A young girl was trafficked across the United States-Mexico border by an illegal alien sex offender who had “rented” her with the hope of getting released into the nation’s interior, Rep. Kat Cammack (R-FL) detailed in a chilling case before Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra.
During a House Energy and Commerce Secretary hearing this week, Becerra was pressed for answers on his handling of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) who arrive at the southern border in the hands of cartel smugglers and are eventually placed in homes with adult sponsors across the United States whom HHS is tasked with vetting.
The overwhelming majority of these sponsors are not the biological parents of the UACs they apply to take and there have been a number of cases, a Florida grand jury has found, where HHS has sent many UACs to the same sponsor.
In testimony, Cammack detailed the case of a young girl at the border whom she witnessed with an illegal alien sex offender who ultimately admitted he was not her father as he initially claimed. According to Cammack, the man said he had “rented” the girl to get into the United States.
“It was 11:46 p.m. at night. I myself took this photo. That little girl that you see was acting terrified — not of the agents, not of myself, but of the man holding her,” Cammack told Becerra:
The very next day at the Donna processing facility, we threatened — and I was there to witness this — this man with a DNA test. He confessed that he actually was not her father, that he had rented her. This is a process called ‘recycling.’ Now I know we’re here to talk about what happens to these kids after this point but this little girl was then turned over to HHS custody, your custody. [Emphasis added]
You’ve talked at length today about the vetting process and so you now know, not through a DNA test, she’s not related to that man; she now is in your custody. You have your own case managers who are supposed to vet these processes — and we of course know this from the Florida grand jury — that these case managers have very little training or no training in interviewing these individuals, particularly children and young children who have been traumatized. You can imagine that this man … who by the way was a convicted sex offender, with this child, you can imagine the trauma that this child has sustained. Your own case managers are not trained in examining, evaluating, or recognizing documents as authentic or fake — she came with no documents. They have no official training when it comes to trauma-informed interviewing skills, no official training when it comes to investigating the safety or legitimacy of addresses to which a UAC may be sent. [Emphasis added]
Cammack said UACs at the border often arrive “with numbers pinned to their clothes or sharpied on their bodies to call” and that oftentimes, “the same sponsor is being called and magically, 20, 30, 40 kids end up with that sponsor.”
When asked if HHS uses DNA tests to prove that a sponsor is related to a UAC, Becerra said DNA tests are “a tool” among many that the agency uses “on occasion,” refusing to state whether the tests are done in 100 percent of cases.
In testimony earlier this month, Center for Immigration Studies Director of Policy Jessica Vaughan said President Joe Biden’s administration has “deliberately” turned a blind eye to the trafficking of UACs once they are released to sponsors in the United States.
“There are a number of instances where, for example, girls have been placed with older men in what is clearly an exploitative situation,” Vaughan said. “There are kids who have been turned over to labor traffickers. There are kids who get turned over to gang members. There are kids who get placed into domestic servitude and other forms of abuse. It’s really quite horrific.”
As Breitbart News has reported, the inflow of UACs to the United States has tripled under Biden’s watch. In Biden’s first two years, close to 300,000 UACs arrived at the border and were released into the United States interior to adult sponsors.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.
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