WASHINGTON — Migrant children in the government’s care fell prey to human trafficking after the Health and Human Services Department failed to protect them, according to a bipartisan congressional investigation released Thursday.
The six-month inquiry found that the government, overwhelmed by the influx of tens of thousands of children crossing the border to flee violence in Central America, failed to conduct the most basic checks on the adults entrusted with caring for the children.
Many adult sponsors didn’t undergo thorough background checks. Government officials didn’t visit homes and in some cases, had no idea that adult sponsors had several unrelated children, a possible sign of human trafficking.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, chairman of the Senate Homeland and Governmental Affairs investigations subcommittee, said the HHS placement program for migrant children suffers from “serious, systemic defects.” The report echoed the findings of an Associated Press investigation.
At a hearing reviewing the program, officials from the department angered Democratic and Republican senators, who dismissed their answers as incomplete or complained that they failed to take full responsibility for the children who were abused or exploited.
At times the officials said they did not have the legal authority from Congress to follow up on the children.
“We are mindful of our responsibilities to these children and are continually looking for ways to strengthen our safeguards,” said Mark Greenberg, acting assistant secretary for HHS’s Administration for Children and Families.
Greenberg testified that one case was a “deeply dismaying event” but said he was not able to discuss details due to an ongoing criminal investigation. He said policies in place at the time were followed.
“It’s discouraging that they won’t even acknowledge the fact that they blew it,” Portman said after the hearing. “They let these kids go be trafficked in horrible conditions and they won’t even say that if they had put in some basic common sense procedures they could have helped avoid this.”
The congressional investigation and hearing was in response to a case in Portman’s home state of Ohio, where six Guatemalan unaccompanied minors were placed with human traffickers and forced to work up to 12 hours a day on egg farms under threats of death.
