There were more than 65,000 illegal alien children who arrived at the U.S. border between January and May and according to a report in Axios, HHS care providers were unable to reach one in three of the kids following their release.
The kids were supposed to be released into the care of a relative or government-approved sponsor, but the massive number of children being held by HHS in makeshift shelters, along with the political pressure on the Biden administration to release the children from U.S. custody, may have put thousands of vulnerable children in danger.
By law, the kids could not be held in U.S. custody longer than 72 hours. And yet, many thousands of children were housed in tents set up by HHS as they waited for a relative or designated sponsor to pick them up.
Therein lies the danger for these children. While “sponsors” were supposed to be thoroughly vetted by the government to make sure the children would be placed in safe environments. However, there was enormous pressure to move the children through the system so they wouldn’t become a political issue to attack the Biden administration, which means that the HHS had to largely contract out the process of finding a sufficient number of qualified sponsors.
More frightening yet, the number of missing children is probably far higher since the Biden administration failed in its responsibility to make follow-up calls to many of the illegal alien children. And more kids crossed the border illegally in June-August than in the previous three months.
More than 65,000 unaccompanied kids crossed the border illegally during those months, and July set yet another all-time record for young border crossers. That suggests the problem of losing track of released children could be compounded in the months to come.
The data also indicates calls aren’t happening with the frequency they should. Between President Biden’s inauguration and the end of May, HHS discharged 32,000 children and teens — but the government placed fewer than 15,000 follow-up calls, according to the FOIA response.
In both March and April, the number of kids discharged was twice as high as the number of check-in calls the following month — indicating that half of the released kids might not have gotten a 30-day call, according to public agency data.
If this were a Republican administration in the White House, children’s rights advocates, immigration activists, Catholic charities, and NGOs from all over the world would be screaming bloody murder about “lost kids.” But since Orange Man Bad left the White House, criticizing the president just isn’t as fun as it used to be.
Where are the children, Joe? That’s a question that a lot of people who aren’t professional activists, but who care if kids were sold into sex slavery or taken by some drug gang, want to see answered.
The government is already investigating whether dozens of migrant children were released to labor traffickers, as Bloomberg Law recently reported.
This happened in 2014 as well, when migrant teens were released to traffickers and forced to work on an egg farm.
Although these horrific situations have been rare, some members of Congress and former agency officials have called for better oversight to ensure kids are safe after leaving the government’s care.
Shouldn’t someone on the left care enough about these kids to start causing a stink? Are partisan ideologues on Capitol Hill and major media so besotted with hatred for their political opponents that they would allow this outrage to go unreported and unprotested?
This should be a scandal of monumental proportions. The kids are in danger because Biden was too frightened of the political consequences flowing from coverage of illegal alien children’s shelters showing kids crowded together in inhumane conditions. The same problems that bedeviled the Trump administration with caring for illegal alien children were solved by making the problem disappear.
It may have disappeared for the president, but the kids are another story.
Source: PJ Media
