CV News Feed // Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra will testify today, July 26, to a House Judiciary Committee explaining his department’s failure to guarantee the safety of migrant children at the southern border.
“President Biden’s open-border policies are leading to a surge of unaccompanied children coming to America,” Investigations Rep. Chair Morgan Griffith, R-VA, and Committee Chair Rep. Cathy McMorris, R-WA, stated:
HHS has lost track of tens of thousands of children after hastily releasing them from its custody, many of whom are tragically being exploited.
The federal government has records of over 130,000 unaccompanied minors crossing the border just last year. “These are not children who have stolen into the country undetected,” the New York Times reported:
The federal government knows they are in the United States, and the Department of Health and Human Services is responsible for ensuring sponsors will support them and protect them from trafficking or exploitation.
These children often face trafficking, forced child labor, or simply dropping off the map entirely. The Times also reported that to date over a third of the unaccompanied children who enter America from the border are unaccounted for.
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.
Becerra is responsible for the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which operates under HHS.
He is a self-proclaimed “committed Catholic,” but Catholic critics say his record both before and after taking office runs afoul of Christian teachings. A Planned Parenthood donor and avid supporter of transgenderism, Becerra has publicly advocated for subjecting minors to sexual mutilation surgeries and chemical castration.
“Becerra used federal tax money to fund Planned Parenthood in violation of state law. He also promotes the genital mutilation of minors and ‘abortion tourism’ — all on the taxpayer’s dime,” according to CatholicVote’s Catholic Accountability Project.
Today’s hearing, “Stopping the Exploitation of Migrant Children: Oversight of HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement,” offers Becerra an opportunity to explain HHS’s failure regarding the missing migrant children.
After the massive success of “The Sound of Freedom,” which has grossed over $100 million, a rise in legal restrictions on sexual mutilation surgeries, as well as an increase in legislation limiting abortion, the hearing comes at a time when child trafficking and abuse are in the public spotlight.
“We must hear from Secretary Becerra on what specifically HHS is doing to rescue those children released into forced labor and unsafe households and what he is doing to prevent it from happening moving forward,” the committee noted.
