More than 250,000 unaccompanied migrant children have entered the United States since October 2020. Based on congressional investigations and media reporting, we know that many of them work in the shadows in forced labor. It is a shameful consequence of failed immigration policy.
Recent media coverage of the exploitation of these children has called new attention to the problem, but the issue is not new. Over the last seven years, as the chairman of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and counsel to that subcommittee, we investigated the federal government’s failure to care for these children.
The subcommittee released four bipartisan staff reports examining failures in how the federal government cares for unaccompanied children from the moment they cross the border and are placed into Border Control custody to when they are placed with adult sponsors in the United States by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). We specifically examined HHS’s failures to vet the sponsors and monitor the placement of these vulnerable children.
In committee hearings following our investigations, we extracted commitments from the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations to do better, and watched each administration fail to live up to those promises.
Each year, the problem grows worse as more and more children who are susceptible to trafficking, abuse, and forced labor enter the country alone. Our investigative work and other studies have documented the problems thoroughly. It’s now time for action. The complexity and sensitivity of the issue of unaccompanied children demand a concerted response from the administration, Congress, and the private sector.
Currently, when a child crosses the border and encounters Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials, DHS is only permitted to house the child for three days until it can transfer the child to the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). ORR then houses the child until it can place them with a sponsor — sometimes a parent or legal guardian, but often another family member or sometimes a stranger.
If HHS releases a child to a parent or legal guardian, that child is no longer “unaccompanied” under the law and HHS no longer has responsibility for the child. In violation of the plain text of the law, however, HHS disclaims all responsibility for the thousands of children it releases every year to other family members or total strangers.
Those children who are not with their parents or legal guardians are at a heightened risk of trafficking and abuse. HHS should follow the law and ensure the safety of these children until they are reunified with a parent or legal guardian or returned to their home country.
Furthermore, HHS releases children to sponsors with the bare minimum of sponsor background checks. In our state foster care systems, before states release children to foster homes, they conduct intensive home studies for every child. HHS does not. Of the 127,447 children released to sponsors in fiscal 2022, HHS did a home study for 8,619 of them. HHS’s failure to ensure that sponsors provide a safe home environment has led to the abuse and trafficking of these children. HHS must conduct more thorough background checks and home studies before placing unaccompanied children with adult sponsors.
Congress has an enhanced role here, too. It should pass legislation to protect these vulnerable children once they are in the country. In previous Congresses, the bipartisan coalition of Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), James Lankford (R-OK), and Tom Carper (D-DE) collaborated to sponsor the Responsibility for Unaccompanied Minors Act. Although these senators disagree on other policy issues, they came together for the benefit of vulnerable migrant children. That bill would strengthen HHS requirements to care for the children until they are reunified with their parents or legal guardians or returned to their home countries. It also would require HHS to notify state welfare agencies before children are placed in the state, among other important reforms.
Finally, private companies should take reasonable steps to prevent underage children in their workforce. Studies show that underage workers are particularly likely to be found in industries such as meatpacking, farming, manufacturing, restaurants, and domestic work. Companies should implement reasonable processes to verify employees are of age and eligible to work and to confirm the responsibility of their staffing agencies and other contractors, as well.
Taken together, administrative agency reform, congressional action, and the actions of private companies can reduce both real and perceived economic opportunity for underage workers, discouraging children and their families from making the hazardous journey to the United States to seek work in the first place.
Over the last two years, Congress and the administration demonstrated through their collaborative, bipartisan work on infrastructure, semiconductors, and electoral reform that they can agree on solutions to major problems facing our country. Congress should now flex the bipartisan muscles it developed in the course of those debates to ensure that children who enter our country do not fall victim to abuse, trafficking, or forced labor.
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Mr. Rob Portman is a former Republican U.S. senator for Ohio and a distinguished visiting fellow in the practice of public policy at the American Enterprise Institute. Amanda H. Neely served as general counsel to Sen. Portman and deputy chief counsel on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. She now is a counsel in the public policy and congressional investigations practice groups of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP.
