A newly released bipartisan Senate investigative report which found that the Obama Administration not only failed to protect thousands of children from Central America who flooded over the southern border of the United States but actually also helped deliver them into the hands of human traffickers who exploited them, caused “grave concern” to U.S. Reps. Chris Smith (NJ-04) and Jeff Duncan (SC-03), the chairmen of the Foreign Affairs subcommittees that oversee Human Rights and Western Hemisphere affairs.

  According to the report a review of the Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement concluded that “HHS’s policies and procedures are inadequate to protect children in the agency’s care.” Citing instances in 2014 where children were turned over to traffickers, the Senate said that the vetting process for verifying the relationship between children and adults was “unreliable and vulnerable to abuse.” 

  The report cited a case where traffickers collected children to work on a chicken farm in Marion, Ohio, pointing out that the HHS failed to detect that traffickers “were collecting multiple, unrelated children,” which in itself is a “warning sign of a potential trafficking ring” which went unheeded by HHS. Click here to read a Washington Post article on the investigation.

  According to Chairman Smith, who is the author of the landmark Trafficking Victims Protection Act, “The report shows an utter disregard for the welfare of children by the Department of Health and Human Services, and a serious lapse in oversight by senior administration officials, including HHS Secretary Sylvia Matthews Burwell.

  “This appears to be criminal incompetence, reminiscent of the Obama Administration’s mishandling of the scandal at Veterans Administration hospitals, the running of guns to Mexican drug cartels in ‘Operation Fast and Furious’ in a program overseen by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and the failure to provide adequate security for U.S. embassy personnel by Hillary Clinton’s State Department as evidenced by the terrorist attack on Benghazi,” according to Smith. 

  Chairman Duncan said, “I applaud our Senate colleagues for their recent report on HHS’s policies in providing temporary housing for Central American minors. However, I am appalled at the results of this investigation, which found gross incompetence and negligence on the part of HHS in exposing children to an ‘unacceptable risk of trafficking and other forms of abuse at the hands of their government-approved sponsors,’ resulting in at least one case of children being placed with human traffickers and subjected to essentially modern day slavery at egg farms in Ohio.”

   “It is utterly unthinkable that HHS would place these children into homes without rudimentary efforts to run background checks, visit child sponsors’ homes, and track cases,” Duncan said. “In addition, by allowing non-relatives with criminal histories to sponsor children, individuals without adequate income to sponsor children, and individuals illegally in the country to sponsor children, HHS’ policies have opened the door to incredible amounts of fraud, illegal activity, and potential unspeakable horrors for these children. Once again, a lack of seriousness is shown on the part of the Obama Administration to take real steps in addressing illegal immigration in our country. The President has refused to enforce the law, his Administration – HHS in this case – has been utterly irresponsible and has acted in such a way that is completely unacceptable.  Such egregious errors by HHS deserve a swift response – those responsible must be held accountable for their actions.”

   Both Smith and Duncan demanded HHS accountability.

  “Children have been exploited in the most cruel way, and HHS failed in its duty to protect them,” Smith said.

###