Ranking Member Cassidy, Grassley, Colleagues Call Out Biden-Harris Failure to Address Exploitation of Migrant Children, Abuses at ORR

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, Chuck Grassley (R-IA), Ron Johnson (R-WI), and 41 other Republican lawmakers called out the Biden-Harris administration for its failure to address the abuses at the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), resulting in the exploitation of unaccompanied migrant children in its care.  

“This is not a partisan issue. It can and should bring us together, as we try to protect Americans and [unaccompanied migrant children] placed in HHS ORR custody alike,” wrote the lawmakers. “Your Administration must make changes to its policies and procedures for [unaccompanied migrant children] to end this public safety crisis.” 

For over a year, Cassidy has been investigating the systemic failures at ORR, the federal agency responsible for caring for unaccompanied migrant children once they cross the border and ensuring they are released to thoroughly vetted sponsors. This investigation has exposed HHS and ORR’s focus on speed over safety, leading to cases where Biden-Harris officials released unaccompanied children to dangerous sponsors, including sexual predators and those with close ties to MS-13 gang members. Many of these children are also forced into dangerous working conditions and exploited for illegal labor.      

Last week, Cassidy delivered a floor speech ahead of Senate Democrats blocking legislation he led with Senator Grassley that prohibited the use of federal funds for any ORR grantee facing suspension and debarment procedures for allowing illegal sexual abuse or harassment of children in its care. Recently, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Southwest Key Programs, alleging that its employees committed sexual abuse against unaccompanied children as young as five years old in its shelters for nearly a decade. Cassidy previously called on the HELP Committee chair to hold a hearing with Southwest Key and ORR officials to answer how these shocking allegations of sexual abuse went undetected for so long.    

Recently, Cassidy penned a Fox News op-ed detailing how the Biden-Harris open border policies have exacerbated ORR’s failures to protect unaccompanied children from exploitation.    

Cassidy, Grassley, and Johnson are joined by U.S. Senators Mike Crapo (R-ID), John Cornyn (R-TX), Lindsey Graham (R-SC),  John Thune (R-SD), Roger Wicker (R-MS), Jim Risch (R-ID), John Hoeven (R-ND), Mike Lee (R-UT), Tim Scott (R-SC), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Deb Fischer (R-NE), Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), James Lankford (R-OK), Steve Daines (R-MT), Dan Sullivan (R-AK), John Kennedy (R-LA), Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Mike Braun (R-IN), Josh Hawley (R-MO), Rick Scott (R-FL), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), Katie Britt (R-AL) and Pete Ricketts (R-NE). 

Read the full letter here or below.

President Biden and Vice President Harris:

As a result of your open-borders policies, overseen by Vice President Harris, who was tasked with “stemming the migration” at our border with Mexico, more than 500,000 unaccompanied alien children (UACs) have crossed the southwest border without a parent or guardian to provide care since you took office, a massive increase when compared to previous administrations.¹ These UACs often experience horrible sexual, physical, and emotional abuse on the journey and are victims of cartel trafficking and exploitation, a business that surged an estimated 2,500 percent from the Trump Administration to the middle of your term in 2022.² Sadly, the suffering these children endure does not end at the border. Your Administration also fails them when they arrive in the United States by rushing them out of the custody of your Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) into the hands of unvetted sponsors who often continue to exploit and abuse them.³

Even as the trafficking business and the number of children entering the U.S. surged, HHS ORR cut back significantly on background checks and vetting procedures to speed up the process, despite knowing children were being trafficked through HHS ORR’s UAC program.⁴ Your Administration likewise continued Vice President Harris’s longtime priority of cutting back on information sharing between HHS ORR and law enforcement related to unaccompanied children and sponsors. When the Trump Administration implemented a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) to provide for robust information sharing between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and HHS ORR, then-Senator Harris called this attempt to protect children and communities “outrageous.”⁵ She also introduced legislation in response to the Trump MOA that slashed funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement by $220 million.⁶ Her bill was so extreme it failed to allow HHS information to be used by DHS for immigration enforcement even for potential sponsors and household members with convictions or pending charges of child abuse, sexual assault, child pornography, or any other crime.⁷ Even House Democrats considered Harris’s approach too radical and added these exceptions to counteract the extreme nature of her legislative proposal. Their approach, unlike Harris’s, allowed HHS information to be used to deport child predators and those convicted of serious felonies.⁸ Given her stated policy priorities, it is no wonder your Administration later revoked the Trump Administration’s MOA, seriously hampering the work of law enforcement,⁹ and promulgated a final rule enshrining the bar on sharing such information with law enforcement officials.¹⁰

