On Wednesday, a whistleblower is set to testify before a House Judiciary subcommittee that the U.S. government has been operating as the “middleman” for a large-scale multibillion-dollar migrant child trafficking operation, Fox News reported.
The hearing, titled “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.
The hearing will hear testimony from three witnesses: Tara Lee Rodas, a whistleblower working within a federal government agency called the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity & Efficiency [CIGIE]; Sheena Rodriguez, founder and president of Alliance for a Safe Texas; and Jessica Vaughan, director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.
Citing her experience working with the HHS’ resettlement office, Rodas will argue the U.S. government is operating a “large-scale, multi-billion-dollar child trafficking operation run by bad actors seeking to profit off the lives of children.”
Breaking Digest previously reported that Project Veritas released a video featuring an interview with Rodas, in which she described how precarious she believes the current child sponsorship program is for these minors.
“The tax dollars of people who are listening are paying to put children in the hands of criminals,” Rodas told then CEO of Project Veritas, James O’Keefe.
Recent reports show the Biden administration has been unable to contact more than 85,000 child immigrants. “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,” Fox News reported.
Fox News reported:
The Wednesday hearing will hear from three witnesses: Tara Lee Rodas, a HHS whistleblower formerly with an inspector general’s office; Sheena Rodriguez, founder and president of Alliance for a Safe Texas; and Jessica Vaughan, director of Policy Studies at the Center for Immigration Studies.
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“Today, children will work overnight shifts at slaughterhouses, factories, restaurants to pay their debts to smugglers and traffickers. Today, children will be sold for sex,” she will say. “Today, children will call a hotline to report they are being abused, neglected, and trafficked. For nearly a decade, unaccompanied children have been suffering in the shadows.”
Rodas will talk about her volunteering at an emergency intake site in California to help the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) identify sponsors for minors who have come across the border.
“I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes. Instead, I discovered that children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with being recruited in their home country, smuggled to the U.S. border, and ends when ORR delivers a child to a sponsor – some sponsors are criminals and traffickers and members of Transnational Criminal Organizations. Some sponsors view children as commodities and assets to be used for earning income – this is why we are witnessing an explosion of labor trafficking,” Rodas’ written remarks show.
“Whether intentional or not, it can be argued that the U.S. Government has become the middleman in a large scale, multi-billion-dollar, child trafficking operation run by bad actors seeking to profit off the lives of children.”
Rodriguez, of the Alliance for a Safe Texas, will share her experiences of encountering unaccompanied children at the border, including teenage boys whom she said told her that cartel cooperatives transported children through Mexico and held them at warehouses with armed guards. She will also call for the investigation of federal agencies responsible and for the ending of releasing migrants to sponsors.
“We can no longer turn a blind eye and pretend this isn’t happening. Congress has the power to stop this, which is why I am calling on you to do what is right,” her testimony says.
Vaughan will call, too, for congressional action, including the ending of legal loopholes that she says force the government “to operate a massive catch and release program for illegally-arriving alien children.”
“They have been carelessly funneled through the custody of U.S. government agencies and contractors, and handed off to very lightly vetted sponsors (who are usually also here illegally) in our communities without regard to their safety and well-being,” she will say. “There is no question that the system for processing minors who cross illegally is dysfunctional, and has been for some time, and needs to be fixed.”
