CV NEWS FEED // Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra testified Wednesday regarding the Biden administration’s handling of unaccompanied minors at the southern border.
The U.S. House Energy Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations called Becerra to testify following reports of an estimated 85,000 such children unaccounted for since Becerra’s agents placed them following their entry into the country. The federal government reports that over 130,000 minors crossed the border in 2022 without parents or guardians.
As HHS Secretary, Becerra oversees his department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is responsible for the children in question. He has described himself as a “committed Catholic.”
As CatholicVote reported Tuesday:
These children often face trafficking, forced child labor, or simply dropping off the map entirely…
Based on the fate of children who have been found so far, many are probably working underpaid jobs instead of attending school, being exploited by their sponsors for profit, and in danger of being seriously injured or killed in their workplaces.
Aside from a New York Times report in May 2023, however, the mainstream media has kept largely silent on the issue since Biden’s inauguration.
CatholicVote Vice President Josh Mercer commented:
Biden and the mainstream media were relentless in their attacks on Donald Trump because so many migrant children went missing. Now a Democrat is in the White House and the situation has become even worse.
“And yet,” Mercer continued, “We have nothing but silence from the left-wing mainstream press — and nothing but excuses from the Biden administration. Neither the mainstream media nor the Biden administration actually care about the plight of these children. They are only pawns in their partisan gamesmanship.
The Hearing Begins
Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-VA, opened the hearing by saying that he appreciates Becerra “keeping his word and appearing before this subcommittee.”
Griffith went on to say that
Under the Biden Administration, ORR has faced [an] unprecedented surge in the number of unaccompanied minors referred to its custody.
The numbers [sic] of unaccompanied minors crossing our border is astronomically high. From Fiscal Years 2018 through 2020, ORR averaged around 44,500 referrals per year. As of March 31, 2023, which is the last time ORR made their numbers public, the agency had received almost 60,000 in Fiscal Year 2023, putting the agency on pace for over 120,000 referrals for the third year in a row.
And you and I don’t agree on the policies that brought these children to our border. But I believe that no matter the policies, once they are in our care and we have taken on the responsibility for them, we must care for them properly.
The congressman then told the HHS Secretary that regardless of the message the ORR “intended to send, it does appear that children’s welfare was not a primary concern.” He cited a New York Times report that there was “constant neglect when handling the intake and release of these children.”
Griffith read Becerra’s own words from a recording obtained by the Times: “If Henry Ford had seen this in his plants, he would never have become famous and rich. This is not the way you do an assembly line.”
“Is that statement consistent with how you intended to run ORR’s unaccompanied children’s program?” Griffith asked rhetorically. “While I hope not, the overriding priority seems to have been moving children out of ORR facilities as quickly as possible and not protecting them.”
The congressman said that he feared Becerra “may be putting ORR on a permanent assembly line footing where child welfare simply is not a priority.”
Worst Border Crisis in History
Energy and Commerce Committee Chairwoman Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-WA, added, “Under President Biden, we face the worst border crisis in our history,” and agreed with Griffith that the recent numbers of ORR referrals have been “unprecedented.”
As the New York Times has uncovered, this border crisis has left children alone and exploited. And these are just a few of the gut-wrenching examples: 13 and 14-year-olds are working 12-hour shifts on farms and factories. Children [are] dropping out of school or never signing up as they owe a debt to the smuggler that trafficked them. Children [are] running away from their sponsors, the ones that ORR placed them with, because they were being sold for sex.
“We’re going to talk a lot about the 85,000 children that ORR could not contact after placement,” Rodgers forewarned.
Becerra Responds
In his opening statement, Becerra acknowledged that “reports that have flagged an increase in children being employed illegally and exploited by companies” are “real, repulsive, and unacceptable.” He cited the story of his own father, a construction worker who “had to leave school after the sixth grade” and “never got to go back.”
He stated that HHS is working with the Department of Labor to “further crack down on illegal child labor.” Continuing, he said that “at HHS, we follow the law” and encouraged “employers and companies” to “do the same.”
