Inspector General Report Confirms Biden Admin Endangered Children

The Inspector General (IG) of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a report last week entitled “Gaps in Sponsor Screening and Followup Raise Safety Concerns for Unaccompanied Children.” Of course, the IG could have characterized the “gaps” as more like yawning chasms. Among the myriad of findings, we now know that significant percentages of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) were given to sponsors without any record of background checks. Sixteen percent of UACs lacked any record of a sponsor having a check and 19 percent more had no proof of results of background checks that were supposedly ongoing. 

This all confirms the general reporting on the child labor crisis generally, and the labor trafficking of UAC in particular. President Biden’s compassionate open borders strategy has led to the most acute and tragic crisis for children in modern American history. Tens of thousands of children were in federal government custody and were fecklessly passed around to adults with no background check or follow up wellness checks. 

These laissez-faire policies have led to horrific conditions for children and some have even died in dangerous jobs. The New York Times was ahead of the curve on this one as the Biden Administration stonewalled investigations and denied there was even a crisis. 

It is remarkable that this is not the biggest scandal of the Biden Administration. Given the press attention focused on “separation of families” during the Trump era, I expected more outrage for a functional assembly line of child labor and exploitation. 

If you are wondering what Congress is doing about it, well no one wonders that because when does Congress do anything? However, if you want to know what Congress thinks about this child exploitation situation, look no further than the much ballyhooed Senate compromise legislation. The Lankford/McConnell border surrender caucus did NOTHING to address the UAC situation. 

Meanwhile, H.R. 2, the House-passed border security bill does close the UAC loophole that encourages parents to send their children to the border alone. However, the Biden Administration says H.R. 2 is DOA. Senators Lankford and McConnell just took that as a given and transitioned to crafting a bill that codifies Biden’s current disastrous border policies. 

The number of UAC, along with all other categories of entries, has exploded during the Biden Administration. There is no doubt that part of the problem is that HHS has no staffing capacity for the number of migrants they are responsible for. We all can understand how lack of resources hobbles effectiveness. However, when an administration opposes solutions to the problem of over capacity, namely closing loopholes and eliminating incentives, the only conclusion is that they are too dumb or malicious to offer solutions. 

At this point it is safe to say tens of thousands of UAC in the United States are living with sponsors that force them to work. Some of them are doing jobs that can be deadly for little to no wage to pay back cartels and sponsors that brought them to the country. This is undisputed. The only question that remains is what we intend to do about it.