During a hearing on child sex and labor trafficking Wednesday, Republican Senator Josh Hawley exposed the Administration for Children and Families, a subsidiary of the Department of Health and Human Services, for engaging in the practices.
Under questioning from Hawley, ACF Director Robin Dunn Marcos failed to explain agency failures to properly vet adults who claim unaccompanied minors. She also couldn't detail where unaccompanied minors were located after releasing them from government custody.
"Do you really think that you are helping these children by releasing them to labor traffickers and yes, sex traffickers?" Hawley asked, highlighting the number of children the agency has lost. "85,000 children whom you have no contact with and your answer is—we gave them a presentation before we turned them over to these people who are exploiting them on a scale not seen in this country for 100 years."
Here’s the Biden Administration’s idea of securing the border. Give unaccompanied migrant children a presentation on “their rights” - and then turn them right over to sex and labor traffickers pic.twitter.com/bBA0LZ6irN
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) October 25, 2023
Here is the full exchange:
Speaking of labor trafficking, the New York Times recently published horrific details of child labor at Perdue Farms in Virginia.
The belt caught the sleeve of Marcos’s baggy jacket and pulled him across the floor. Hard plastic teeth ripped through his muscles, tearing open his forearm down to the bone. By the time someone heard his screams and shut off the power, his arm was limp, a deep triangular gash running down the length of it. A rope of white tendons hung from his elbow to his wrist, horrifying the workers who gathered around him. He understood from their faces that something was badly wrong but didn’t feel any pain as the wound began gushing blood and he started to lose consciousness.
He came from a village in Guatemala to this small town on the Eastern Shore of Virginia several months earlier.