Kamala Harris’ Legacy on the Border Crisis: Hundreds of Thousands of Missing and Exploited Children

Last week, the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Inspector General concluded that the Biden-Harris administration cannot confirm the location, safety, or well-being of 323,000 unaccompanied migrant children released from government custody. A disturbing revelation, but the full story is much worse.

Because this report only examined DHS, it did not look at systemic failures at the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which actively places children in dangerous situations. ORR is responsible for caring for unaccompanied children and ensuring they are released to safe, thoroughly screened sponsors.

My years of research into ORR have revealed that Biden-Harris officials are prioritizing speed over safety in processing the thousands of unaccompanied minors crossing the border, even releasing them to dangerous sponsors, including sexual predators and people with close ties to MS-13 gang members.

A migrant child sits in the back of a Border Patrol vehicle after being apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in Ruby, Arizona, on June 24, 2024. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

To protect the White House from the political embarrassment of overflowing processing facilities with unaccompanied children crossing the open border, senior Biden-Harris officials have directed ORR staff to expedite the process of releasing migrant children to outside sponsors.

ICE HAS DELAYED TENS OF THOUSANDS OF MIGRANT CHILDREN, DHS INSPECTOR GENERAL DISCOVERS

For example, in some cases, the Biden-Harris administration has removed requirements that ORR officials check whether a sponsor had a criminal record or even verify the sponsor’s identity. In another case, ORR failed to verify that the sponsor’s listed address was even a real home, sending a child to an address that was nothing more than an open field.

Joe Biden and his border czar Kamala Harris are failing to address the consequences of the crisis they created at the border.

When Biden took office, we had the lowest illegal immigration in nearly 50 years. Almost immediately, Biden and Harris rushed to roll back the hardline border policies they inherited from President Trump. They ended “Remain in Mexico,” reinstituted “Catch and Release,” and exempted unaccompanied children from Title 42.

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These open border policies have fueled the highest levels of illegal immigration ever recorded, including more than 500,000 unaccompanied migrant children entering the United States under this administration. In fact, the month after Biden and Harris exempted unaccompanied children from Title 42, there was the highest monthly total of these children crossing the southern border in history.

Many of these children are forced into dangerous working conditions and exploited for illegal labor. In one such facility, which is currently under investigation for violations of the Child Labor Act, a 16-year-old boy died after being pulled into a meat processing machine.

Other children have been forced into drug trafficking, sex trafficking, and other criminal activities to bribe the cartels that brought them here—with no follow-through or oversight from the Biden-Harris administration.

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These children do not have to suffer. It is unacceptable that Biden-Harris officials continue to place these children in dangerous environments. The hundreds of thousands of children who may be missing because of this administration’s incompetence will continue to be exploited, abused, and murdered by their captors.

The serious problems with MRO and child exploitation have been documented for years. Unaccompanied children continue to cross the border in record numbers. Yet there has been no substantive effort by Biden or Harris to fix their open border policies or reform MRO to protect unaccompanied children from harm.

In fact, it wasn’t until Biden was struggling in the polls against Trump that Democrats began to admit the border was a problem. Their solution: blame Republicans for the border crisis they created. Good luck convincing the American people.

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It is clear that Democrats do not see the border or child exploitation as a serious problem that needs to be solved, but rather as a purely messaging problem that they simply need to “prioritize” in an election year. This is outrageous.

Since Harris’ dramatic entrance into the presidential race, the liberal media has predictably refused to question her on any issue, let alone her transgressions that led to the exploitation of children.

Make no mistake, Harris is not an accomplice to the border chaos, she is the perpetrator. During her White House coronation as border czar, Biden said Harris would lead the administration in “containing migration to our southern border,” and that “when she speaks, she speaks for me.”

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Less than four years later, it is clear that she has not only failed the American people, but also the unaccompanied children who are being exploited and abused because of her willful incompetence.

The border crisis is Kamala Harris’ legacy. No amount of media spin or rewriting of history will change that.

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