by 
By Ava Grace
Whistleblowers have warned that the Biden administration is facilitating child trafficking by releasing unaccompanied minors to fake sponsors.
Government whistleblowers shared this information with a Senate panel, noting that approximately 85,000 children who crossed the border as unaccompanied minors are now missing after being placed with unrelated sponsors. According to them, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has lost track of these children as they were released to individuals who weren’t their relatives. These unknown sponsors often end up forcing the children into prostitution and slave labor, with the whistleblowers providing evidence of such.
One whistleblower, Tara Lee Rodas, was a 20-year veteran of government service. She speaks Spanish and her husband is from El Salvador, leading her to sign up to help children. Rodas volunteered to go to the border when the Biden administration called for employees from any and all government agencies, as the border was so overwhelmed. (Related: Report: 99% of illegals and border crossers are LIVING FREELY across the United States.)
Rodas worked at the Pomona Fairplex Emergency Intake Site in California, which processed 8,300 minors, as deputy to the director of the Federal Case Management Team. But Rodas’ career is in training government investigators, and all she saw were red flags when she got there.
One case she shared was that of a 16-year-old Guatemalan girl named Carmen. She was placed with a man claiming to be her brother, but this man subsequently posted child pornography online.
Rodas also told senators that gangs like MS-13 are involved in child placement. Despite her warnings, authorities retaliated against her instead of taking a look at her findings.
Deborah White, another whistleblower, alleged that sponsors are rarely vetted face-to-face and fake documents are pervasive.
“Children were not going to their parents,” she told senators. “Children were being trafficked with billions of taxpayer dollars by a contractor failing to vet sponsors and process children safely, with government officials complicit in it.”
Sponsor oversight from HHS was minimal, which enabled trafficking
The whistleblowers told senators that the HHS’ oversight and follow-up of sponsors was minimal. It was typically limited to a phone call 30 days after the children were placed. By that time, many could no longer be contacted.
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra maintains that no children have gone missing from his agency’s custody. But according to the whistleblowers, this claim was technically accurate only until transportation companies delivered the children to their sponsors. The children often went missing shortly after.
U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) remarked that the Biden administration apparently shoveled children out to the homes of poorly vetted volunteers as fast as it could to avoid holding them in secure facilities. According to him, President Joe Biden had painted those as his rival, former President Donald Trump, putting “kids in cages.” Grassley also added that the Democratic incumbent wanted to prevent those optics at all costs.
But the whistleblowers remarked that this alternative from Biden was far less humane. Half a million children were flown or bussed to the homes of people who were sometimes strangers. Moreover, the Biden administration loosened rules on background checks.
The panel was perhaps the most devastating in the history of the border crisis – so much so that the Democrats who control the Senate refused to cooperate. This led Grassley and several of his GOP colleagues – Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson and Texas Sen. John Cornyn – to hold the panel unofficially.