Your Administration further stripped Customs and Border Protection officials of their ability to conduct familial DNA testing, as was implemented by the Trump Administration to verify adults’ claims that they are related to children they bring across the border.¹¹ This made the smuggling and trafficking of these kids that much easier. Early into your term, your Administration also canceled protections the Trump Administration proposed to provide post-release services for all children placed with sponsors, including in-person visits and extended follow-up after placement.¹² These protections would have helped ensure children were safe. Instead, the actions of your Administration have been disastrous and now, HHS ORR is actively attempting to cover up the results of its egregious decisions. We call upon you to put an end to that cover-up.

When Senator Grassley and Senator Cassidy, ranking members of the Senate Budget Committee and Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, asked HHS ORR contractors and grantees whether they took necessary steps to protect children, HHS obstructed those inquiries, directing the entities not to respond.¹³ This included Southwest Key, which Senator Grassley asked, among other things, about its vetting of staff before they have access to minors.¹⁴ The Department of Justice has since sued Southwest Key for turning a blind eye to nearly a decade of child rape and sexual abuse by its staff.¹⁵ During this same time, HHS ORR provided Southwest Key with more than $3 billion to house UACs.¹⁶ These contractors and grantees receive large sums of taxpayer dollars, a lucrative business that has boomed during your Administration.¹⁷ Yet HHS ORR told them not to answer Congress when it asked whether basic protections were afforded to these kids. This is completely unacceptable.

At the same time, since early 2023, the House Judiciary Committee has sought information on the total number of UACs HHS ORR has lost contact with after placement during your Administration.¹⁸ According to the New York Times, as of February 2023, ORR had been unable to contact at least 85,000 UACs after placement with sponsors,¹⁹ or roughly 34 percent of total UACs released up to that point in your term.²⁰ Applying the 34 percent figure to the most up-to-date number of 432,938 UACs the Administration has released to sponsors,²¹ we estimate ORR has been unable to contact nearly 150,000 UACs through Safety and Well-being calls after their release.²² When confronted by the House Judiciary Committee with an estimate based on the Times’s findings,²³ ORR did not dispute it.²⁴ Although the House Judiciary Committee twice subpoenaed HHS for internal agency data relating to the total number of UACs with whom it has lost contact after placement, HHS has refused to provide the subpoenaed data.²⁵

Unfortunately, the cover-up does not end there. Recently, DHS informed Senator Grassley’s office that HHS ORR has not sufficiently complied with two out of every three subpoenas and other information requests that resulted from his referral of possible child trafficking rings across the U.S. to DHS in January.²⁶ By not supplying the information law enforcement requested, ORR denied Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents critical information, including the last known addresses of children and sponsors and the identity of other household members.²⁷ In part because of HHS ORR’s lack of cooperation, DHS has so far only been able to locate less than four percent of sponsors identified as investigative targets, and a similarly small number of UACs.²⁸

At a recent Senate roundtable forum, “The Exploitation Crisis: How the U.S. Government is Failing to Protect Migrant Children from Trafficking and Abuse,” senators and members of the public heard from a panel with direct knowledge of this crisis.²⁹ What the witnesses told the oversight panel was shocking. For example, HHS retaliated against one of the witnesses, Ms. Tara Lee Rodas, after she blew the whistle and tried to stop the placement of young children with a household in Ohio connected to the violent MS-13 gang.³⁰ In addition, witnesses described how HHS and its contractors prioritized UAC placement speed over UAC safety by failing to verify the legitimacy of identity documents, failing to obtain criminal history from the countries of origin of UACs and sponsors, and failing to conduct legally required home studies for UACs who had endured sexual or other abuse.³¹ Other whistleblowers continue to come forward with similar information. Congress has the right to obtain information necessary to conduct oversight of these widespread failures to protect the lives of children without HHS standing in the way.

