An agent with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Homeland Security Investigation team is scanning the Internet for child sexual exploitation.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

From The Center Square

By Bethany Blankley

Earlier this year, Grassley led a group of 44 senators to introduce a resolution to reform ORR oversight after multiple allegations of sexual abuse of UACs were reported and more than 100,000 UACs appear to be missing, The Center Square reported.

The Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security issued a management alert to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to make it aware of an urgent issue: ICE is incapable of monitoring hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied children (UACs) released into the country by the Biden-Harris administration.

“We found ICE cannot always monitor the location and status of unaccompanied migrant children who are released from DHS and HHS custody,” HHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari said in a memo to the deputy director of ICE.

“Without an ability to monitor the location and status of UCs, ICE has no assurance UCs are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor,” the alert states.

In response, U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, requested additional information from HHS about UAC oversight, saying, “lax vetting has placed migrant children in grave danger of exploitation and abuse and makes locating these children after placement difficult, something I fear hinders the work of DHS as well.”

The DHS OIG report found that not only was ICE incapable of monitoring the location and status of all UACs but it was also incapable of initiating removal proceedings as needed.

ICE transferred more than 448,000 UACs to the care of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is responsible for their care, from fiscal years 2019 to 2023. Over the same time period, ICE neglected to issue notices to appear (NTAs) before an immigration judge for 65% of UACs transferred from DHS custody, according to the OIG report, leaving them in limbo.

Of the 448,000 UACs who illegally entered the country and were placed with sponsors through ORR, the majority arrived under the Biden-Harris administration: roughly 366,000, or 81%, between fiscal years 2021 and 2023, Grassley notes.

The report also found that ICE agents didn’t issue NTAs for immigration court hearings to all UACs who were flagged to be removed from the country, despite being required by federal law to do so, the OIG report found.

ICE failed to issue NTAs to at least more than 291,000 UACs who should have been placed in removal proceedings but weren’t, as of May 2024, according to the report.

“ICE was not able to account for the location of all UCs who were released by HHS and did not appear as scheduled in immigration court,” the report states.

At least 32,000 UACs who were given NTAs didn’t show up to their immigration court hearing and ICE doesn’t know where they are. Additionally, ICE didn’t always inform ORR when UACs didn’t show up, contributing to multiple agencies not being able to account for their whereabouts, the report found.

To make matter worse, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations officers weren’t looking for them, according to the report.

Officers from only one of eight ICE ERO field offices that OIG staff visited said they attempted to locate missing UACs.

Federal agencies not scheduling immigration court dates appears to be a consistent problem, according to several audit reports.

From January 2021 to February 2024, one audit found that 200,000 asylum or other immigration cases were dismissed because DHS didn’t file paperwork with the courts in time for scheduled hearings, The Center Square reported.

Prior to that, 50,000 illegal foreign nationals released into the U.S. by ICE failed to report to their deportation proceedings during a five-month period analyzed in 2021, The Center Square reported. ICE also didn’t have court information on more than 40,000 individuals it’s supposed to prosecute, according to the report, and more than 270,000 illegal foreign nationals were released into the U.S. “with little chance for removal” during that time period, the report found.

Not knowing the whereabouts of the UACs “occurred, in part, because ICE does not have an automated process for sharing information internally between the Office of the Principal Legal Advisor (OPLA) and ERO, and externally with stakeholders, such as HHS and the Department of Justice (DOJ), regarding UCs who do not appear in immigration court,” the OIG report found.

ICE-ERO also hasn’t developed a formal policy or process to find UACs who don’t show up to their court dates, has limited oversight for monitoring them, and faces resource limitations, the OIG says. Nevertheless, “ICE must take immediate action to ensure the safety” of UACs and provide it with the corrective action it will take.

UACs who miss their court dates “are considered at higher risk for trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor,” the OIG says.

Earlier this year, Grassley led a group of 44 senators to introduce a resolution to reform ORR oversight after multiple allegations of sexual abuse of UACs were reported and more than 100,000 UACs appear to be missing, The Center Square reported.

Texas, California and Florida have received the most UACs of all states, The Center Square first reported, with each state receiving record numbers in fiscal 2023. For some states, fiscal 2023 numbers represent 20% or more of the total they received since 2015 or dwarfed previous years.

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Hailey Gomez

A Venezuelan immigrant living in migrant housing in Aurora, Colorado, appeared to fight back tears while speaking to independent reporter Nick Shirley, saying she would return to her country after living in the U.S.

This week, the city of Aurora faced major pushback from Republicans after footage surfaced online of armed men inside an apartment complex in late August. Shirley was seen visiting various migrant housing units before stopping at the viral location to interview residents where the armed men had been spotted.

Shirley spoke with a Venezuelan woman who showed him the poor living conditions her family endures, stating she pays $1,200 per month for the apartment. The migrant stated that the electricity and hot water in her apartment weren’t working, telling Shirley that the landlord hadn’t accepted any payment for the “past couple of months.”

“Does your father still have to pay rent?” Shirley asked as they walked around her father’s apartment.

“The owner is no longer receiving any kind of payment, because he is also taking all this, that the gangs and the mafia are taking advantage of all of this to get us out as if we were dogs and it’s not fair,” the migrant stated, according to a translation.

Shirley asked if gangs had been charging people, to which the migrant replied, “no.” The independent reporter then asked if her life in the U.S. was what she expected after crossing the border.

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“No, never. I would have stayed in my country. They say that here everything is different, the laws, everyone gets a good job, you get ahead, you can save money to take back to your country,” the migrant stated. “But not everything is as they say, the American dream is simply just a dream. When you get here you wake up, it’s not like they say.”

Shirley then pressed the migrant, asking in Spanish if she would take a “flight or opportunity to go back” to her home country.

“With all the love in the world I would return to my country,” the migrant said.

Republican lawmakers on Friday sent a letter criticizing the Biden-Harris administration’s “open border policies” and local “sanctuary” policies over the reported presence of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which allegedly terrorized several apartment buildings in Aurora.

Reportedly beginning as a prison gang in 2014 within the northern Venezuelan state of Aragua, Tren de Aragua has grown into one of Venezuela’s largest criminal organizations. With around 5,000 members and stretching internationally across Latin America and the U.S., the gang has allegedly been connected to several high-profile crimes within the U.S., including the kidnapping and strangling of a Florida man last year.

This week, the Aurora Police Department announced the arrest of two confirmed Tren de Aragua gang members, Jhonnarty Dejesus Pacheco-Chirinos and Jhonardy Jose Pacheco-Chirinos, following a July 28 shooting that left two men hospitalized with serious injuries.