Chairman Green Subpoenas HHS Secretary Becerra for Documents Regarding Handling of Unaccompanied Alien Children

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Last week, House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Mark E. Green, MD (R-TN) subpoenaed Xavier Becerra, secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for documents and information regarding the screening and vetting of sponsors for unaccompanied alien children (UACs).
The subpoena follows the Biden-Harris administration's failure to respond and comply with Committee requests for documents and information. On August 12, 2024, Chairman Green sent a letter to Robin Dunn Marcos, director of HHS' Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), requesting documents and information regarding various aspects of ORR's handling of UACs and those applying to be sponsors of this vulnerable population. Among other items, this included documents showing how many UACs each month have been placed with sponsors charged with or convicted of any crimes, the number of sponsors who have provided false information in their applications, the steps ORR personnel have taken to establish communication with sponsors after UACs have been placed, and ORR's monthly denial rate for potential sponsors.

Read more from Jennie Taer at the New York Post.

On September 25, after weeks of ignoring the Committee, HHS provided more than 700 pages of documents that are wholly unresponsive to the Committee's request, which include hundreds of pages of publicly available documents. As Chairman Green wrote in his letter to Secretary Becerra, "Absurdly, HHS stamped all these publicly available pages with a disclaimer stating, 'Produced to Homeland Security Committee Pursuant to Oversight Request[;] Do Not Disclose Without Permission from Department of Health and Human Services.'"
"From day one, the Biden-Harris administration made clear they would not return UACs to their families in their home countries, and the consequences have been disastrous," Chairman Green said. "The sheer number of unaccompanied, vulnerable minors who have crossed our Southwest border on President Biden and Vice President Harris' watch is difficult to fully comprehend-but that doesn't make it any less tragic. Most of these children have witnessed things that would chill us to the bone, and when they arrive in the United States, the nightmare is only beginning. We know that many of them have been pressed into forced labor, sexual servitude, or gang membership-all inside our borders. The administration has a moral obligation to be honest with the public about what they are doing to prevent the abuse of these children, and it's extremely telling that we have to compel them to do so. They know what they've done, and they know there is no excuse. We will not let them hide."
In his letter to Secretary Becerra, Chairman Green writes, "The nearly 520,000 UACs encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) along the Southwest border just from February 2021 through August 2024, with more UACs entering our country every day, remain vulnerable as victims of the unthinkable and devastating horrors of child trafficking. The exigency of this matter related to the youngest among us demands swift solutions based in evidence and facts. The 31 days of inexcusable delinquency in providing the Committee the August 12 requested documents and information is unacceptable. … To date, HHS has failed to produce a single document responsive to the Committee's August 12 requests…"
Chairman Green further notes in the letter that during a September 19 briefing, ORR Deputy Director Jenifer Smyers only gave "unsatisfactory responses" when asked about the status of this request for documents and information. He writes:

"Subcommittee Chairmen Clay Higgins and Dan Bishop also requested that Deputy Director Smyers provide a date by which HHS would satisfy production, but she refused to commit to any date or even an estimated timeline. Similarly, during the briefing, Deputy Director Smyers failed to answer members' questions about the number of UACs that HHS considered missing or lost that had entered a sponsor's custody, indicating HHS' potentially low awareness of the issue."

Read the full cover letter, schedule, and subpoena.
Background:

Last year, the Department of Labor revealed that nearly 6,000 children were victims of forced labor in the United States. Under the Biden-Harris administration, CBP has encountered nearly 520,000 UACs at our Southwest border. Per an August 2024 report from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG), over the last several years, more than 291,000 UACs have been released into the interior who as of May 2024, had not received immigration court dates, while another 32,000 who did receive court dates never showed up for their hearings. As a result, "Without an ability to monitor the location and status of UCs, ICE has no assurance UCs are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor."

In a July 19, 2023, hearing on cartel control of the Southwest border, Jessica Vaughan, the director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, testified that roughly a quarter of trafficking victims are children, and that the Biden-Harris administration is failing to properly vet UACs or their sponsors. An April 2021 report from the Washington Examiner quoted an official familiar with ICE's testing procedures at the border as saying, "This administration wants these families and kids released quickly. That is their No. 1 goal, so they are not going to do anything to slow that process down." According to a Florida grand jury investigation, "In one memorable instance, a federal employee was told by an ORR attorney to stop asking questions about potentially unsafe sponsors because doing so caused delay, and '[W]e only get sued for keeping them too long. We don't get sued by traffickers. Are we clear?'" In some cases, the Biden-Harris administration has released scores of UACs to the same sponsor. The administration sent more than 100 children to the same address in Austin, Texas, while other Texas addresses received 44 and 25 minors, respectively. One sponsor in Florida had multiple UACs sent to different addresses, and "he applied using different versions of his hyphenated surname."

From May to September 2023, the Committee conducted transcribed interviews with eight chief patrol agents and one deputy chief patrol agent to acquire more information about operations in their sectors and how the crisis has impacted the safety and security of the United States. The agents testified that vulnerable alien children are being exploited by criminal cartels and human smugglers amid the ongoing historic humanitarian crisis, and that Biden and Harris' reckless policies have only incentivized the abuse.

The sector chiefs told the Committee that not only has a lack of consequences for crossing the border illegally led to more children in danger at the border and in the interior, but the resulting influx has made it much more difficult for DHS to properly investigate and prevent abuse and trafficking.

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