Why are we encouraging Central American parents to send their children here with smugglers?

Lora Ries from the Heritage Foundation was one of the witnesses at a recent congressional hearing on “Ensuring the safety and well-being of unaccompanied children.” She testified that “the best way to ensure the safety and well-being of unaccompanied alien children is to remove the pull factors” that encourage their parents to send them here.

In other words, they wouldn’t be risking the lives of their children to get them to the American border if we weren’t welcoming them into the country and letting them stay.

The main pull factor is section 235(a) of the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, which requires Border Patrol officers to let unaccompanied children from noncontiguous countries into the United States; transfer them to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement; and put them in regular removal proceedings rather than in expedited removal proceedings.

Only 5.3 percent of these children were repatriated between 2013 and 2021.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas’s enforcement guidelines made this pull factor even stronger by permitting the parents of these children to remain indefinitely, too, if they succeed in reaching the interior of the U.S., unless they pose a threat to national security, public safety or border security. According to Mayorkas, “The fact an individual is a removable noncitizen […] should not alone be the basis of an enforcement action against them.”

The number of unaccompanied minors encountered at the border jumped from just 33,239 in fiscal 2020 to 146,925 in fiscal 2021 to 152,057 in fiscal 2022; so far, there have been more than 46,000 such encounters in fiscal 2023, which ends September 30.

Former President Barack Obama tried to stop Central American parents from sending their children to America, making the following statement on ABC’s Good Morning America: “Our message absolutely is don’t send your children unaccompanied, on trains or through a bunch of smugglers. We don’t even know how many of these kids don’t make it, and may have been waylaid into sex trafficking or killed because they fell off a train.”

“Do not send your children to the borders,” he said. “If they do make it, they’ll get sent back. More importantly, they may not make it.”

He also sent then-Vice President Joe Biden to Central America to warn parents there about the perils of the trip and seek cooperation from the governments of the Central American countries.

“The United States, to state the obvious, is greatly concerned by the startling number of unaccompanied minors that — children and teenagers who are making a very perilous journey through Central America to reach the United States,” Biden said. “These are some of the most vulnerable migrants that ever attempt — and many from around the world attempt — to come to the United States…The majority of these individuals rely — we estimate between 75 and 80 percent — rely on very dangerous, not-nice, human-smuggling networks that transport them through Central America and Mexico to the United States. These smugglers — and everyone should know it, and not turn a blind eye to it — these smugglers routinely engage in physical and sexual abuse, and extortion of these innocent, young women and men by and large.”

Immigration expert Andrew R. Arthur wonders whether Biden still cares about the dangers these children face on such a perilous journey.

Terri Gerstein from the Harvard Center for Labor and a Just Economy was a witness at the same hearing Ries testified at. Gerstein testified that for many UACs, their hardships are just beginning when they reach the United States.

Unaccompanied children are especially vulnerable to being exploited.

In a series of stories, Reuters found migrant children as young as 12 manufacturing car parts at suppliers to Korean auto giant Hyundai in Alabama.

The New York Times published an exposé on migrant children in dangerous jobs in violation of child labor laws, including at processing plants for household‐name foods like Cheerios and Nature Valley, J. Crew, and Fruit of the Loom. These violations occur across industries, in every state.

And the Labor Department filed a complaint in federal court against Packers Sanitation Services Inc. (PSSI), one of the nation’s largest providers of food safety sanitation services. PSSI was employing at least 31 children from 13 to 17 years of age to do hazardous work, such as cleaning dangerous powered equipment. The federal court issued a permanent injunction prohibiting PSSI from engaging in such practices.

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra has acknowledged that the reports of child labor violations are real and that unaccompanied minors are uniquely vulnerable to being compelled to do dangerous work. But he wouldn’t accept responsibility for what happens to them after they are placed with a sponsor.

“Once we release that child into the hands of a vetted sponsor, we lose that custodial responsibility.”

At another congressional hearing, Office of Refugee Resettlement Director Robin Dunn Marcos stated that the office follows up with a minimum of three attempts to reach and speak to the children and their sponsors. But the sponsors do not have to talk to the government when they are contacted.

Central American parents shouldn’t send their children on such a dangerous journey in the care of smugglers, but they wouldn’t be doing it if Congress had not passed a law that welcomes UACs into the country. 

In any case, Congress should have required the Office of Refugee Resettlement or some other government agency to monitor unaccompanied children after they are released to the care of a sponsor and to intervene when necessary for the safety or well-being of a child.

These problems can be avoided if Congress restricts the applicability of the Trafficking Act to trafficking victims, which is what it should have done in the first place.

Nolan Rappaport was detailed to the House Judiciary Committee as an Executive Branch Immigration Law Expert for three years. He subsequently served as an immigration counsel for the Subcommittee on Immigration, Border Security and Claims for four years. Prior to working on the Judiciary Committee, he wrote decisions for the Board of Immigration Appeals for 20 years.  Follow him on his blog.