HHS’s failure to ensure UACs are in appropriate placements and to adequately vet sponsors is harmful not only to the UACs, but also to American citizens. As the Attorney General under the Trump Administration recognized, the UAC program has for years suffered from exploitation by criminals, including “gang members who come to this country as wolves in sheep[’s] clothing” and “use th[e UAC] program as a means by which to recruit new members.”³² As the House Judiciary Committee’s oversight has shown, under Secretary Becerra’s leadership, HHS has ignored the potential criminality and gang affiliation of UACs.

Indeed, as revealed in the House Judiciary Committee’s May 2023 interim report, in May 2022, HHS ORR released to a sponsor a UAC with a previous arrest record for “illicit association with MS-13.”³³ That UAC, released by your Administration, went on to brutally assault and murder 20-year-old American citizen Kayla Hamilton.³⁴ Incredibly, HHS noted on several occasions to the House Judiciary Committee its focus on protecting the privacy of Kayla’s murderer.³⁵ Although local police quickly identified Walter Javier Martinez as the primary suspect in the murder and expressed their concern about the threat he posed to society, according to new investigative reporting, Martinez was placed in a Maryland foster home with other children and enrolled in high school.³⁶ Later, while in custody for murdering Kayla, the alien authored a letter in which he “admitted to committing [four] murders, [two] rapes, and additional other crimes.”³⁷ Martinez has since been sentenced to more than 70 years in prison.³⁸

Despite having released to a sponsor a UAC with gang tattoos and a history of “illicit association” with MS-13, HHS told the House Judiciary Committee that it does not have a policy to refer known or suspected gang members to the Justice Department for investigation or, where appropriate, prosecution.³⁹ At the same time, ORR Director Robin Dunn Marcos, the HHS official in charge of the UAC program, admitted that, while HHS sometimes contacts the consulate or embassy of a UAC’s country of origin or last habitual residence to verify some documents or claimed familial relationships, HHS does not even request UACs’ criminal records.⁴⁰ Troublingly, HHS has also admitted that it does not currently have any secure facilities “in-network”—that is, facilities designed for the secure placement of UACs who pose a danger to themselves or others or who have been determined to have a criminal record.⁴¹

An August 2024 House Judiciary Committee report highlighted yet another case of UAC criminality, detailing how Juan Carlos Garcia Rodriguez, a UAC from Guatemala released by your Administration, horrifically assaulted and murdered 11-year-old Maria Gonzalez.⁴² Maria’s father found “his daughter’s body wrapped in a trash bag and stuffed in a laundry basket that was put beneath her bed.”⁴³ Garcia Rodriguez was encountered by Border Patrol after entering the U.S. illegally in El Paso in January 2023, smuggled to the U.S. border by a “guide” paid for by his parents.⁴⁴ Despite being overheard commenting about his desire to run away while in HHS custody, HHS placed Garcia Rodriguez with an unrelated adult sponsor who had twice previously sponsored unrelated UACs.⁴⁵ Unsurprisingly, shortly after the Biden-Harris Administration’s release of Garcia Rodriguez, he became one of the estimated 150,000 UACs with whom HHS has lost contact.⁴⁶ Just months after HHS lost contact with Garcia Rodriguez, he ran away from his sponsor.⁴⁷ Not long after his 18th birthday, and mere months after his release from HHS custody, Garcia Rodriguez, brutally assaulted and murdered Maria.⁴⁸

This is not a partisan issue. It can and should bring us together, as we try to protect Americans and UACs placed in HHS ORR custody alike. Your Administration must make changes to its policies and procedures for UACs to end this public safety crisis. It must also take urgent steps to provide information to law enforcement and Congress, to reveal the crisis’s full scope. We request that you immediately instruct HHS Secretary Becerra to take urgent steps to this end: HHS must provide access to the UAC Portal, HHS’s system of record for UACs, to federal law enforcement, HHS’s Inspector General, and Congress, allowing them to quickly conduct investigations and oversee the UAC placement program, and to analyze data regarding suspicious UAC placements; it must fully cooperate with DHS’s HSI and other federal, state, local, and tribal law enforcement agencies seeking to locate children and investigate trafficking, smuggling, and other forms of child exploitation; and it must thoroughly respond to congressional oversight requests and instruct HHS’s contractors and grantees to do the same.

HHS must stop its cover-up and cooperate with law enforcement and Congress to end this crisis and protect unaccompanied children and the American people. Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

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