Several Republican senators have banded together to sponsor legislation combating human trafficking as the humanitarian crisis at the southern border of the United States continues to grow.
“The bill requires DHS to deport alien adults if they refuse a DNA test and mandates a maximum 10-year prison sentence for all alien adults who fabricate family ties or guardianship over a minor,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn said in a statement about the End Child Trafficking Now Act, which she is sponsoring along with Sens. Joni Ernst, Thom Tillis, and Mike Rounds.
BIDEN ADMINISTRATION HAS 14,000 MIGRANT CHILDREN WITHOUT PARENTS IN ITS CUSTODY
“It also criminalizes ‘child recycling,’ which happens when the same child is used repeatedly to gain entry by alien adults who are neither relatives nor legal guardians,” Blackburn added. “ If family ties or legal guardianship cannot be proven with the accompanying adult, the Act requires HHS to process the child as an unaccompanied minor under current law.”
Tillis placed blame at the feet of the Biden administration, saying the bill comes as a result of not enough being done to stem the flow of illegal immigration at the border.
“Unaccompanied children are passing through our border with the help of strangers and members of cartels, putting these children at an increased risk of sexual abuse and human trafficking,” Tillis said. “This is completely unacceptable, and the Biden administration’s response has been severely lacking.”
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Illegal immigration into the United States has surged since Biden took office, and that influx includes a record number of unaccompanied minors, many of them victims of human trafficking.
Roughly 14,000 unaccompanied minors are currently being held in U.S. migrant detention centers, and Republicans have argued that the Biden administration is putting those children in danger by releasing them to adult sponsors that are not their biological parents.
In 2014, HuffPost reported that an estimated 80% of women and children who cross into the U.S. illegally are raped during the journey.
Biden has declined to refer to the current situation at the border as a “crisis” despite criticism from both sides of the aisle and said recently he has no immediate plans to travel to the border to survey the scene.
