WASHINGTON – The Wall Street Journal today revealed the Biden administration knowingly placed unaccompanied migrant children with harmful sponsors, including potential labor traffickers and individuals with criminal records. The Journal notes Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is leading 46 Senate colleagues in a bipartisan Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution to strike down the Biden administration’s rule allowing unaccompanied minors to go to unvetted and abusive sponsors.
 
Read the full piece HERE and see excerpts below.
 
WSJ: U.S. Officials Wanted to Avoid Trump’s ‘Kids in Cages’ Problem. Doing So Created Another Dilemma.
By Jack Gillum and Michelle Hackman
July 8, 2024
 
In 2021, when the new Biden administration was struggling to cope with a sudden influx of unaccompanied migrant children at the U.S.-Mexico border, the government repeatedly overrode the concerns of lower-level workers who warned about placing them in certain households…
 
“It does not appear safe for the minor to be released to a home environment that was not fully assessed,” a case worker wrote about a child slated to live in a hostel-like home in Florida with at least three adults. A few days later, an official dismissed the recommendation to reject the proposed guardian, according to internal government memos.
 
At another facility in Pomona, Calif., about 30 miles east of Los Angeles, more than 100 children that summer were sent to temporary guardians who were issued denials early in the process by case coordinators… [M]any of the others were approved with scant details explaining why. Some of those home addresses were tied to histories of criminal activity or other behavior that indicated the possibility the children would be put to work…
 
The findings show that Biden administration officials sometimes overlooked concerns about potential guardians as they faced a political crisis over an unprecedented surge of unaccompanied minors soon after taking office…
 
...[O]ne caseworker said supervisors were warned that adoption attempts by some sponsors may indicate children were at risk because the sponsor was trying to take on at least a half-dozen children, a common indicator of labor trafficking.
 
For instance, workers discovered that purportedly different guardians living at several addresses in one U.S. city had ties back to the same person, documents show. That suggested one sponsor was recruiting children for work, they said. 
 
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In yet other instances, officials appeared unaware of criminal histories. 
 
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[A] group of some 40 senators, led by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and including Sen. Joe Manchin (I., W.Va.), are planning to hold a vote that could force the administration to revise its approach to handling unaccompanied children, saying it leaves too much room for children to be sent to unsafe homes in the effort to get them out of government custody.
 
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