By Ted Hesson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. agency responsible for the care of unaccompanied migrant children did not have proof it fully vetted U.S. sponsors for some minors during a period of high illegal crossings from Mexico in 2021, a government report released on Thursday said.
The report, issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services inspector general, found 16% of child case files in March and April 2021 lacked documentation of sponsor background checks by the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement. In 19% of cases where children were released to sponsors pending FBI or state checks, the case files were never updated with results, the watchdog found.
The watchdog report raises questions about the government’s ability to vet sponsors but investigators did not find that children were subjected to harm.
“We don’t have evidence that these gaps resulted in unsafe placements for the children in our sample, but they do create vulnerabilities which could increase children’s risk of being released to unsafe sponsors in the future,” said Haley Lubeck, the lead analyst for the report.
The number of migrants illegally crossing the southwest border spiked in early 2021 shortly after U.S. President Joe Biden took office, part of a trend that has continued through his presidency. The HHS refugee office struggled at the time to move children from crowded border processing centers to shelters and to the custody of family or other sponsors.
HHS spokesperson Jeff Nesbit said in a statement that the agency was dealing with an “unprecedented influx” of unaccompanied migrant children during the two-month period examined in the watchdog review and that it had already taken steps to address most issues raised in the report.
HHS has expanded services for children after they are released to sponsors, increased sponsor vetting, and enhanced coordination with the U.S. Department of Labor to protect against possible abuses, Nesbit said. The refugee office also improved its case management system to make it easier to spot potential problems with sponsors, according to HHS.
Reuters reported in recent years on unaccompanied migrant children working illegally in poultry plants and for automotive suppliers after being released from federal custody.
Immigration has become a flashpoint before Nov. 5 presidential elections that will likely pit Biden against Republican former President Donald Trump, an immigration hardliner. Republicans have seized on the lack of follow-up for migrant children as a criticism of Biden’s immigration policy.
More than 448,000 unaccompanied minors have been apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border during Biden’s presidency, more than double the number under Trump.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington; Editing by Deepa Babington)