“I hold our team and our entire department to the highest standard,” Becerra claimed, “to ensure we are delivering on our mission to provide care that is in the child’s best interest.”
Becerra further commented that “HHS’s custodial responsibility for unaccompanied children legally ends once we place them in the custody of a vetted sponsor.” He said that the average amount of time a migrant child spends in HHS custody is “less than one month,” and “fewer than 15%” are assigned a sponsor that is not the child’s “parent legal guardian or close family member.”
The secretary added that Griffith and Rodgers’ statements about his department’s treatment of the unaccompanied minors amounted to a “misunderstanding.”
Grilled by Congress
Griffith was not satisfied with this answer. “Let’s talk about these kids,” he said before asking Becerra a few follow-up questions.
“It’s my understanding that you all do not notify the local Department of Social Services or other local child welfare agency in the community in which the child is being placed,” Griffith said. “Is that correct, yes or no?”
“Mr. Chairman, we have to protect the privacy of children,” Becerra replied, “so we try not to provide information about the child.”
“So, you don’t provide information to the local child welfare agencies that the child’s been placed there?” the Congressman pressed him.
To this, Becerra replied, “We will work with local agencies when necessary.”
Griffith then asked him if the ORR uses DNA tests to “establish a genetic link” when someone claims to be a family member of a child in their custody. In posing this question, he referenced the surprise blockbuster film “Sound of Freedom,” in which
the bad guy was bringing a child who had been kidnapped across the border. The good guys were there to intercept, but he presented fake documents claiming to be the uncle of the child.
“So, do you all do a DNA test because I just got to tell you, Mr. Secretary, my information indicates that you only do a DNA test in about 23% of the cases?”
Becerra replied, claiming that the ORR goes “through a thorough vetting process for each and every sponsor” and “one of the tools” that they use is voluntary DNA testing.
“But you don’t do that in every case where a familial relationship is claimed, isn’t that true?”
The secretary testified that his department sometimes uses birth certificates in lieu of a DNA test.
Griffith countered by again referencing the film, saying that, like other documents coming from other countries, birth certificates can be forged.
“There’s a way to do this,” he added. “And if we’re truly going to properly vet where we place these children, we need to be doing more DNA testing.”
Cartel Slaves
Later on in the hearing, committee member Rep. Kat Cammack, R-FL, held up a large jar filled with numerous colorful objects for Becerra to see clearly. “Do you know what this is?” she asked him.
“It looks like candies or snacks,” Becerra answered, unsure of his response.
“Unfortunately, the reality is much more grim,” the congresswoman noted. “These are wristbands the cartels force people to wear when they cross the border – and if you’re not wearing one when you cross, the cartels will take a limb or an appendage.”
“This is what these people are forced to wear, and it dictates what cartel they belong to,” she continued, using air quotes over the word “belong.”
They are absolutely a part of the horrors of trafficking and smuggling that occurs at our southwest border.
And I have to point this out because I want to tell the journey – because this has really been laid out in bits and pieces along the way by my colleagues, and we’re here to talk about these kids.
Cammack showed Becerra a photo that she personally took of a young child at the border just before midnight. “That little girl that you see was acting terrified, not of the agents, not of myself, not of the agents, but of the man holding her.”
The next day, Cammack and others threatened the man with a DNA test causing him to confess that he was not the girl’s father, as he had claimed.
“He had rented her,” said the Florida congresswoman. “This is a process called ‘recycling.’”
Tom McClusky, CatholicVote Director of Governmental Affairs added, “It is a disgrace that Secretary Becerra, a self-loathing and self-described Catholic, has been not only complicit in such a massive increase in child trafficking, but seem to both defend it while ignoring the problem.”
Becerra was one of CatholicVote’s “Zeroes” for its March 2022 edition of Heroes and Zeroes, an monthly feature that highlights some of the best and worst self-professed Catholics in public life.
Read more: Becerra to Testify on Missing Child Migrants
