.
Jan. 28, 2016 articles, Washington Post and NY Times:
1/28/2016, "Obama administration placed children with human traffickers, report says," Washington Post, Abbie Van Sickle
"The Obama administration failed to protect thousands of Central
American children who have flooded across the U.S. border since 2011,
leaving them vulnerable to traffickers and to abuses at the hands of
government-approved caretakers, a Senate investigation has found.
The
Office of Refugee Resettlement, an agency of the Department of Health
and Human Services, failed to do proper background checks of adults who
claimed the children, allowed sponsors to take custody of multiple
unrelated children, and regularly placed children in homes without
visiting the locations, according to a 56-page investigative report
released Thursday.
And once the children left federally funded
shelters, the report said, the agency permitted their adult sponsors to
prevent caseworkers from providing them post-release services.
Sen.
Rob Portman (R-Ohio) initiated the six-month investigation after
several Guatemalan teens were found in a dilapidated trailer park near
Marion, Ohio, where they were being held captive by traffickers and
forced to work at a local egg farm.
The boys were among more than
125,000 unaccompanied minors who have surged into the United States
since 2011, fleeing violence and unrest in Guatemala, Honduras and El
Salvador....
The report concluded that administration “policies and procedures were inadequate to protect the children in the agency’s care.” HHS
spokesman Mark Weber said in a statement that the agency would “review
the committee’s findings carefully and continue to work to ensure the
best care for the children we serve.”
The report was released
ahead of a hearing Thursday before the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on
Investigations, which Portman co-chairs with Sen. Claire McCaskill
(D-Mo.). It detailed nearly 30 cases where unaccompanied children had
been trafficked after federal officials released them to sponsors or
where there were “serious trafficking indicators.”
“HHS places
children with individuals about whom it knows relatively little and
without verifying the limited information provided by sponsors about
their alleged relationship with the child,” the report said.
For
example, one Guatemalan boy planned to live with his uncle in Virginia.
But when the uncle refused to take the boy, he ended up with another
sponsor, who forced him to work nearly 12 hours a day to repay a $6,500
smuggling debt, which the sponsor later increased to $10,900, the report
said.
A boy from El Salvador was released to his father even
though he told a caseworker that his father had a history of beating
him, including hitting him with an electrical cord. In September, the
boy alerted authorities that his father was forcing him to work for
little or no pay, the report said; a post-release service worker later
found the boy was being kept in a basement and given little food.
The
Senate investigation began in July after federal prosecutors indicted
six people in connection with the Marion labor-trafficking scheme, which
involved at least eight minors and two adults from the Huehuetenango
region of Guatemala.
One defendant, Aroldo Castillo-Serrano, 33,
used associates to file false applications with the government agency
tasked with caring for the children, and bring them to Ohio, where he
kept them in squalid conditions in a trailer park and forced them to
work 12-hour days, at least six days a week, for little pay.
Castillo-Serrano has pleaded guilty to labor-trafficking charges and
awaits sentencing in the Northern District of Ohio in Toledo.
The
FBI raided the trailer park in December 2014, rescuing the boys, but
the Senate investigation says federal officials could have discovered
the scheme far sooner.
In August 2014, a child-welfare caseworker attempted to visit one of
the children, who had been approved for post-release services because of
reported mental-health problems, according to the report.
The
caseworker went to the address listed for the child, but the person who
answered the door said the child didn’t live there, the report added.
When the caseworker finally found the child’s sponsor, the sponsor
blocked the caseworker from talking to the child.
Instead of
investigating further, the caseworker closed the child’s case file, the
report said, citing “ORR policy which states that the Post Release
Services are voluntary and sponsor refused services.”
That child
was found months later, living 50 miles away from the sponsor’s home and
working at the egg farm, according to the report. The child’s sponsor
was later indicted."
"VanSickle is a
reporter for the Investigative Reporting Program, a nonprofit news
organization at the University of California at Berkeley."
.........
==============
.............
Jan. 28, 2016 NY Times article:
"The
report also said that it was unclear how many of the approximately 90,000 children the agency had placed in the past two years fell prey to
traffickers, including sex traffickers, because it does not keep track
of such cases."...
1/28/2016, "U.S. Placed Immigrant Children With Traffickers, Report Says," NY Times,
The
Department of Health and Human Services placed more than a dozen
immigrant children in the custody of human traffickers after it failed
to conduct background checks of caregivers, according to a Senate report released on Thursday.
Examining
how the federal agency processes minors who arrive at the border
without a guardian, lawmakers said they found that it had not followed
basic practices of child welfare agencies, like making home visits.
The
Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations opened its inquiry
after law enforcement officials uncovered a human trafficking ring in
Marion, Ohio, last year (2015). At least six children were lured to the United
States from Guatemala with the promise of a better life, then were made
to work on egg farms. The children, as young as 14, had been in federal
custody before being entrusted to the traffickers....
In
addition to the Marion cases, the investigation found evidence that 13
other children had been trafficked after officials handed them over to
adults who were supposed to care for them during their immigration
proceedings. An additional 15 cases exhibited some signs of trafficking.
The
report also said that it was unclear how many of the approximately 90,000 children the agency had placed in the past two years fell prey to
traffickers, including sex traffickers, because it does not keep track
of such cases....
In the fall of 2013, thousands of unaccompanied children began showing up at the southern border.
Most risked abuse by traffickers and detention by law enforcement to
escape dire problems like gang violence and poverty in Central America.
As
detention centers struggled to keep up with the influx, the Department
of Health and Human Services began placing children in the custody of
sponsors who could help them while their immigration cases were
reviewed. Many children who did not have relatives in the United States
were placed in a system resembling foster care.
But
officials at times did not examine whether an adult who claimed to be a
relative actually was, relying on the word of parents, who, in some
cases, went along with the traffickers to pay off smuggling debts.
Responding
to the report, the Department of Health and Human Services said it had
taken measures to strengthen its system, collecting information to
subject potential sponsors and additional caregivers in a household to
criminal background checks.
Mark
Greenberg, the agency’s acting assistant secretary of the
Administration for Children and Families, said it had bolstered other
screening procedures and increased resources for minors.
“We
are mindful of our responsibilities to these children and are
continually looking for ways to strengthen our safeguards,” he said."
................
Translation/comment: This is called
"overwhelming the system" and gets predictable results for all concerned, ie misery, poverty, and disease. This is exactly what the entire open borders, globalist US political class has been working toward for decades. American citizens, if they must exist, are enslaved for the purpose of forcing continuous low wages globally. A wink is also given to the world's
tyrants and dictators who know they're free to continue their brutal ways, which include forcing
out all the people they don't want because US taxpayers will be forced
to pay their expenses. US elections are meaningless. George Soros runs the US.
.........
.....................
Saturday, April 28, 2018
Caravan people won't be saved by legal aid. Caravan people should fear coming to US because they can be given to human and sex traffickers, forced to work as slaves. US gov. has no ability to prevent this, doesn't keep track of kids, has no way of dealing with so-called sponsors who prevent kids from receiving services-Washington Post, NY Times, Jan. 28, 2016
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