Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) falsely claimed this week that thousands of unaccompanied migrant children have not gone missing in the United States.
A recent report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) this past August showed that as many as 32,000 migrant children have gone missing in the United States after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials released them into the custody of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) since 2019.
“[ICE] could not monitor the location and status of all unaccompanied migrant children (UCs) or initiate removal proceedings as needed,” the OIG report stated. “During our ongoing audit to assess ICE’s ability to monitor the location and status of UCs who were released or transferred from the custody of [DHS] and [HHS], we learned ICE transferred more than 448,000 UCs to HHS from fiscal years 2019 to 2023.”
“However, ICE was not able to account for the location of all UCs who were released by HHS and did not appear as scheduled in immigration court. ICE reported more than 32,000 UCs failed to appear for their immigration court hearings from FYs 2019 to 2023,” it added.
The report also showed that many of these children could be subject to exploitation, child labor, trafficking, and other abuses. Despite the evidence, Jayapal declared on the House floor that the HHS simply lost contact with the children once they were placed with an adult sponsor.
🚨BREAKING: HHS Secretary is NOT ABLE to account for the over 400,000 missing children! pic.twitter.com/wa4e68Zj7P
— Gunther Eagleman™ (@GuntherEagleman) November 20, 2024
"Mr. Secretary you have dropped them off at a sponsor's house, you now can't get ahold of them, that's on you. What do you do after that? What I'm hearing back is you don't do anything! You shrug your shoulders and then send another batch of kids out to another group of sponsors'… pic.twitter.com/7apQSPFQ2T
— Federation for American Immigration Reform (@FAIRImmigration) November 20, 2024
“Today’s hearing will be one final attempt by the majority to use all their same, false talking points that the Biden administration purposefully lost tens of thousands of children, all of which we know is wrong by the facts,” Jayapal said. “And I’m sure [HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra] will address this as well, but let’s just be clear, these children are not lost.”
“HHS’ legal authority ceases once an unaccompanied child is reunited with a sponsor, usually a parent or a close relative. While HHS conducts three follow-up calls to ensure that everything is going well between a sponsor and a child, the agency has no ability to force their way into the home. If no one answers these three calls, then HHS is no longer in contact with the child. Now that does not mean that the child is lost,” she added.
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