Trump administration scrutinizes migrant child vetting under Biden

The Trump administration has initiated a rigorous probe into what it perceives as significant lapses in the Biden administration's vetting of migrant children, potentially exposing them to exploitation.

According to Breitbart, the recent investigation focuses specifically on how the Biden administration managed the safety and verification processes concerning around 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children.

Under the Biden administration, the Department of Health and Human Services allowed the entry of nearly 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children into the U.S., as per official reports. These children, lacking parental accompaniment, were processed by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is now under intense scrutiny for its handling of their cases.

Concerns have escalated about the potential for these children to have been placed in dangerous situations, including falling into the hands of human traffickers and sexual predators. The Trump administration has accused the ORR of failing to conduct adequate background checks and not implementing necessary safety protocols for sponsors.

Questions Raised Over Sponsor Vetting Integrity

A Trump administration memo was sharply critical of the Biden ORR for its sponsorship approval processes, calling them reckless and insufficient. Notably, the ORR's approval rate for applications was extraordinarily high, with only one percent of applications being rejected despite some containing dubious details.

Instances of questionable vetting cited included a case where a sponsor presented a fraudulent Guatemalan ID and another case where a sponsor used a seemingly fake photograph claimed to be of a child’s mother. These examples highlight significant gaps in the authentication processes under the previous administration.

Critics from within the Trump administration argue that the rapid transfer of children from Border Patrol to ORR-sponsored care prioritized speed over the safety of the children. This hastiness in processing has raised substantial concerns about the true identities and intentions of the individuals into whose custody these children were released.

Implementation and Oversight Failures Detected

Fingerprints were reportedly not required from sponsors during Biden's term, according to Trump administration sources. This absence of a critical vetting tool meant that the identities of many sponsors remained unverified, posing a direct risk to child safety.

It was revealed that HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra was adequately warned about these glaring issues with sponsorship vetting but took no decisive action to remedy them. This oversight has been labeled by some officials as a “heinous dereliction of duty,” necessitating urgent and corrective measures to protect these vulnerable groups.

In an endeavor to address these serious shortcomings, the current administration is implementing a series of robust changes to enhance the safety and security of migrant children in U.S. custody. These changes aim to tighten vetting procedures and ensure that all sponsors are thoroughly checked before taking custody of any child.

Advocating for Enhanced Child Protection Measures

In their critique of the Biden administration's processes, Trump administration sources expressed that the previous approach to migrant child welfare was characterized by a focus on expedient processing rather than thorough safety assessments. “It was all about getting them out of custody as quickly as possible... When they were putting expediency over safety, that's what created this problem,” one source stated.

Another unidentified source highlighted the previous lack of fingerprinting for sponsors, emphasizing the severity of the oversight: “In the last administration, they weren’t even fingerprinting sponsors. We didn’t know who those people were that we were releasing kids to.”

The Trump administration's report calls for immediate action to correct these failures and secure the protection of migrant children, emphasizing the vital need for a system that prioritizes their safety over procedural speed. “This was a heinous dereliction of duty by the Biden administration and must be immediately rectified to protect vulnerable children,” the report concludes.

This investigation by the Trump administration into the Biden administration's handling of unaccompanied migrant children's vetting processes sheds light on significant flaws that may have left thousands of minors at risk of exploitation. The call for stringent reforms underlines the importance of robust safeguarding measures in the management of vulnerable populations.