HHS whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas testified before the House Judiciary Committee this afternoon.
Speaking before a House Judiciary subcommittee, Tara Lee Rodas testified that the U.S. government has become the “middleman” in a sophisticated, large-scale child trafficking network that begins in the children’s home countries and ends with the government delivering the children to sponsors in the United States.
Rodas told Congress that today in the United States children will work at slaughterhouses, factories, and restaurants to pay their debt to the smugglers, traffickers, and cartels.
Rodas also confirmed that there are a staggering 85,000 lost unaccompanied minors due to Biden’s out-of-control border.
“I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes,” she stated, holding back tears. “Instead, I discovered that children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with recruiting in home country, smuggling to the U.S. border, and ends when ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement) delivers a child to a sponsor.”
Watch:
Rodas testified that she witnessed firsthand the exploitation of vulnerable children, including indigenous children from Guatemala who only speak Mayan dialects and cannot speak English or Spanish. “That means they cannot ask for help in English; they cannot ask for help in Spanish. They become captives of their sponsors,” she said.
Rodas also witnessed apartments where up to forty unaccompanied minors have been released, sponsors simultaneously trying to sponsor children from multiple sites, and numerous cases of children in debt bondage, adding, “The child knew they had to stay with the sponsor until the debt was paid.”
“Realizing that we were not offering the children the American dream, but instead putting them in modern-day slavery with wicked overlords, was a terrible revelation,” she said.
Fox News reported:
A House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on Wednesday will feature the testimony from a whistleblower who will warn lawmakers that the U.S. has become the “middleman” in a multi-billion dollar migrant child trafficking operation at the border.
The hearing, “The Biden Border Crisis: Exploitation of Unaccompanied Alien Children,” will be held by the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security and Enforcement and will examine the surge in unaccompanied children (UACs) at the southern border.
According to Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statistics, the number of UACs who came to the border shot up from 33,239 in FY2020 to over 146,000 in FY 2021 and 152,000 in FY 2022. So far in FY 2023 there have been over 70,000 encounters of unaccompanied children.
When child migrants are encountered at the border, they are transferred into the custody of Health and Human Services (HHS) and then united with a sponsor — typically a parent or family member already in the U.S.
But the Biden administration has been rocked by a number of reports that officials have been unable to make contact with over 85,000 child migrants, and more recently that administration officials ignored signs of “explosive” growth in child labor. A number have been forced into indentured servitude to pay back smugglers and have worked in dire conditions.
The Wednesday hearing will hear from three witnesses: Tara Lee Rodas, a whistleblower and former employee at HHS; Sheena Rodriguez, founder and president of Alliance for a Safe Texas; and Jessica Vaughn, director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.
