House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) has subpoenaed Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra for information on the agency’s handling of criminals and gang members posing as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) in the hopes of being released into the United States.
On Tuesday, Jordan announced that he subpoenaed Becerra, suggesting that HHS has been less than forthcoming regarding how the agency handles UACs who are discovered to be criminals and gang members.
HHS oversees the UAC program, in which children arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border are briefly taken into Department of Homeland Security (DHS) custody before being transferred to HHS custody, where they are eventually placed with an adult sponsor — the majority of whom are not their biological parents.
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According to Jordan, the Judiciary Committee has asked repeatedly since June of last year for all information from HHS regarding where UACs are placed, the vetting process for adult sponsors, and what the agency does when a UAC is found to be a criminal or gang member.
HHS, Jordan alleges, has been unable to disclose the total number of UACs that the agency has placed in the custody of a known sex offender or the number of adult sponsors who have been rejected for being a convicted criminal, including a convicted murderer.
From Fiscal Year 2021 through Fiscal Year 2023, more than 370,000 UACs have been released into the U.S. interior by Biden’s DHS. The majority of UACs, 61 to 66 percent, are males, while 69 percent to 72 percent are 15 to 18-years-old.
As Breitbart News has chronicled, Becerra has been unable to guarantee that 100 percent of adult sponsors’ homes are inspected before a UAC is placed in their care — a requirement for many pet adoption programs, Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ) previously noted.
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Last year, the New York Times released a bombshell report suggesting that more than 85,000 UACs released into the U.S. interior had been lost in the system after being sent to live with adult sponsors — most of whom were not their biological parents — by HHS.
HHS losing contact with these UACs coincides with a boom in labor trafficking among migrant children. The labor trafficking pipeline has gotten so out of hand that the Department of Labor Inspector General has opened an investigation into the Biden administration’s handling of the issue.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here.