Morgan Griffith on the Neglect of Immigrant Children

From U.S. Representative Morgan Griffith; editorial comment below...

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Office of Refugee Resettlement

In a March hearing, I asked U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra to come before my Oversight and Investigations (O&I) Subcommittee to discuss the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). I recently chaired said hearing.

ORR, an agency within HHS, is responsible for the care and placement of unaccompanied children who cross our borders.

During my opening statement, I thanked him for testifying and said even though he and I don’t agree on the Biden policies that brought these children to our border, once we have taken on the responsibility for them, we must properly care for them.

During the Biden Administration, ORR has faced an unprecedented surge in the number of unaccompanied minors referred to its custody.

For reference, from fiscal years (FY) 2018 through 2020, ORR averaged around 44,500 referrals per year. As of March 31, 2023, the agency had received almost 60,000 referrals in FY2023. This puts the agency on pace for over 120,000 referrals for the third year in a row.

Evidence from whistleblowers, Inspector General reports, and news reports demonstrate a failure by ORR to competently manage the surge. This surge has led to increased exploitation and trafficking of unaccompanied minors.

During the questioning portion of the hearing, I asked Secretary Becerra about a few specific concerns I have with ORR.

First were comments that Secretary Becerra himself made. In a leaked audio recording, the Secretary was heard saying, in reference to the processing of unaccompanied minors:

“If Henry Ford had seen this in his plants, he would have never become famous and rich. This is not the way you do an assembly line.”

These comments are alarming! In April, the New York Times reported that instead of taking the necessary time and effort to properly vet the people the children were being placed with, ORR fast tracked children through their system. This has led to reports of children being forced to illegally work in dangerous and inappropriate jobs instead of being enrolled in school.

ORR does not even notify the local school system that the children have been placed in their jurisdiction.

While Secretary Becerra’s comments seem to suggest that moving children out of ORR facilities quickly is more important than protecting them, the Secretary claimed that was not the case and his comments were more about overall ORR efficiency.

I also questioned the Secretary about ORR’s unacceptable vetting practices of family members and sponsors.

In regard to establishing claimed familial relationships between an adult and an unaccompanied minor, I asked if the agency does DNA testing. Secretary Becerra said that the agency verifies the identity of the family member mainly through documents, like birth certificates.

This is not enough. Documents like birth certificates or passports can be forged!

DNA testing is the only way to be completely sure there actually is a family connection.*

Additionally, I questioned Secretary Becerra about ORR continuing to waive background checks not only for people claiming to be family members, but also for unrelated adults who live in the house where a child is being placed – practices that were approved by the Secretary in ORR Field Guidance 10 and 11.

Further, ORR does not generally conduct FBI background checks of sponsors. 

The Secretary’s responses to my questions about ORR’s vetting process were far from satisfactory. I was hoping to hear that ORR would start doing FBI background checks on sponsors and DNA tests on those claiming to be family. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

These issues with ORR have been ongoing since the start of the Biden Administration.

In 2021, I visited the Emergency Intake operation at Fort Bliss, Texas, and was shocked by what I learned. There was no collaboration with law enforcement for background checks when vetting sponsors and the “background check” or “public records check” they were using were merely widely available internet search engines.

In my opening, I placed into the record a report by a statewide grand jury in Florida, charged with investigating ORR. It said:

“If any resident of Florida exposed U.S. born children to this process, they would be justifiably arrested for child neglect or worse. We do not think children should be less-protected simply because they were born outside our borders and brought here by a government agency.” 

I agree. In my view, as a former domestic relations attorney in Virginia, ORR’s practices and actions are tantamount to child neglect. A child’s legal status is irrelevant, ORR must do better.

If you have questions, concerns, or comments, feel free to contact my office. You can call my Abingdon office at 276-525-1405 or my Christiansburg office at 540-381-5671. To reach my office via email, please visit my website at www.morgangriffith.house.gov.

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Comment:  This can't go on. People think that instead of sending their children to school, they can just ship the kids to the United States and the children will be taken care of. But who's volunteering to take care of them?

DNA tests prove nothing. They suggest that a lot of people are not the sons or daughters of their mothers' husbands. Why hurt the feelings of mothers' husbands who are willing to act like fathers? A mother's husband's second cousin may be an ideal foster parent. A biological parent or grandparent may be a drug addict who can't take responsibility even for perself, There's no way a huge government policy can be tweaked to protect children who are sent to a foreign country on their own. 

Even with our own children, adolescence is always a difficult time as hormone surges make even the best situations feel intolerable to teenagers, decisions have to be made about an unknown future, and emotional compatibility between parents or guardians, teachers, and teenagers becomes crucial--and hard to guarantee. A school, home, foster family, or job that seems wonderful for one teenager seems abusive for another teenager. One child perceives a distant, "hands off" approach to teaching, parenting, or supervision as respect, and uses it as a base for prodigious achievements; another child perceives the same approach as "not caring" and uses it as an excuse to accomplish nothing, run away, and become a teenaged drug prostitute. There are no guarantees with or for teenagers. Most adults prefer just to avoid teenagers, even their own offspring, so that we won't be blamed when something goes wrong! 

It would be better to tell parents who are considering shipping their children off to the United States, "Don't do it. We can take no responsibility for your children. 

We can prosecute the life out of anyone we catch prostituting any child, put such creatures in prison and instruct the guards not to interfere if the murderers want to improvise a play about wine making and cast the child traffickers as grapes--but that's about all. 

We can make it hard for children to get legitimate, age-appropriate jobs--but a primary effect of that will be to put some children into illegitimate, inappropriate jobs. 

We can mandate that all children spend some time in some sort of school--but that's no guarantee that they will actually learn anything or that they'll be safe, even on the most basic physical level, from beatings, rape, or even murder. 

Every year we automate more entry-level jobs, so there is less opportunity for a teenager to get a nice wholesome part-time job stocking shelves or washing dishes, and so there's more opportunity for him and his guardians to be desperate enough that he ends up working in a coal mine. 

We can't promise to connect unaccompanied children with relatives who live here--the only way you can know with whom your children might live is to bring them here, yourselves, and make sure you know the alleged relatives who may turn up to claim them. We can't promise them homes, education, or medical care. Americans are like the rest of the world in that some of us love all children and wish we could adopt more of them, and some of us are selfish pieces of garbage who will exploit and abuse anybody in any way we can. If you send children here as unaccompanied refugees, you need to know that every year we have less room even for genuine refugees from natural disasters and wars, and it is entirely a matter of luck whether those children live or die. 

So don't send them here. If you want to see your children grow up, then KEEP THEM AT HOME."