Lawmakers face off over GOP effort to ease return of migrant children

House Judiciary lawmakers sparred Wednesday over a Republican proposal that would empower law enforcement officials to quickly send unaccompanied immigrant children back across the border.

Republicans argued their proposal, part of a larger GOP immigration package the House Judiciary Committee advanced last week, would remove incentives for children to come in the first place. Democrats, however, said the harsh immigration policy could only put children in further danger.

The debate over how America should deal with unaccompanied minors has been in the spotlight after reports that a majority of the tens of thousands of children who cross the border without a guardian each year end up working as child laborers. 

At a hearing of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, and Border Safety, lawmakers disagreed on how best to respond to the problem.

“On a border trip last year, I asked a CBP [Customs and Border Protection] officer how to stop the trafficking of children into this country,” Chair Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) said. “His answer was immediate: get them safely home.”

“He said the cartels charge thousands of dollars to traffic these children, and they don’t give refunds,” McClintock added. “The moment children are returned home, their business will dry up.”

The GOP bill would allow for expedited removal of an unaccompanied minor if an initial screening by the Department of Homeland Security determines they aren’t a trafficking victim and don’t have a credible fear of returning to their home country. 

Judiciary Committee Ranking Member Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said this would put children in danger.

“That legislation would leave these unaccompanied children with the right merely to cursory screenings by law enforcement personnel, lacking child welfare expertise, screenings that would largely fail to identify signs of trafficking and exploitation,” Nadler said. 

“This would lead to the summary return of too many children with valid protection claims to the same dangers they fled.”

Subcommittee Ranking Member Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said there are better ways to protect migrant children. She said the government should go after the companies that hire child laborers.

And she said Congress should provide more funding to the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) and other agencies to ensure the safety of migrant children, including more money for post-release services and for providing children with attorneys.

“Improvement in both of these areas will help protect children from mistreatment, exploitation and trafficking,” Jayapal said.

Following New York Times reporting earlier this year revealing the extent of child labor among unaccompanied minors, the ORR has announced several steps it’s taking to better protect immigrant children and increase vetting of the adults, often family members, they are sent to live with. 

Republicans at the hearing attacked ORR, accusing it of prioritizing releasing children as quickly as possible over ensuring their safety. Multiple Republicans said the agency had “lost” around 85,000, a characterization that Democrats and the Biden administration have disputed.

At a hearing last week, ORR Director Robin Dunn Marcos testified that the office doesn’t track children after they are released. Thirty days after a child is released to a sponsor, ORR conducts a follow-up phone call. The 85,000 figure refers to the number of minors whose sponsor did not answer a follow-up call in the past two years.

“I believe that failure to respond to a follow-up phone call from an unknown phone number does not constitute being lost,” said the Democrat’s witness at Wednesday’s hearing, former ORR Director Bob Carey.

But fellow witness Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the conservative Center for Immigration Studies, said a phone call isn’t good enough. 

“A phone call is not sufficient to detect whether the child is in a safe environment,” Vaughan said. “A phone call is not enough to know if a child is being abused.”