A human trafficking expert railed against the Biden-Harris administration on Capitol Hill Tuesday for losing track of more than 320,000 migrant children, sharing a horrific tale of one girl’s abuse as an example of the “dangerous loopholes” that have led to widespread exploitation.
Alicia Hopper, who has provided oversight to non-governmental groups and other organizations being exploited by human traffickers for sex or forced labor, told members of the House Homeland Security Committee that federal agencies tasked with securing the border have instead turned it into “a trafficking pipeline.”
“As a Hispanic mother, this crisis is deeply personal to me,” said Hopper, who consults for Sadulski Enterprises, LLC. “The very system meant to protect vulnerable children has become a trafficking pipeline.”
“A young girl who arrived at the border in the custody of individuals claiming to be her family was bruised, disoriented and in pain,” she recounted. “Medical examinations revealed that she had been raped, yet she was sent back to her abusers because no verification was done to confirm her guardianship.”
“This is not an isolated case,” Hopper added, “but a glaring error of the system leaving children in the hands of those who exploit them.”
Under President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, more than 529,000 migrant children have entered the US, according to Customs and Border Protection data.
As many as 291,000 were loose in the country’s interior as of May 2024 and had not been given a date to appear in immigration court –giving federal authorities no way to track their whereabouts, a shocking Department of Homeland Security watchdog report revealed in August.
Additionally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement released 32,000 children into the US with hearing dates — but they never showed up, according to the 14-page DHS Office of Inspector General report, which tracked a period from October 2018 to September 2023.
The Homeland Security Committee slapped Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra with a subpoena in September for records on the “vetting, screening, and monitoring” of migrant sponsors.
On Tuesday, the panel also heard from witnesses with firsthand knowledge of the failures inside federal agencies like US Border Patrol and the Department of Health and Human Services that led to the massive number of missing migrant kids.
“Children, boys and girls, are being sold for sex,” testified HHS whistleblower Tara Rodas, who formerly worked on behalf of the agency’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) to place unaccompanied migrants with sponsors at an emergency intake site in California.
“Just last month I spoke to a care provider in Florida who told me about cases of migrant children as young as eight with sexually transmitted diseases,” she added.
Rodas slammed HHS’ sponsorship apparatus as a “white-glove delivery system” allowing known gangs and “other unsavory characters” to intercept the kids — despite whistleblowers before her calling out the abuses as long ago as 2015, under former President Barack Obama.
“HHS has a 10-year demonstrated record of losing children to sponsors who abuse, exploit, traffic and harm children in unthinkable ways,” Rodas said in her opening remarks.
Rodas and another HHS whistleblower, Deborah White, testified to Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) at a July roundtable that “billions of taxpayer dollars” had been handed over to outside contractors who are neglecting to properly vet sponsors.
In a scathing 171-page report released Tuesday, staff for Cassidy, the top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, blamed the widespread abuse on ORR’s reliance on third-party contractors and weakening of the sponsorship vetting process.
“The exploitation of unaccompanied children has been documented for years. The Biden-Harris administration should have fixed its policies to protect these children, but instead it subverted Congress and states to cover up its mistakes,” Cassidy said, noting attempts by ORR to obfuscate his probe.
“This lack of transparency to the American people is reprehensible. It is hard to see this as anything other than an attempt to shield the Biden-Harris administration from accountability.”
Hopper also blamed “policies from the Biden-Harris administration” — with Becerra and others “prioritizing speed over safety” by placing “children with unvetted sponsors, increasing their risk.”
“Furthermore, this administration’s decision to eliminate DNA testing to verify familial relationship has created dangerous loopholes which traffickers are now currently aware of and actively exploiting,” she also testified.
The trafficking has also emboldened “ruthless cartels” such as Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation.
“No one passes through without their approval,” Hopper said, recounting that she had traveled south of the border only to find piles of passports and other identification — showing how many migrants have shed their identities to be shuttled north.
“One was the passport of a five-year-old Colombian girl, a haunting reminder of the dangers these children face,” she recalled, holding it up in her hand during the hearing. “Traffickers erase migrant identities to smuggle them in under false names.”
Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) demanded in a Tuesday letter to Becerra and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that their agencies preserve all records on unaccompanied minors for the incoming Trump administration.
