U.S. Loses Track of Another 1,500 Migrant Children, Investigators Find

[DonViejo]

Source: The New York Times



By Ron Nixon
Sept. 18, 2018

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is unable to account for the whereabouts of nearly 1,500 migrant children who illegally entered the United States alone this year and were placed with sponsors after leaving federal shelters, according to congressional findings released on Tuesday.

The revelation echoes an admission in April by the Department of Health and Human Services that the government had similarly lost track of an additional 1,475 migrant children it had moved out of shelters last year.

In findings that lawmakers described as troubling, Senate investigators said the department could not determine with certainty the whereabouts of 1,488 out of 11,254 children the agency had placed with sponsors in 2018, based on follow-up calls from April 1 to June 30.

The inability to track the whereabouts of migrant children after they have been released to sponsors has raised concerns that they could end up with human traffickers or be used as laborers by people posing as relatives.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/18/us/politics/us-migrant-children-whereabouts-.html?action=click&module=In%20Other%20News&pgtype=Homepage&action=click&module=Latest&pgtype=Homepage

[Lars39]

1. I keep thinking of those babies that were moved to Devos' adoption place.

[yardwork]

2. Trump is selling these babies.

[BumRushDaShow]

3. Future farm labor.

[KCDebbie]

4. But is the government still getting billed $770/day/child

By the for-profit prison/human warehousing industry?

Follow the money, find the kids - that's the tip for journalists out there...

[groundloop]

5. I feel quite certain they went to a for-profit adoption agency

Spanky and his gang are CRIMINALS, this nightmare can't end soon enough.

It just sickens me how those bastards can be so callous about taking children from their parents and then not even caring about the end result of that. No wonder the rest of the world hates us so much.

[Sunny Daze]

6. 'This needs to be the number one priority

above the Supreme Court...above health care...above anything else. What have we become?!

[catrose]

7. Shelters and rescues keep better track of adopted pets

[csziggy]

8. Many may be "missing" for good reason

When the "missing" children became an issue earlier this year it was pointed out that many were placed with relatives who may not have wanted to have the Trump administration know where they were.

From the article linked in the OP:

Caitlin Oakley, a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Human Services, offered a response to the findings on Tuesday night. “As communicated to members of Congress multiple times,” she said, “these children are not ‘lost.’ Their sponsors — who are usually parents or family members and in all cases have been vetted for criminality and ability to provide for them — simply did not respond or could not be reached when this voluntary call was made.”

Many of the sponsors, whose own immigration status could be in question by the current government, may not want the government to know where they are. They could worry that they and their wards could be summarily deported.

I don't have a link but there was an opinion piece posted here that said people should NOT urge that every single child involved be located since that could mean that they and their sponsors could all be deported.

Of course, that presumes that the current administration properly vetted the sponsors ahead of time. The previous group of "missing" children had been placed during the Obama administration and I have more confidence that their sponsors were vetted. Not so much no.

[Bayard]

9. Troubling? Concerned?

Is that the best ya got? Where are the real investigations of this? Give immunity for sponsors who may be illegal themselves, but I can't believe they would have given these kids over to whoever showed up to claim them. Right? Right?