I’m here to inform my colleagues what’s wrong with our immigration enforcement involving children.
In April, the Biden administration finalized a rule governing its Unaccompanied Minors program. They did this over the objections of this senator and 38 others when we informed this administration in letter. And we didn’t object lightly.
For nearly a decade, my oversight has shown the Office of Refugee Resettlement, that’sORR for short, has failed to protect unaccompanied minors. Biden’s new rule cements ORR’s dangerous policies.
Here’s just one example of ORR’s many failures. This is taken straight from a Justice Department court filing.
A sexual predator smuggled a 10-year-old girl,I’ll call her Mary... Mary was from Guatemala, smuggled to the United States on false promises of an education. When she reached the border, ORR officials promised Mary they’d find a safe sponsor for her. Then, they simply trusted everything to Mary’s predator,and what that predator said.
Mary’s predator lied about being her father. He gave ORR phony documents and phony forms approving Mary’s release to his sister, who he claimed was Mary’s aunt.
Under Biden’s rule, ORR doesn’t have to verify a sponsor’s proof of identity or even guardianship. It doesn’t even fully background and, accordingly, check the sponsor.
The ORR Rule takes a sponsor’s representations at near-face value, and then puts employees on a 10 or 14-day clock to get kids into the hands of the sponsors as fast as possible.
Then, without even batting an eye, the ORR escorted Mary to her fake aunt in Chicago. There, this 10-year-old girl was stabbed with a kitchen knife, scalded with cooking oil and repeatedly sexually assaulted by four men.
Now, Mary thought she was coming to America to have a better life and pursue the American Dream. Instead, she was enduring a nightmare.
I imagine Mary prayed every night for help. I reckon she spent every day asking God how this happened to her.
It happened because the United States turned a blind eye. And by finalizing this rule, the administration of President Biden is refusing to remove the blindfold.
ORR knows it has a problem. The Justice Department told ORR what happened to Mary.
Last December, I led 38 other senators in demanding ORR change its policies. But our warning fell on deaf ears.
Biden’s ORR just finalized a rule with policies that are even worse than those that placed Mary with her abusers.
Under these policies, in 2021, ORR sent another little girl to a sexual predator in the state of Kentucky who falsely claimed to be her uncle.
ORR accepted fake paperwork and unverified claims.
It moves kids to sponsors as if they were nothing more than products on an assembly line.
We ought to protect kids from predators.
Now, there’s a process where Congress can object to these rules; it’s called a Congressional Review Act. It’s something that can be done in the United States Senate with just a majority vote. You don’t have to have 60 votes to stop debate, because it’s limited to 10 hours of debate and then you vote whatever the majority wants to do.
Now this whole thing of child abuse through the immigration system, because we are not adequately vetting the people who bring these kids in, or where they’re assigned – it'svery clear that child abuse of this typeisn’ta Democrat or Republican issue.
So, under this Congressional Review Act process, I’mglad to have the support of Senator Manchin and 43 other senators on my resolution to overturn the Biden administration’s awful ORR rule.
I hope to see more of my colleagues support this effort and I hope to get it to a vote, and [I] ask for their support.
I yield the floor, Mr. Chairman.
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