Can the Trump Administration Rescue the Missing Children?

Families, communities, states, and nations are stronger when all children are protected. According to a retired Border Patrol agent, the government of the United States has the distinction of being the largest child sex trafficking organization in modern world history. In an article published at The Daily Signal, Virginia Allen reported on the testimony of J.J. Carrell, who served in the Border Patrol for 24 years before he retired. At the time of retirement, he was a deputy patrol agent in charge of the San Diego Sector. Since retirement, he authored a book on the border crisis and produced two documentaries on the topic. According to Allen, Carrell testified of the following: 

“I state with complete certainty that [President Joe] Biden, [Vice President Kamala] Harris, and [Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas intentionally, strategically and purposely weaponized illegal immigration and use it as a tool to fundamentally transform America,” Carrell said during the joint hearing by the Subcommittee on Border Security and Enforcement and Subcommittee on Oversight and Accountability, both subcommittees of the House Homeland Security Committee.

“Inside this invasion, the unspoken evil of child trafficking and more specifically, child sex trafficking has flourished,” he said.

To support the testimony of Carrell given above, Allen summarized the latest information about the missing children.

In August, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reported that it does not know the location or status of more than 300,000 migrant children. Between fiscal year 2019 and 2023, 32,000 illegal alien minors did not appear for their immigration court hearing, and an additional 291,000 were never given an immigration court date.

According to the Office of Refugee Resettlement, 81% of unaccompanied alien children are between the ages of 13 and 18. The average age of a trafficking victim in the U.S. is between 12 and 15, according to Anti-Trafficking International.

Under current U.S. law, after being apprehended by Border Patrol or Customs and Border Protection, unaccompanied migrant children are released into the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which in turn releases the child to a sponsor in the U.S.

For a decade, HHS has demonstrated a “record of losing children to sponsors who abuse, exploit, traffic, and harm children in unthinkable ways,” Tara Rodas told members of Congress during her testimony at Tuesday’s hearing, which was titled “Trafficked, Exploited, and Missing: Migrant Children Victims of the Biden-Harris Administration.

Rodas was a government employee when she was assigned in 2021 to help HHS with the burgeoning numbers of unaccompanied immigrant children arriving at the southern border. It did not take long for Rodas to realize that the department’s program was allowing sponsors to exploit children. Even though the department runs the names of sponsors through the National Crime Information Center before they are allowed to take a child, there are not enough controls on the sponsors. They can be relatives or not related at all. This opens the door for human traffickers to prey on innocent minors. According to Rodas, the practice happens regularly.

 “Migrant children are working overnight shifts in slaughterhouses and factories, and some may die today because they don’t have the knowledge or skills to do the job that [they are] supposed to be doing, but their doing it because they need to repay debts to their smugglers and traffickers,” she said.

Rodas said that U.S. officials are allowing “MS-13, 18^th Street Gang, Russian Balkans crime syndicates, and other unsavory characters” to take the children. She defended HHS by pointing out that the department is “not an investigative or law enforcement agency” and “does not have the knowledge, skills, ability, or the tradecraft to protect children from traffickers.” She compared the operations of child traffickers to the “tactics and operations of terrorist organization.”

Rodas suggested some solutions to end the exploitation of migrant children. Her suggestions include DNA testing of sponsors who pose as a relative to a child and prison time for sponsors who do not produce the child put into their care.

“Let’s mobilize the full power of our intelligence and law enforcement communities to dismantle these criminal networks,” Rodas said, recommending that child trafficking activity should be elevated on the National Intelligence Priorities Framework and be designated a terrorist activity.

“We cannot be a nation that looks the other way,” Rodas said. “We have a moral imperative to care for children that the government takes into custody, and the time to act is now.”

Babies, children, and youth are precious in the sight of God, and He will not hold our nation guiltless for endangering and misusing the migrant children and youth who come into our nation. The more we do to rescue these misused individuals, the more we will protect our own children and youth. The nominated Border Czar Tom Holman has declared that he will find the missing children, and we should pray that he can and will. We must protect all minors within the borders of our nation if we want to have strong families, communities, states, and nations.