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Last Tuesday, three senators and two federally employed whistleblowers raised concerns over the federal government’s apparent complicity towards missing and possibly trafficked minors at the southern border. Led by Senators Chuck Grassley, Bill Cassidy, and Ron Johnson, this roundtable addressed the worsening border crisis and its implications.
In 2022 alone, there were reportedly 128,904 unaccompanied minors at the border. Child sex trafficking at the border is often co-opted as a political talking point. However, a five figure number of missing children and lack of accountability from the organizations meant to protect them is not a partisan issue.
Deborah White is a federal employee who worked with Health and Human Services (HHS) and Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) on their Unaccompanied Minor Program. She makes a harrowing statement at the roundtable: “What I discovered was horrifying. Children were not going to their parents. They were being trafficked with billions of taxpayer dollars by a contractor failing to vet sponsors and process children safely with government officials complicit in it.”
White began working with this program in Pomona, California in the summer of 2021. At the time, the contractor processing unaccompanied children at the border was Cherokee Federal. White cites instances of children being sent to abandoned houses, nonexistent addresses, and even one being sent to an abandoned field in Michigan.
When she raised concerns about Cherokee Federal, and asked to see the contract, she was told “you are not going to get the contract and don’t ask for it again.” She goes on to assert that HHS never met with sponsors face to face and falsified documents were rampant. When she contacted the Guatemalan consulate regarding concerns over falsified documents, she was formally reprimanded by the HHS, where she was told it was not her job and she was never to contact the consulate again.
Per HHS mandate, children and sponsors are subject to mandatory 30 day wellness calls. Upon discovery that many of these children were no longer with their sponsors, caseworkers grew frantic.
Quickly, HHS higher ups decided that workers were no longer responsible for these calls, and that they would instead be processed at the national call center. White claims the HHS and Cherokee Federal prioritized “speed over safety”. Following the shift over to the national call center, Cherokee Federal allegedly created a strike team in order to move childrens out of homes faster, despite being warned of the possibility that children were being trafficked. White blatantly calls the HHS ORR program, “the biggest government failure in history that I have ever witnessed.” She goes on to plead for congress to investigate this program for the safety of the children.
White’s coworker Tara Rodas additionally testifies. She tells the story of a 16-year-old Guatemalan girl named Carmen released to a sponsor claiming to be her older brother. Upon release into the custody of said sponsor, Carmen appears in a photo on his social media page where he is touching her in a sexual manner.
A later photo on the page shows her with her hair and makeup styled and shirt unbuttoned. An ORR federal field specialist claimed that Carmen looked drugged, and the post was an ad for her sale. It was later discovered that the sponsor’s other social media accounts contained photos of child pornography. She also tells the story of a 13-year-old girl released to a sponsor with direct MS-13 affiliation. Upon making a disclosure to the DOJ, Rodas’s badge was taken and she was escorted off of the job site.
The DOJ and HHS were not present at this meeting. Especially in an election year, the border crisis is a contentious issue. However, five percent of all border crossings in 2023 alone involved unaccompanied minors. American tax dollars should not be funding operations incapable or unwilling to protect minors, and the well-being of children should not be politicized. The full roundtable can be viewed here.
Featured image: Soldiers place concertina wire barrier on the banks of the Rio Grande River in Brownsville, Texas, on May 19, 2023. (Texas National Guard Photo by Operation Lone Star Public Affairs)
