Child Trafficking Used by Criminals to Enter U. S.

Earlier this week in discussing the rampant child trafficking at the border, child smuggling used to game entry, I noted that rather suddenly men trying to enter are showing up with children.  I was skeptical about the motives, and I was right, of course: 

The Department of Homeland Security treats the expanded “Flores” decree like God’s word, releasing any illegal alien who crosses the border with a child, even if border personnel can’t confirm identities, criminal records, or whether they are threats to Americans or to the children they’re using as golden tickets.

Senator James Lankford, R-Okla., announced at yesterday’s Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing that border agents told him, on his recent trip to the border, that they found in two separate incidents that an alleged murderer and a convicted pedophile had each been released with a kid as part of the expanded Flores catch-and-release deadline of 20 days.

In one case, “they released an adult with a child and then found out two weeks later that that adult had a murder warrant in their home country, and they just released him into the country, and they could do nothing about it.” In another case, “they had released an adult traveling with a child and then found out after they were released when they got their criminal records in from home country that, that was a convicted pedophile from that country now traveling with a child somewhere in our country, and because we couldn’t detain them for longer than 20 days and we couldn’t get those criminal records, they’re released in the country, and they’re traveling with a child.”

When Lankford asked acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan whether border personnel were able to verify criminal status within the arbitrary 20-day deadline by the courts, he answered, “Not efficiently.”

So criminals are using child smuggling, combined with the 20 day deadline mandated by a California judge in the Flores decision, to be released into our country to prey on the rest of us.  And in case one thinks I am being alarmist about exceptional situations…

“In every single group, almost without fail, there is someone with a criminal record, typically males with single kids,” [an anonymous] agent said. “There is a wide misconception about the majority of these people being females. They are overwhelmingly male. While we try to prioritize referrals for prosecution based on criminal history, we only have so many computers we can utilize and so many staff members.”

When I asked him if that means there are those with confirmed criminal records, even with convictions in the U.S., who have been released, he said, “Absolutely. … They are given a notice to appear in court like anyone else.”

And we know that most do not show up for their court hearings.

Again, sentimental thinking about children and families at the border is enabling child trafficking and other criminality.  Yes, families (not the fake ones) showing up at the border should be kept together . . . by sending them back across the border immediately if they don’t have proper documentation.  If they want and merit a hearing, they can wait for it across the border.  We must stop policies which make children a golden ticket to get in and thereby make them targets of child trafficking.

Rampant Child Trafficking: Children Used to Game Border Entry

As is hard to miss, there is a lot of sentimental talk about keeping families at the border together.  (Strange that deporting them together is rarely suggested as a solution.)  This and other weaponized compassion about “refugees” and “immigrants” is enabling rampant child trafficking.  A lot of those families are fake: 

Homeland Security Investigations, a division of ICE, sent 400 agents to El Paso and Rio Grande Valley, Texas, in mid-April to interview families that Border Patrol suspected were fake. In the last eight weeks, HSI special agents have identified 5,500 fraudulent families—about 15 percent of all cases referred.

McAleenan said agents have uncovered 921 fake documents and 615 individuals have been prosecuted for trafficking or smuggling a child.

“That tells me that we might be scratching the surface of this problem and the number of children being put at risk might be even higher,” he said.

“Everybody knows that if they bring a child, they’ll be allowed to stay in the United States—they call it a ‘passport for migration.’ I heard that directly from a gentleman from Huehuetenango, the western-most province of Guatemala.”

Yes.  Smuggling children in order to gain entry into the U. S.

Do we want people who would do this in our country at all?

But you get more of what you reward.  And we are rewarding child trafficking at the border. If you have a child with you and get across the border, you are probably in.  For that we can thank . . .

The legal loophole that is fueling the sharp increase in family units was opened in 2015 by a California judge, [of course]who amended the Flores Settlement Agreement to prohibit the detention of families for more than 20 days. Previously, the 20-day rule was applied to unaccompanied minors only.

An immigration case cannot be adjudicated within 20 days, so families who cross the border illegally are now released by Border Patrol within days, with a future court date that most fail to honor.  [87% failed to show up by one study. – ed.]

One of the most telling statistics is that of men crossing the border with a child. In 2014, fewer than 1 percent of all men apprehended by Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley Sector had a child with them. That number now sits at 50 percent, according to Rodolfo Karisch, chief Border Patrol agent for that sector.

Wow! It’s so nice to see male illegals suddenly become so family-oriented!

Now at least some of those men are smuggling their own children, taking them through a dangerous journey, which is bad enough. Who knows how many of those men are smuggling other people’s children.

As for unaccompanied minors, most of them are smuggled as well in part to, yes, game the system.

McAleenan said it’s often a parent, who is already in the United States illegally, who pays a smuggler to deliver their child up to the border.

“I don’t think most people realize that most of these unaccompanied children are being released to parents or relatives in the United States who are also here unlawfully, who may not have permission to work in the United States,” McAleenan said.

New restrictions, placed by Congress in the latest round of appropriations, include a provision that illegal aliens in a household with an unaccompanied minor are now exempt from deportation.

Again, rewarding child trafficking and the violation of our borders.

I do not pretend to know the balance between compassion on the one hand and self-defense and not enabling criminal behavior on the other.  But we as a nation need to be realistic about who is entering the U. S. and how they are gaining entry, even if being realistic is smeared as racist or whatever.

And, for the sake of children and the God who loves them, we must stop enabling and rewarding child trafficking.