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CV NEWS FEED // House Republicans during a Wednesday hearing grilled outgoing Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra over the hundreds of thousands of migrant children reportedly unaccounted for under the Biden-Harris administration.
The lawmakers expressed particular concern over the government reportedly placing migrant children with pimps, gang members, and even sex offenders, allowing threatening people to serve as “sponsors.”
As HHS secretary, Becerra oversees the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR). Per its government website, the ORR is responsible for promoting “the health, well-being, and stability” of unaccompanied migrant children.
Becerra is a self-professed Catholic who has also expressed fervent support for pro-abortion and pro-“transgender” policies.
During the hearing before the House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-WI, asked Becerra, “Would you change anything that you’ve done in the last four years, with 320,000 children unaccounted for by your administration?”
“We work tirelessly to strengthen and approve the program of the … unaccompanied children that come before us,” replied Becerra. “And we work really hard to make sure we first and foremost protect the safety and the wellbeing of those kids.”
“Every day is a challenge and we do the best we can,” the secretary added.
Tiffany pressed Becerra on a 2023 Florida grand jury report that found that unaccompanied migrant children “were pimped out by their aunt, which it turns out the aunt wasn’t even related to that child.”
Becerra told the congressman that he does “not remember” hearing of this revelation.
Tiffany followed up: “Do you remember the teenage girl that was in a house with unknown men with no private bedroom for her? Are you familiar with the sponsors that utilized a strip club in Jacksonville as an address for where this child … should be settled?”
The Biden-Harris official replied that he did not have “the information on” the report “in front of me,” but could “try to get back to” Tiffany with an answer.
Tiffany took to X (formerly Twitter) after the hearing, calling Becerra’s inability to explain how his department allowed these horrific incidents to occur “a sickening failure of oversight.”
Similarly, Rep. Andy Biggs, R-AZ, asked Becerra during the hearing:
How can you say that your number-one priority is the safety of these unaccompanied children when you’re placing them in sponsors’ homes that on occasion have had criminal gang affiliations, because there has been no proper background check?
In response, Becerra claimed that his department conducts “extensive background checks.”
“So, how did it happen?” Biggs pressed him. “How did we see children end up in the homes of MS-13 gang members as the sponsor?”
The secretary asserted that “no sponsor would be allowed to take a child if we have information that shows that they are engaged in criminal activity.”
Biggs countered: “But if you don’t do the vetting right, you don’t know if they’re engaged in criminal activity. That’s how you end up with an MS-13 gang member as the sponsor. That’s how you end up with pedophiles getting 20 children in the same home.”
Rep. Chip Roy, R-TX, pressed the secretary on how he can “credibly claim that HHS is working to protect these children.”
“Can you account for the whereabouts of those four-hundred-and-something-thousand children?” Roy asked Becerra:
The 320,000 that were put in the report by the Inspector General, the 85,000 that we’ve talked about before in 2023?
Do you know where all of these children are and that they are safe? Yes or no.
>> 2023: BECERRA STRUGGLES TO EXPLAIN SCANDAL OF 85,000 LOST MIGRANT CHILDREN <<
Becerra replied: “We lose custody of those kids once we find a vetted sponsor with whom they can stay.”
“A vetted sponsor that rapes and murders the people that they’re entrusted to?” Roy emphatically responded, holding up a report. “That’s what you think is appropriate care for these children?”
After decisively winning the White House following a vow to end the Biden-Harris administration’s border crisis, President-elect Donald Trump named former acting Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Tom Homan as his second term “border czar.”
Multiple Democrats have since advanced a debunked left-wing talking point accusing Homan of initiating the separation of migrant children from their families during the first Trump administration.
In reality, Homan, a Catholic, has spoken extensively on the need for approaching illegal migration as a humanitarian issue, especially when children are involved.
>> TRUMP PICKS COMMITTED CATHOLIC AS SECOND TERM BORDER CZAR <<
During a FOX News interview earlier this week, Homan stressed that saving the hundreds of thousands of lost migrant children will be a main priority of the incoming Trump administration’s border policy.
“Over half a million children have been trafficked into the United States,” he told host John Roberts. “This administration released them to unvetted sponsors. And they can’t find 300,000.”
“Some of these children are in forced labor,” he added, “some are in forced sex trafficking, some of them are with pedophiles. We need to save these children.”
“I was raised in a Catholic family in Upstate New York and I’ve seen a lot of terrible things in my career,” Homan told Catholic priest and podcaster Fr. Robert McTeigue, SJ, in 2020. “Securing the border not only saves lives in this country. It saves lives of the most vulnerable people that are enticed to come to this country with promises that can’t be kept.”
“I’ve seen many children who died making that journey,” Homan added. “Thirty-one percent of women are being sexually assaulted making that journey. … So, it’s important having a secure border.”
>> TRUMP’S NEW CATHOLIC BORDER CZAR OUTLINES PLANS FOR ENDING CRISIS <<
