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Last week, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of the Inspector General found that the Biden-Harris administration cannot confirm the whereabouts, safety, or well-being of 323,000 unaccompanied migrant children released from government custody. A disturbing revelation, but the full story is much worse.
Because this report looked only at DHS, it did not examine the systemic failures in the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which actively places children in dangerous situations. ORR is responsible for caring for unaccompanied children and ensuring they are transferred to safe and thoroughly vetted sponsors.
My years-long investigation of ORR found that Biden-Harris officials are prioritizing speed over safety in processing thousands of unaccompanied minors crossing the border, even handing these children over to dangerous sponsors, including sex offenders and individuals with close ties to MS-13 gang members.
To save the White House from the political embarrassment of overcrowding holding facilities with unaccompanied children crossing the open border, senior Biden and Harris officials directed ORR staff to expedite the process of transferring migrant children to outside sponsors.
ICE has lost track of tens of thousands of migrant children, Department of Homeland Security Inspector General says
For example, in some cases, the Biden-Harris administration has removed a requirement that ORR officials check whether a sponsor has a criminal record or whether the sponsor’s identity is real. In another case, ORR failed to verify whether the sponsor’s listed address was even a real home, sending a child to an address that was nothing more than an open field.
Joe Biden and his border commissioner Kamala Harris are failing to get a handle on the consequences of the border crisis they caused.
When Biden took office, we had the lowest illegal immigration rate in nearly 50 years. Almost immediately, Biden and Harris rushed to roll back the strict border policies they inherited from President Trump. They ended the “Remain in Mexico” policy, reinstated “catch and release,” and exempted unaccompanied children from Title 42.
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This open border policy encouraged the highest illegal immigration rates ever, including over 500,000 unaccompanied migrant children coming to the United States under this administration. In fact, the month after Biden and Harris exempted unaccompanied children from Title 42 saw the highest monthly number of these children crossing the southern border in history.
Many of these children are forced into dangerous working conditions and exploited for illegal labor. In one of these facilities, which is currently under investigation for violations of child labor laws, a 16-year-old boy died when he was pulled into a meat processing machine.
Other children were forced into drug trafficking, sex trafficking and other criminal activities to pay the cartels that brought them here – with no follow-up or oversight from the Biden-Harris administration.
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These children do not have to suffer. It is unacceptable that the Biden-Harris administration continues to place these children in dangerous environments. The hundreds of thousands of children who may be missing due to the incompetence of this administration will continue to be exploited, abused, and killed by their captors.
The serious problems with the ORR and child exploitation have been documented for years. Unaccompanied children are still crossing the border in record numbers. Yet Biden or Harris have made no substantive efforts to change their open border policies or reform the ORR to protect unaccompanied children from harm.
In fact, it wasn’t until Biden was losing ground in the polls against Trump that Democrats began to admit the border was a problem. Their solution: blame Republicans for the border crisis they created. Good luck trying to convince the American people of that.
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It is clear that Democrats do not see the border or child exploitation as a serious problem that needs to be solved, but rather as a purely messaging issue that they simply need to “prioritize” in an election year. This is shameful.
Since Harris’ dramatic entry into the presidential campaign, the liberal media has, unsurprisingly, refused to press her on anything, especially her failures on border policy that have led to the exploitation of children.
Don’t worry, Harris is not an accomplice in the border chaos, she is the perpetrator. At her coronation as border czar in the White House, Biden said Harris would lead the administration to “curb migration to our southern border” and: “When she speaks, she speaks for me.”
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Less than four years later, it is clear that she has not only failed the American people, but also the unaccompanied children who are being exploited and abused because of her deliberate incompetence.
The border crisis is Kamala Harris’ legacy. Nothing will change that, neither through media manipulation nor through rewriting history.
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