The Department of Health and Human Services handed off unaccompanied migrant children to adults who had not even been rudimentarily vetted, according to a report released on Thursday from the HHS Office of the Inspector General.
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The report covers the year 2021 and contains some shocking shortcomings by HHS that put children in danger of being exploited on many levels.
The analysis showed that the department failed to run basic safety checks — like address or criminal background checks — and that up to a third of IDs that the sponsors supplied were illegible. That means that the IDs were probably forged.
“We found that children’s case files and sponsor records were not always updated with important documentation and information,” said Haley Lubeck, an analyst for the HHS IG’s office.
HHS placed more than 16,000 children with adult sponsors at that time and failed to follow up with wellness check calls to the children in the required time frame of 30-37 days. It took four times longer to get in touch with the children than required.
The agency also failed to provide proof it had conducted basic safety checks – like background checks or address checks – in 16% of the cases, the watchdog found.
And, for every five cases, HHS didn’t follow up to check on the children it had placed, often for months.
HHS is supposed to have a follow-up call with every child and their sponsor between 30 to 37 days after placement. But in cases where the agency failed to follow up with the children, it took on average about 122 days for a caseworker to reach out, the OIG’s analysis found.
Previously, the IG found that these lax procedures resulted in children being exploited in sweatshops. It’s unclear whether the children were trafficked in some cases, but with thousands of unvetted adults, it’s not impossible to imagine.
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Worse, some whistleblowers tried to bring these dangerous procedures to the attention of their supervisors.
Finally, staff reported acts of potential retaliation and whistleblower chilling. These reported acts may have created an environment in which staff at the ORR EIS at Fort Bliss and ORR headquarters felt discouraged from raising concerns about case management and child safety to supervisors.
The Office of Refugee Resettlement within HHS (ORR) was discouraged from making waves in order to speed up the resentment of minors. At the time (September 2022), the issue was causing political trouble for Biden and the Democrats before the midterm election.
“Protecting children must remain paramount,” said Jennie Murray, President and CEO of the National Immigration Forum, in a statement. “HHS and the Biden administration more broadly must take these findings seriously and do everything in their power to ensure that children are safe.”
As long as they’re out of sight and not a political burden.