Sitting before members of Congress on Capitol Hill Tuesday, retired Border Patrol agent J.J. Carrell told the lawmakers that the “United States federal government is the world’s largest child sex trafficking organization in modern history.” 

Carrell served in the Border Patrol for 24 years, retiring as a deputy patrol agent in charge of the San Diego Sector before going on to author a book on the border crisis and film two documentaries on the topic. 

“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.  

Where Are the Missing Migrant 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.” 

As a government employee, Rodas was recruited in 2021 to help HHS with the growing number of unaccompanied migrant children arriving at the southern border. She soon discovered that the department’s unaccompanied migrant child program was allowing for the exploitation of children.  

The names of the sponsors who take the children from the Office of Refugee Resettlement are run through the National Crime Information Center before a child is released. A sponsor can be a distant relative or have no blood relation to the child at all, opening the door for human traffickers to prey on minors, which, according to Rodas, has and continues to happen 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 their supposed to be doing, but their doing it because they need to repay debts to their smugglers and traffickers,” she said. 

Rodas accused the U.S. of operating a “white glove delivery system” that is responsible for handing migrant children over to “MS-13, 18th Street Gang, Russian Balkans crime syndicates, and other unsavory characters.”  

In defense of HHS, Rodas pointed out that the department is “not an investigative or law enforcement agency. HHS simply does not have the knowledge, skills, ability, or the tradecraft to protect children from traffickers.”  

Furthermore, child trafficking has become a highly sophisticated operation, according to Rodas, mirroring the “tactics and operations of terrorist organization.”  

Solutions

Solutions to end the exploitation of migrant children, according to Rodas, include DNA testing for sponsors who claim to be a relative of the child, and prison time for sponsors who cannot produce the child that was given 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.” 

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