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Inside The Trump Administration’s Effort To Stop Child Migrant Trafficking
Trump administration officials are working tirelessly to stop the pipeline of child trafficking — and track down more than 320,000 missing migrant kids.
John Fabbricatore, who returned to the federal government to lead the effort at the Department of Health and Human Services, told The Daily Wire that the Trump administration is determined to right the wrongs of the Biden administration, which often released children who crossed the border alone to sponsors in the United States who were “vetted” with a single phone call.
When unaccompanied children cross the border, Border Patrol agents hand them off to HHS, which works to place them with a sponsor in the United States. Under the Biden administration, border agents saw a flood of more than 500,000 unaccompanied migrant children pouring over the border.
“We could never tell if they were able to take care of these children. And there wasn’t DNA testing done to verify that these children actually belong to the people that were claiming to be a familial connection,” Fabbricatore, who previously served as the director of Immigration and Custom’s Enforcement’s Denver office, said. “There were many ‘aunts and uncles,’ quotation marks that came forward and we found out in multiple cases that that these were wrong, and kids were sent to very bad people.”
“Kids were sent to drug dealers, kids were were sent to people who claimed to be a brother, and it wasn’t a brother, and wound up raping the young girl,” he said.
Under the Biden administration, several federal whistleblowers exposed the lax vetting system that placed some migrant kids in the hands of traffickers, gang members and sex offenders.
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Now, the vetting process for sponsors “has been strengthened tenfold,” Fabbricatore explained.
“The sponsor vetting went from just a simple phone call and a photo was sent over an email and nothing was ever verified, to now a very staunch and structured vetting process,” he added.
The Trump administration requires sponsors and other adults living with them to submit their fingerprints to undergo background checks. Additionally, sponsors are required to submit proof of income to show they can support the child.
Sponsors who claim they are related to the child will also undergo DNA testing.
Homeland Security agents also meet with the sponsor and HHS officials visit the home to ensure it’s a safe place for the child.
Many of the children in HHS-contracted facilities after arriving under the Biden administration are “aging out” of care, meaning they’re turning 18 and walking free before their immigration cases are completed, presenting a new challenge the Trump administration is tackling head on, according to Fabbricatore. The older teens oftentimes were sent to the United States by their parents to find work to send money home, which doesn’t qualify as a valid asylum claim.
But until their case is heard by an immigration judge, they can’t be deported.
“What’s happening is many of these kids are aging out of our care before they ever see an immigration judge, before they ever get in front of a court. And they’re just going out onto the street. So, NGOs are just making money for keeping these kids in [Office of Refugee Resettlement] care as long as they can,” said Fabbricatore, who added that the organizations housing migrant children are being “audited.”
The Trump administration is seeking to address the issue in part by offering a $2,500 stipend to migrant children 14 or older who volunteer to return home to their families. The child still has to request what is known as a “voluntary departure” from an immigration and has free legal representation provided by the federal government.
“The voluntary departure gives them a choice to make an informed decision to go home,” Fabbricatore said.
“It allows for a quicker reunification of these adolescents to their families in their country of origin. An immigration judge still has to sign off on that decision,” he said.
“When a kid asks for volunteer departure, we work with their country of origin to make sure that we have travel documents, to make sure that they’re going to a safe location, so that they’re flown back safely to be reunified with their families and their country of origin,” he said.
The Trump administration has located roughly 25,000 migrant children who were “lost” under the Biden administration, Border Czar Tom Homan revealed last month.
Meanwhile, the work continues as officials work “to save every single kid that is in danger or in trouble,” Fabbricatore said.
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