Republicans grill Biden’s refugee resettlement chief on migrant child labor

Republicans grilled the director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) at a House oversight hearing Tuesday, accusing the office of failing to vet the adults who take in unaccompanied migrant children. 

The hearing comes amid reports of children released by ORR ending up in unsafe conditions, including being used for child labor, as the number of unaccompanied children coming across the border has surged in the past couple years.

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wisc.) — chair of the House Oversight Subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs — blamed the problem in part on Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, who he said had “pushed to instill a culture at ORR that prioritizes ‘assembly line’ speed in releasing unaccompanied alien children to poorly vetted sponsors across the country to the detriment of children’s safety.”

ORR Director Robin Dunn Marcos said her office is obligated to release children to sponsors “without undue delay,” and that it has relaxed some of its vetting requirements in order to address a backlog. 

But she insisted ORR’s screening process is thorough, and noted the agency doesn’t keep track of children after they are released, and doesn’t have the authority to remove children from unsafe situations.

“ORR works within the statutes and authority and resources provided,” she said.

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) called Marcos’ responses at the hearing “very unacceptable.”

“We all look at children a little differently than we do adults,” he said “Children are dependent upon adults and parents do the right thing.”

Marcos said ORR is taking steps to fix the child labor problem, including signing a memorandum of understanding with the Department of Labor to facilitate information sharing.

“We know child welfare best practice is a child is best placed with their family in a community, not a congregate care setting,” she said.

Grothman claimed during the hearing that there was a double standard in how the media was treating the issue, compared to reporting on the Trump administration’s policy to separate migrant children from their families. 

“It’s particularly aggravating to see all these kids coming across the border and have the press not covering what’s going on when these kids may never see their parents again,” he said. “And just a few years ago, we had the press screaming about broken families.”

A February New York Times report brought national attention to the issue of migrant child labor. Caseworkers estimated that around two-thirds of unaccompanied migrant children end up working full-time. 

A March report by Florida’s statewide grand jury, an arm of the state’s Republican attorney general’s office, said that ORR wasn’t adequately vetting potential sponsors.

“ORR is facilitating the forced migration, sale, and abuse of foreign children,” the grand jury’s report said.

The Biden administration promised to crack down on child labor after the Times report, while also blaming the Trump administration for “exacerbating” the problem. 

However, some of the Republicans on the subcommittee blamed the problem on the Biden administration’s loose immigration policies, which they argued are encouraging more children to come across the border.

Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) said the Department of Health and Human Services needs to do more to deal with unaccompanied minors, but also pointed at the companies who end up employing minors. 

“Corporate America needs to be held accountable for putting children in danger to boost their profits,” she said.

Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) called Republicans’ concern for migrant children hypocritical given their party’s immigration policies.

“We have a party that wants to take this problem, that is a problem that needs to be fixed, using it for political points rather than actually wanting to fix the problem,” Frost said.