[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 46 (Thursday, March 14, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2396-S2397]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                      Office of Refugee Relocation

  Mr. President, also today, I was shocked to hear the Secretary of 
Health and Human Services, Secretary Becerra, say that when it comes to 
the 400,000 unaccompanied children that have come to America, come to 
our shores and been placed with sponsors by the Office of Refugee 
Relocation under Health and Human Services--he said: We don't have any 
responsibility to those children after they are placed with sponsors.
  Just to remind everybody, under current law, if an unaccompanied 
child shows up at the border--smuggled to the border by criminal 
organizations that get rich smuggling migrants to the border--they are 
then turned over by the Border Patrol to Health and Human Services 
Office of Refugee Relocation. They then identify a sponsor for that 
child in the interior of the United States. Sometimes it is a family 
member; sometimes it is not.
  There has been precious little vetting of the households in which 
those children are ultimately placed. And the New York Times, in 2023, 
wrote several investigative articles documenting the fact that the 
Biden administration had simply lost those children. In 85,000 cases 
where the reporters contacted the sponsors of these children, there was 
never an answer.
  Secretary Becerra said this morning: I don't have the authority to do 
anything after we turn them over to the sponsor.
  I said: OK. You can't tell us where these children are? You can't 
tell us are they going to school? Are they being trafficked for sex? 
Are they being forced into child labor in violation of the laws that 
are designed to protect children as has been documented by the New York 
Times and one of the Senate's own investigating committees?
  He said: It is not my job.
  Frankly, my conclusion is he simply doesn't care about the welfare of 
these 400,000 children living in communities all across America. We 
don't know

[[Page S2397]]

whether they have been forced into gangs or whether they dropped out of 
school. Secretary Becerra and President Biden don't know, and they 
don't care.