Sec. 501. Findings
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Congress makes the following findings: Implementation of the provisions of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 that govern unaccompanied alien children has incentivized multiple surges of unaccompanied alien children arriving at the southwest border in the years since the bill’s enactment. The provisions of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 that govern unaccompanied alien children treat unaccompanied alien children from countries that are contiguous to the United States disparately by swiftly returning them to their home country absent indications of trafficking or a credible fear of return, but allowing for the release of unaccompanied alien children from noncontiguous countries into the interior of the United States, often to those individuals who paid to smuggle them into the country in the first place.
The provisions of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 governing unaccompanied alien children have enriched the cartels, who profit hundreds of millions of dollars each year by smuggling unaccompanied alien children to the southwest border, exploiting and sexually abusing many such unaccompanied alien children on the perilous journey. Prior to 2008, the number of unaccompanied alien children encountered at the southwest border never exceeded 1,000 in a single year.
The United States is currently in the midst of the worst crisis of unaccompanied alien children in our nation’s history, with over 350,000 such unaccompanied alien children encountered at the southwest border since Joe Biden became President. In 2022, during the Biden Administration, 152,057 unaccompanied alien children were encountered, the most ever in a single year and an over 400 percent increase compared to the last full fiscal year of the Trump Administration in which 33,239 unaccompanied alien children were encountered.
The Biden Administration has lost contact with at least 85,000 unaccompanied alien children who entered the United States since Joe Biden took office. The Biden Administration dismantled effective safeguards put in place by the Trump Administration that protected unaccompanied alien children from being abused by criminals or exploited for illegal and dangerous child labor. A recent New York Times investigation found that unaccompanied alien children are being exploited in the labor market and are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country. .
The Times investigation found unaccompanied alien children, under intense pressure to earn money in order to send cash back to their families while often being in debt to their sponsors for smuggling fees, rent, and living expenses, feared that they had become trapped in circumstances they never could have imagined. . The Biden Administration’s Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra compared placing unaccompanied alien children with sponsors, to widgets in an assembly line, stating that, If Henry Ford had seen this in his plant, he would have never become famous and rich.
This is not the way you do an assembly line. . Department of Health and Human Services employees working under Secretary Xavier Becerra’s leadership penned a July 2021 memorandum expressing serious concern that labor trafficking was increasing and that the agency had become one that rewards individuals for making quick releases, and not one that rewards individuals for preventing unsafe releases. . Despite this, Secretary Xavier Becerra pressured then-Director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement Cindy Huang to prioritize releases of unaccompanied alien children over ensuring their safety, telling her if she could not increase the number of discharges he would find someone who could and then-Director Huang resigned one month later.
In June 2014, the Obama-Biden Administration requested legal authority to exercise discretion in returning and removing unaccompanied alien children from non-contiguous countries back to their home countries. In August 2014, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5320, which included the Protection of Children Act. This title ends the disparate policies of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act of 2008 by ensuring the swift return of all unaccompanied alien children to their country of origin if they are not victims of trafficking and do not have a fear of return.