It reports that 103 unaccompanied migrant children were found in an abandoned trailer in Mexico on Sunday, coupled with recent Recent York Times exposé on migrant children working in america sheds light on an underreported aspect of the border disaster – the plight of the greater than 325,000 foreign children that Customs and Border Protection officials have encountered on the Southwest border since Joe Biden became president.
In the event that they were in the identical school district, it could be the sixth largest in America. Nonetheless, most journalists ignored them.
Most got here in order that they (or more often, their parents and smugglers) could benefit from a legal loophole created by the Democratic Congress in 2008.
This 2008 law divides the “unaccompanied alien children” that the Department of Homeland Security sees into two groups: children from “adjoining countries” (Mexico and Canada) and children from other countries.
![Migrant children after being taken by DHS.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/2023-03-06T200956Z_1559616293_RC2KOZ9OI786_RTRMADP_3_USA-IMMIGRATION-MEXICO.jpg?w=1024)
DHS can quickly return adjoining children in the event that they haven’t been trafficked and are usually not afraid to return. The remaining are sent to the Refugee Resettlement Office for Health and Human Services, most to be placed with “sponsors” (often parents) whom they pre-screen in the US, whether or not they have trafficking or asylum applications .
About 271,225 unaccompanied children CBP encountered under Biden were foreign nationals. Just about all of them were sent to the ORR and have already been released.
President Barack Obama unsuccessfully asked Congress to shut this loophole in June 2014 because, as The Washington Post later explainedthe 2008 law “encouraged 1000’s of Central American children to try to enter america, giving them access to immigration courts that Mexican children don’t enjoy.”
![View of the abandoned truck trailer where Mexican authorities found 343 Central American migrants.](https://nypost.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2023/03/2023-03-06T201120Z_2096650884_RC2KOZ9DF8HV_RTRMADP_3_USA-IMMIGRATION-MEXICO.jpg?w=768)
On their way here, migrant children risk wanton abuse, as then-Veep Biden explained in 2014: “These smugglers – and everyone should know this and not turn a blind eye to it -. . . routinely engage in physical and sexual violence and extortion of those innocent young women and men in general.”
Nonetheless, as president, he did nothing to stop children from entering illegally.
Worse, his ORR has cut down on the time he spends vetting potential sponsors before releasing migrant children to them.
In fiscal 12 months 2022, the ORR held these children while vetting potential sponsors for just 30 days – half the time it spent vetting sponsors under President Donald Trump in FY 2018 and FY 2019 and lower than a third of the time the method took (102 days ). ) in the 2020 financial 12 months.
Should you’re wondering why the Times is now talking about migrant children in their teenage years working “in the country’s most criminal jobs,” including “roofers,” “slaughterhouse staff,” and “night shift sawing,” start along with your own ORR statistics.
Just over a 12 months after the Biden administration, the ORR overlooked nearly 20,000 migrant children. Today, that number might be several times higher, but when the Trump administration lost lower than 1,500 unaccompanied children in 2018, it was a bit greater than that. news headlines on CNN in Washington Post. Until the Times article, Biden’s shoddy approach to migrant children received little attention.
Not that the newspaper’s reports have woke up many from their lethargy. This isn’t a surprise. September HHS inspector general report stunning ORR results in the care, tracking and release of migrant children (even lost children in his custody) also didn’t meet with much interest.
The dominant mindset appears to be: if Biden is doing something with aliens, that is effective. Except for migrant children, after all not. To cite Joe Biden circa 2014, “everyone should know. . . and not turn a blind eye” to the risks of migrant children. That is advice price listening to in 2023.
Andrew Arthur is a resident of the Center for Immigration Studies in Law and Policy.