Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) is grilling DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas about what he says is a “catastrophic failure” to protect hundreds of thousands of migrant children released into the US from labor exploitation.
“Unaccompanied migrant children are some of the most vulnerable people in America,” Hawley wrote. letter “They are routinely trafficked for sex, forced into illegal labor, burned with chemicals, and subjected to countless atrocities at the hands of the cartels,” Mayorkas said.
As Breitbart News reported last week, the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General (IG) found that Biden and Harris’ agencies released more than 365,000 unaccompanied alien children (UAC) into the U.S. interior between fiscal years 2021 and 2023.
According to the IG report, hundreds of thousands of UACs placed with adult sponsors in the United States (the majority of whom are not their biological parents) are at risk of “trafficking, exploitation, and forced labor” because DHS and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) are not in touch with them.
“Your policies are completely making the situation worse… [the] “The dangers of human trafficking to migrant children,” Hawley wrote to Mayorkas, “… your department has not only allowed these children to go missing, but has made no attempt to notify anyone. This is inexcusable.”
RELATED: Biden administration officials can’t say how many migrant children released into the U.S. are being tracked by the federal government.
Senator Josh Hawley / YouTube
Hawley demanded immediate answers from Mayorkas, requesting information about where at-risk UACs live in the U.S., why DHS has failed to notify the courts of hundreds of thousands of UACs, what DHS is doing to find such UACs, and what caused the failure in the first place.
In February, HHS IG Christy Grimm Published The report found that in 22% of cases, authorities did not provide appropriate and safe follow-up phone calls for UACs released to U.S. adult sponsors.
In fiscal year 2023, the Ministry of Labor 88 percent Child labor trafficking has increased compared to 2019. Last year, approximately 6,000 children, many of them minors, were found to be engaged in cruel, life-threatening and illegal work.
Related: Vivek Ramaswamy explains why he got involved City of Dreams Film documenting migrant child slavery
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John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter. here.
