A federal whistleblower said Tuesday that the Biden administration’s Office of Refugee Resettlement within the Department of Health and Human Services was sending unaccompanied minors to the U.S. Child TraffickersFailed to properly vet sponsors.
Federal employees Deborah White and Tara Rodas said they first learned in June 2021 that ORR was placing children in “unsafe” situations.
“A most horrific injustice.”
Once minors cross the border, Customs and Border Protection transfers unaccompanied children to the custody of HHS’s ORR, which is responsible for finding and vetting sponsors to care for the minors. The priority is to first try to release the children to their parents or legal guardians, but this rarely happens, according to testimony to a senator committee on Tuesday.
“What I discovered was horrifying: children were being trafficked using billions of taxpayer dollars, by contractors who failed to vet sponsors and failed to keep the children safe, and with government complicity,” White said. “In some cases, children were being sent to abandoned buildings and addresses that didn’t exist.”
“In Michigan, kids were sent to the field despite us reporting them. [sic] “I called 911 when I heard someone screaming for help, but they still sent my child,” White continued. “When I expressed concerns about the contractor’s poor workmanship and asked to see the contract, I was told, ‘You’ll never get the contract and don’t ever ask again.’ So I decided to take it upon myself to create training on critical incident reporting of sexual abuse and flagging human trafficking so case managers would be prepared.”
Despite reporting concerns, children continued to be sent to “dangerous places,” White said.
“When we questioned the documentation, HHS ORR officials said, ‘You guys are not experts in fake IDs and it’s not your job to investigate sponsors. Your job is to reunite children with sponsors,'” White said.
Rodas told senators that ORR noted it was not meeting with sponsors in person and that children were being placed with “random people.”
She explained that a 16-year-old girl from Guatemala had been placed with a man who claimed to be the girl’s brother, but who it was “clear” was not. In photos posted by the man on social media, the girl “appeared to be on drugs” and “for sale.” She added that the man had “touched the girl inappropriately” and had other social media accounts that contained child pornography.
Florida Department of Children and Families Secretary Shevan Harris argued that only 10 percent of unaccompanied minors are able to live with their parents.
“It defies logic and it’s inhumane,” Harris said.
Both White and Rodas alleged that ORR and the Cherokee Confederacy, the taxpayer-funded contractor tasked with resettling unaccompanied children, ignored warning signs of possible human trafficking activity.
White said the Cherokee Federal Police “employed several unqualified, unvetted and, frankly, unsafe contractors to work with vulnerable children who were denied the proper support, services and humane treatment they deserved after a most dangerous journey.”
She added that the stories she’s heard from some of the children “will haunt me for the rest of my life.”
“HHS ORR leadership and contractors have allowed child trafficking to occur on their watch and taxpayers continue to fund it,” White said, calling the department’s program “the greatest failure in the history of our government.”
“This is the most horrific injustice against a child I have witnessed in my career as a federal employee,” Rodas said.
Neither HHS nor the Cherokee Federation responded to The Washington Post’s requests for comment.
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