During a campaign style rally in Montana Thursday night, President Trump went after Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and challenged her to a DNA test.
"We will say, ‘I will give $1 million to your favorite charity paid for by Trump if you take the test and it shows you’re an Indian,'" Trump said to roaring applause. "Let's see what she does, right? I have a feeling she will say no. But we will hold that for the debates."
Warren, who is a likely 2020 presidential challenger, fired back on Twitter.
Hey, @realDonaldTrump: While you obsess over my genes, your Admin is conducting DNA tests on little kids because you ripped them from their mamas & you are too incompetent to reunite them in time to meet a court order. Maybe you should focus on fixing the lives you're destroying.
— Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) July 5, 2018
Not surprisingly, her characterization about why children at the border are receiving DNA tests is false. Federal immigration authorities are conducting DNA tests because it's the only way to tell if adults traveling with children are actually parents. Much of the time, adults are strangers paired to unaccompanied children by smugglers.
From previous reporting on the issue:
"You can never really verify who the parents really are," former Border Patrol and Customs Special Agent Jason Piccolo said during an interview with Townhall. "Especially in light of adult males showing up with kids."
"You can never really verify who the parents really are," former Border Patrol and Customs Special Agent Jason Piccolo said during an interview with Townhall. "Especially in light of adult males showing up with kids."
In 2015, Piccolo blew the whistle on the Obama administration releasing unaccompanied minors to unvetted, criminal sponsors. During that time, he served as the sole ICE and Enforcement and Removal Operations representative to the White House Security Council’s DHS Human Smuggling Cell. It was his job to disrupt or dismantle human smuggling organizations domestically and internationally.
"Without doing some kind of in-depth interview or interrogation or some kind of biometrics [DNA] there's no way you can tell if the kids are actually family," he said.
Piccolo explained how adults and children are given fake documents, including birth certificates to “prove” they are “related."
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Human smuggling from Central America to the United States is a billion dollar industry. Little girls are given birth control by their parents before the journey, knowing they'll likely be sexually assaulted along the way.
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley warned about smugglers taking advantage of lax U.S. immigration laws back in 2016.
“A recent Department of Homeland Security (DHS) report confirmed that human smuggling rings are exploiting children in order to prevent the detention of the undocumented immigrants they’re smuggling into the United States. They are pairing children with unrelated adults, knowing adults who enter the United States with children won’t be detained,” Grassley said.
“At least one Honduran interviewed by DHS officials reported that children are kidnapped or adopted then smuggled with their unrelated adult “family member” to the United States. This smuggling practice has bolstered an underground market for counterfeit birth certificates according to the report, which was prepared by the DHS Human Smuggling Cell. Once in the U.S., these children are vulnerable to labor or sex trafficking,” he continued.
Warren doesn't seem concerned about the seriousness of the situation.
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