Emma Waters: Missing minors

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: Today is Wednesday, July 31st, 2024. Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Lindsay Mast.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard. WORLD Opinions Commentator Emma Waters now…on the consequences of supposedly compassionate border policies.

EMMA WATERS, COMMENTATOR: The news of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump spread across the nation within minutes of the bullet grazing his ear. By God’s providence, the president chose that exact moment to gesture toward a chart of immigration data. This slight movement took him out of harm’s way. Sadly, the same cannot be said for the many young migrants trafficked each year across the porous U.S. southern border.

Since President Joe Biden took office, more than 460,000 unaccompanied minors have been released to unrelated or distantly related sponsors in the United States. As of 2023, the Department of Health and Human Services was unable to locate more than 85,000 of these children.

Where did they go? Based on investigations by The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, as well as roundtable Senate Committee hearings, it appears that many of these lost children are being exploited for labor or sex in the United States. As HHS whistleblower Deborah White told Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, at a roundtable hearing earlier this month, the Biden administration’s emphasis on speed over proper safety precautions has resulted in “taxpayer-funded child slavery.”

White testified that the Biden administration has failed to follow proper safeguards such as fingerprinting sponsors and conducting home visits before releasing children. Congressional investigations have also found that many of these sponsors have ties to the MS-13 gang, were previously denied approval, or already had three or more unaccompanied minors in their care.

White also explained that children had been sent to addresses of unsafe or abandoned homes. In one case, a child was sent to an open field. In another, more than 50 children had been released to the same address. As The New York Times reports, these situations point to poorly concealed child trafficking schemes.

For many years, certain evangelical leaders and the progressive left disavowed former President Donald Trump’s “inhumane” border policies, citing images of children in cages. Women, especially, were pestered with Bible verses about “welcoming the stranger” and showing hospitality to the least of these. Indeed, they told us that Jesus was an immigrant to the land of Egypt, so we too should welcome those who are foreigners in our land.

These are distortions of Scripture. Joseph, Mary, and Jesus didn’t “immigrate” to Egypt by illegally crossing a border. They simply stayed in another Roman province to avoid dangers in their own town. And there is nothing in Scripture or Christian theology that requires an open border.

Far from caring for the poor and fatherless, the lax policies governing the southern border harm unaccompanied minors who are being trafficked into the United States. Instead of providing safeguards and safety checks at our border, the United States is encouraging child labor and sexual exploitation. Allowing minors into the United States without properly vetting where they will end up is false empathy, and conceals crimes against the poor and vulnerable among us.

We should judge public policies not by the rhetoric in which they’re clothed but by the known and likely effects. As the last four years have shown, a strong and secure southern border is not cruel. On the contrary, it protects both American citizens and illegal immigrants.

I’m Emma Waters.

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