Lawmakers clash over solution to child migrant debacle

WASHINGTON—The deluge of unaccompanied minor immigrants crossing the southern border from Central America, many of whom federal agencies unwittingly placed with sponsors connected to sex trafficking and slave worker camps, has outraged lawmakers on both the left and the right—but for different reasons.

“We spent $3 trillion in the war in Iraq, which failed miserably, and we can’t even protect the children who come across our border,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Tuesday. “They should not become pawns in some larger immigration debate. They are victims of terrible violence.”

The number of unaccompanied alien children (UACs) from Central America has increased tenfold since 2009. Immigration officers went from detaining about 7,000 minors illegally entering the country in 2011 to more than 60,000 in 2014. This year is on pace to exceed that number. Overwhelmed by the surge, federal agencies failed to place children seeking asylum with trustworthy American sponsors, sometimes neglecting even to verify whether sponsors were U.S. citizens or write down valid addresses or phone numbers.

Last month, Congress released a report after a six-month investigation outlining the failures of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which is responsible for placing UACs and keeping them safe. Tuesday’s follow-up hearing featured conflicting solutions.

Leahy and fellow Democrats on the committee believe the placement of UACs is a grave humanitarian crisis.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., pointed to the extreme danger in countries from which many of the children emigrate—El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala.

“I think that we should provide temporary protective status for children in these three countries,” he said. “If we don’t, we might be sending them back to their death.”

When children cross the U.S. border illegally and without a parental guardian, most are not sent back to their home countries. In fact, since the recent surge of UACs, only about 3 percent have been deported. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers detain the children and send them to HHS facilities to await placement with American sponsors.

Committee chairman Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said his investigation found that the average time children waited for placements while in HHS custody went from 72 days to 34 in the last five years. HHS expedited the process, in part by taking shortcuts such as not requiring original birth certificates and not consistently fingerprinting sponsors.

“Because the department cut corners, several minors were placed with human traffickers,” Grassley said. “Others were pawned off to people who abused them or forced them into sex trafficking. And those are only the cases that are public.”

While each committee member expressed sadness for the shortcomings of the unaccompanied children’s program, some members see it as a symptom of a more serious underlying immigration problem.

“It cannot be that every young person that appears from Central America is entitled to asylum and entry into the United States,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala. “They should be treated fairly and sent home. That’s what needs to be done, that’s what the law says, and that’s what the American people want.”

Sessions insisted the U.S. needs to protect its border and not allow immigrants to take advantage of overwhelmed federal agencies. So many UACs come to the border because the Obama administration does not enforce consequences, he said.

Almost half the children do not show up for court dates to assess further action. Federal agencies scramble to locate them, but because of the expedited placement process, many children and their sponsors are unreachable. In some cases, it takes months to find the missing children. Some have disappeared completely.

The committee pressed the witnesses on how to find the children who don’t show up to their court dates, but didn’t get solid answers.

“Trying to find a child is hard, especially when they are not where they’re supposed to be,” said Thomas Homan, executive associate director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations. “We don’t know where they are.”