DHS pushes back on claims of migrant children sex abuse
Anna Giaritelli
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The Department of Homeland Security is going on the offense amid growing criticism of how it has neglected tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children at the border.
The DHS published a fact sheet on its website Wednesday evening highlighting the departmentwide work its federal law enforcement officers and agents have done over the past year to rescue child sex abuse victims and to prosecute adult offenders.
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“DHS is dedicated to battling child exploitation and abuse from every angle: identifying and rescuing victims, protecting and supporting victims and survivors, locating and apprehending perpetrators, and raising awareness through public education and outreach,” the department wrote in a statement.
However, Republicans are increasingly concerned about how the government has handled the 350,000 unaccompanied minors who crossed the border and were released into the United States under President Joe Biden’s watch. Children are first encountered by Border Patrol agents and then turned over to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), where the government will search for a relative, family friend, or another adult to release the child to.
In that time, the federal government lost track of 85,000 immigrant children after their release, only to be found in forced labor and sex work, according to an April report by the New York Times.
More than 75 other House lawmakers demanded transparency from the Biden administration in a letter sent to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Wednesday, accusing them of knowingly and recklessly discharging unaccompanied children to adults across the country.
Without mentioning the New York Times report, DHS said its agencies, including the Secret Service, Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Homeland Security Investigations, and the Science and Technology Directorate, identified or rescued 1,170 child victims of exploitation and abuse.
Federal investigators arrested 4,459 people for crimes of producing, distributing, or receiving child abuse material on both the dark web and clear web. Roughly half of those arrested were eventually convicted.
Through polygraph testing of online offenders, Secret Service officers uncovered more than 1,400 sexual assaults and 90 victims of sexual abuse, according to DHS.
The only mention of unaccompanied children by the department was about Customs and Border Protection’s general screening of migrant children for signs of being abused or exploited, trafficked, or enslaved in other ways.
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Robert Carey oversaw ORR at the end of the Obama administration and testified in a House hearing last month that migrant children were in hostile situations after being released into the U.S.
“Unaccompanied children are vulnerable, and the newest investigations demonstrate that some have been exploited by employers, often laboring for staffing agencies or contractors performing work for prominent U.S. companies and brands,” Carey said in his opening statement.