Biden administration obstructing investigations into trafficking, exploitation of migrant children, report finds

(Daily Caller News Foundation) – The Biden-Harris administration is obstructing congressional and state investigations into the exploitation and trafficking of unaccompanied alien children, a Senate committee report found.

Louisiana GOP Sen. Bill Cassidy, a ranking member of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, released a report Tuesday that accuses the Biden-Harris administration of widespread “failures” that ultimately led to widespread abuse and exploitation of migrant children. The report also accused the White House of  “stonewalling” Congressional oversight into its handling of these unaccompanied alien children and obstructing other state investigations.

“When Ranking Member Cassidy attempted to hold the Biden-Harris administration accountable, the administration made every effort to cover its failures up and to stonewall each new oversight effort — a course of action that continues today,” the report said.

“The administration also refuses to comply with state-level efforts to investigate and prevent the trafficking and exploitation of [unaccompanied children] caused by its own weak sponsor vetting policies and the chaos,” the report said.

The report cited instances when Cassidy’s office “routinely” submitted letters to Health and Human Services (HHS) requesting information on the care that unaccompanied children receive within the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), the vetting of sponsors, and how ORR operates to ensure these migrant children are safe after their release. However, the report claims HHS would repeatedly take months to respond to these requests — and sometimes the department would not respond at all.

HHS officials also stonewalled state investigators when Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis demanded answers, the committee report said.

DeSantis — in response to findings that alien children smuggled into Florida were being sexually exploited or used for trafficking in drugs and weapons — petitioned the Florida Supreme Court to investigate criminal activity related to the smuggling of unaccompanied alien children from the U.S.-Mexico border into Florida, the report said. However, HHS allegedly “refused” to provide witnesses or documents to a grand jury, ignored subpoenas and “actively encouraged” Florida entities that contract with ORR officials to not cooperate with investigators.

“Similarly, state officials in Virginia have sounded the alarm over ORR’s refusal to share information with law enforcement who are investigating cases of trafficking and abuse,” according to the report, which also said that Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares repeatedly wrote to President Joe Biden and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra about the difficulty in investigating missing and exploited migrant children because “very little information” is shared by HHS.

The report marks the latest findings on the ongoing border crisis and, specifically, the consequences for the hundreds of thousands of migrant children living in the U.S.

Federal officials lost track of tens of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children who have entered the country since fiscal year 2019 , as reported in August by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General.

“The exploitation of unaccompanied children has been documented for years,” Cassidy said in a press release. “The Biden-Harris administration should have fixed its policies to protect these children, but instead it subverted Congress and states to cover up its mistakes.”

“This lack of transparency to the American people is reprehensible,” the GOP senator said. “It is hard to see this as anything other than an attempt to shield the Biden-Harris administration from accountability.”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.