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Biden Administration Left Thousands of Migrant Minors in Grave Danger

© AP Photo / Eric GayA group of migrant families walk from the Rio Grande, the river separating the US and Mexico in Texas, near McAllen, Texas, March 14, 2019.
A group of migrant families walk from the Rio Grande, the river separating the US and Mexico in Texas, near McAllen, Texas, March 14, 2019.  - Sputnik International, 1920, 18.04.2023
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A House oversight subcommittee is expected to give a hard time to Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) Director Robin Dunn Marcos on Tuesday over the Biden administration's failure to vet, monitor and track tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children.
The Biden administration appears to be completely indifferent to the fate of unaccompanied migrant children whose arrival at the US southern frontier has increased over tenfold since President Joe Biden assumed the Oval Office, according to Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wisc.), chairman of the Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs.
"We are not using DNA tests to even say who these children are or to make sure these children are going to relatives," Grothman told Just the News, a media outlet founded by US investigative journalist John Solomon, on Monday. "They are resettling them across the United States. Even the New York Times — there's articles about a lot of them working probably against child labor laws. We believe a lot of these children are forced to send money back to the cartels."
According to Grothman, the number of unaccompanied children encountered at the southern border increased from 15,000 in President Donald Trump's last year in office to over 130,000 a year under Biden.
The latest scandal stems from a New York Times investigation concerning unaccompanied migrant children who had been released to sponsors and vanished from the government's radar. According to the newspaper, Health and Human Services (HHS) couldn’t reach more than 85,000 of those minors and lost immediate contact with a third of migrant children over the last two years.
Hundreds of migrants line up to be processed by THE US Border Patrol under the Stanton Street Bridge after illegally entering the US, in El Paso, Texas, on December 22, 2022 - Sputnik International, 1920, 26.02.2023
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The media revealed that the HHS has little, if any, time to properly check all the sponsors as the Biden administration urges the department's staffers to work faster as more and more illegals are coming to the US.
At the same time, it cited US child welfare agencies who argued that the HHS regularly ignores obvious signs of labor exploitation. The newspaper drew attention to the fact that about two-thirds of unaccompanied minors who have been coming to the United States in record numbers since 2021 end up working full-time.
"This labor force has been slowly growing for almost a decade, but it has exploded since 2021, while the systems meant to protect children have broken down," the media outlet summarized.
In March, a Senate Finance Committee led by Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) held a hearing about details in the report. However, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra stated at the time that he was "unfamiliar with reported statistics."
"I have never heard that number of 85,000, I don’t know where it comes from and… so I would say it doesn’t sound at all to be realistic, and what we do is we try and follow up as best we can with these kids," Becerra claimed.
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However, earlier this month a Florida grand jury report described a gloomy picture of unaccompanied minors trafficked by cartels, forced into unlawful labor and sexually abused in the US.
"The public is led to believe that the process described by our federal government in documents and popular media accounts at least resembled the truth," the Florida grand jury report said. "In reality, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) is facilitating the forced migration, sale, and abuse of foreign children, and some of our fellow Florida residents are (in some cases unwittingly) funding and incentivizing it for primarily economic reasons."
According to conservative observers, the unfolding scandal over the Biden administration's negligence and leaving thousands of vulnerable migrant children in grave danger has become "the extraordinary political boomerang" which eventually hit the Democrats after their longstanding criticism of Donald Trump's migrant policies.
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