13. Members also heard witness testimony from retired U.S. Border Patrol Deputy Patrol Agent in Charge J.J. Carrell, and counter-trafficking expert Alicia Hopper, about how criminal organizations are exploiting unaccompanied alien children for illicit organ harvesting, sex trafficking, and forced labor.
In his opening statement, Subcommittee Chairman Bishop described the systemic failure of the Biden-Harris administration to care for unaccompanied migrant children:
“The Biden-Harris administration placed political aims above the welfare of unaccompanied migrant children who crossed, or were trafficked across, the southern border––releasing unaccompanied children with inadequate vetting and follow-up to avoid the bad optics of crowded facilities.
“ORR releases children to sponsors in the United States. Thorough vetting of these sponsors is absolutely critical and morally compelled if that is the path you are going to undertake to bring these children across. Unfortunately, the Biden-Harris administration’s push to quickly release migrants resulted in countless cases of migrant children being released to sponsors with major red flags, placing children at risk of exploitation.”
In her opening statement, Rodas detailed the impact of the Biden-Harris administration’s failed open-borders policies, which have left tens of thousands of children unaccounted for and at risk of exploitation or abuse within our borders:
“Child trafficking has evolved into an international syndicate of gangs and cartels that is highly organized and very efficient. Smugglers and traffickers, during this administration, have moved many of the more than 500,000 unaccompanied children that have flooded across the U.S. Southern border.”
“Sadly, due to the failed open border policies of the Biden-Harris administration, we have delivered these unaccompanied children to criminals, traffickers, and members of transnational criminal organizations, who are using the UC Program as a white glove delivery service of children. These criminal sponsors are defrauding the U.S. government by using the UC Program as the logistical chain of their child trafficking operation.”
“In June of 2021, while serving at Pomona Fairplex Emergency Intake Site (EIS) as the deputy to the director of the Federal Case Management Team, I (and the team) began reporting suspicious sponsors and suspected trafficking cases. In June of 2021, we thought less than 50 children were affected. After funneling more than 8,300 children through the EIS in less than six months, we knew thousands were affected. In February of 2023 we learned from Hannah Dreier at the NYT that 85,000 children were missing. Yet no action has been taken to rescue children.”
In his first round of questioning, Subcommittee Chairman Higgins asked Hopper to detail how Biden-Harris policies have led to the exploitation of migrant children:
“This was a policy decision to step away from the strict means by which these children were monitored and controlled. And what it was replaced with was this Sponsor Care Agreement…Ms. Hopper, you have done some brilliant research on a connection between trafficking, human trafficking, south of the border, and as it networks into our country. Please expound upon what I’ve been discussing today.”
Hopper answered:
“You’re correct. The terrorists, the cartels…They do know our policies and the 94 actions that were rescinded upon in the new current administration coming in. And they actually do use our programs and the manner in which we process unaccompanied children against us. They actually use Border Patrol and refer to them as ‘Migrant Uber.’ They know once migrants cross the border, it’s one phone call away. The Border Patrol picks them up and processes them, and then they know to write the number and name of the sponsor of the child.”
Vice Chairman Michael Guest (R-MS) questioned Carrell on illicit organ harvesting at the border and how it impacts unaccompanied children, to which Carrell replied:
“Organ harvesting is real. To think that it’s not, that… this federal government’s bringing children over, that are being lost, sexually mutilated, raped, murdered, and then we’re shocked or appalled that there could be organ harvesting. The people I’ve interviewed, multiple people—and I asked them, is this an anomaly? Is this a one-off? No. This is pervasive and is growing daily.”
Hopper also answered Rep. Guest on the topic of organ harvesting:
“During the interview with the former Sinaloa Cartel affiliate…He expanded on the fact that these migrant children, especially if they’re traveling without their parent, there is no way to communicate whether they’ve made it through their journey or not. And if a cartel member or smuggler gets a call that there is a specific organ that they’re looking for, they will scout out those organs and especially focus on migrant children, namely for the fact that they are vulnerable, they’re unable to fight back. And, as horrid as it sounds, their organs are more intact and in better shape. So, there is no way to communicate with these children once they’ve crossed into the border, so they kind of disappear on the way.”
Representative Mike Ezell (R-MS) asked Rodas if she believed the concerns she raised while employed at HHS were taken seriously, to which Rodas answered:
“No. Sadly, I don’t. And as I was raising the alarm, along with other wonderful people who were on the site, Deb White, a fellow whistleblower, we were told we were not to be investigating the sponsors. ‘Your job is to get the child to that sponsor.’ When we had children who were going to addresses that we had already [identified] as having multiple children––and I’m talking to the boss who’s an attorney—my superior, the director, she said, ‘Terra, you need to understand at HHS, we only get sued if we keep kids in care too long. We don’t get sued by traffickers.’ That is appalling that I heard from a federal government employee regarding children who we knew were going to addresses that were already under investigation. I’ve never witnessed anything [like that] in my whole life, and had I not seen it with my own eyes, I’m not sure I could believe it.”
Rep. Ezell continued:
“What happened as a result of you pushing the envelope?”
Rodas answered:
“I wasn’t the most popular person on the site, but when DHS whistleblower Aaron Stevenson sounded the alarm and went public in August of 2021, and I saw that they were MS-13 and 18th Street gang—my husband is from El Salvador, so I know that this is not a good thing to be giving children to MS-13. They discovered that I went to the Department of Justice’s Office of Inspector General and HHS’ Office of Inspector General, and it took them less than 20 days to falsely accuse me of wrongdoing, threaten me with investigation, walk me off the site––the perp walk in front of your peers––and take my badge. So that’s how much they appreciated that I was revealing that children were being sponsored by MS-13.”
