Democrats Move To Loosen Oversight Of ‘Sponsors’ That Take—And Often Lose—Migrant Children

Senate Democrats on Tuesday doubled down on a program that has lost at least 85,000 “unaccompanied alien children,” proposing to move children to the sponsors even more quickly, and with even less oversight.

Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and other Democrats introduced the “Children’s Safe Welcome Act of 2024,” which would require that within seven days of receiving an application from an adult who wants to “sponsor” a child who crosses the border without parents, the Department of Health and Human Services must make its decision about whether to release the child to that person.

Agency whistleblowers say that timeline does not give enough time for any reasonable background check, and results in children being sent to live with labor and sex traffickers and gang members.

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) on Tuesday said the emphasis on sending migrants to live with “sponsors” as quickly as possible has led to the “systematic abuse and disappearance of migrant children” and retaliation against employees who tried to block “children from going to men who sexualized them, MS-13 gang affiliated sponsors, and also sponsors who were mass-applying for kids.”

Democrats became obsessed with avoiding the temporary holding facilities, which were common under Barack Obama, at all costs after calling them “cages” under Trump.

The bill would make it very difficult for the government to say no to releasing a child to an adult who wants him or her, saying that the burden of proof falls on the government to establish, “by clear and convincing evidence,” that “placement with the prospective sponsor is likely to result in serious emotional or physical damage to the child.”

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That proof would be hard to come by because the government would be barred from gathering information from prospective sponsors in a manner not subject to fraud. Fingerprint-based checks may only (and even then, not must) be requested “if a public records check of the sponsor reveals safety concerns” — a situation that is unlikely to occur because sponsors for whom fingerprints would show negative information could simply use a fake name. The agency otherwise simply relies on pictures of foreign IDs texted to government workers through WhatsApp.

The bill says that the government must get rid of any process that slows down the release of children — processes that whistleblowers say are designed to prevent them from going to traffickers and abusers. “The Director shall eliminate any administrative hindrance identified as a systemic barrier to release,” the bill says.

A criminal background is not a reason to deny custody of a minor to a “sponsor” unless the conviction is for child trafficking or otherwise has a “direct and immediate impact” on the safety of the child, language that is not defined and which, again, HHS will have every incentive to define narrowly because moving kids quickly to any sponsor is the priority.

Although the program was advertised to Americans as “reuniting” children with family members, the Democrat bill is explicit that children often have no relationship whatsoever to the sponsor, and requires it to stay that way, saying “a prospective sponsor may not be denied sponsorship solely due to … absence of a pre-existing relationship with the unaccompanied noncitizen child concerned.”

The bill also ties HHS’ hands by entirely shutting down group homes where children can be held for longer if a sponsor is not quickly identifiable. Although such group homes have also been sites of abuse of children, having them as not even an option means that HHS will be highly disincentivized to ask any questions about sponsors that might turn up an answer they don’t want to hear.

HHS never meets the sponsors in person before turning the children over to them. Whistleblowers have said it is an open secret that many of them are brazenly lying, and that staff are taught not to ask questions. In one instance, a man pretended to be a particular woman, speaking in a falsetto voice, and government agents simply accepted “her” identity. Then they put the children in the custody of a transportation contractor, who takes them to the sponsor.

The only follow-up that HHS does after that is a single call 30 days later. The New York Times reported in 2021 that one-third of the time, the sponsors couldn’t or wouldn’t assure the government of the child’s safe presence at the home at that time. That amounted to 85,000 missing children — a number which, if the rate held, could now be 166,000, as approximately 500,000 unaccompanied alien children have entered the country in recent years.

The government has a list of the sponsors who are almost always illegal immigrants themselves, and who have lost children, but instead of facing the repercussions that a parent who lost their American child would, the government fiercely protects the sponsors.

It says local authorities are responsible for assuring the safety of children after they are dropped off with sponsors, but refuses to give local authorities lists of the kids — so they don’t know they even exist, and cannot provide child protective services.

The Democrat bill prevents HHS from doing more oversight to ensure the safety of children, saying, “The Director may not uniformly require post-release services to be in place before releasing an unaccompanied noncitizen child to a sponsor,” and, “If HHS becomes aware that a child is in danger, it may not take the child back, but may (not must) notify local authorities.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) said American children would never be treated with such little diligence, and “we should protect these vulnerable children from harm as if they were our own.”

Grassley objected to the Democrat bill Tuesday, saying, “I can’t imagine having every decision critical to my survival turned over to a complete stranger who the government hasn’t even fully vetted, but child safety wasn’t even this administration’s priority.”

“Three months into their term, the Biden-Harris administration tore up an information-sharing agreement” and “they replaced it with a watered-down agreement that deleted provisions that required sponsors to be vetted and run through certain law enforcement checks before being granted custody of a child.”

“I’m not sure if the Biden-Harris administration ever stopped to wonder how a local law enforcement agency looks after a child when the federal government won’t even give them a photograph of an endangered child,” he continued.

Grassley said HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra once lectured employees on a conference call for taking too long vetting sponsors, saying, “This is not the way you do an assembly line.” One employee said, “We only get sued if we keep kids in care of the government too long. We don’t get sued by traffickers,” he said.

Critics say the loophole that shields people from being turned away at the border if they show up without parents has induced the separation of intact families and led to children being made astonishingly vulnerable to exploitation. The Democratic platform adopted at Kamala Harris’ 2024 convention says the loophole on unaccompanied minors must remain intact.

Related: How Guatemalan Traffickers Exploit Biden’s ‘Unaccompanied Alien Children’ Program