More than 600 children were “recycled” through the border over the last year, including some who were carried across eight times, by a different person each time, looking to exploit lax policies to gain a foothold in the U.S., a top ICE official told Congress on Wednesday.
And those are only cases that were detected, officials said.
The recycled children are one of the more disturbing aspects of illegal border flow over the last 12 months, which set records for the number of children and families who snuck into the U.S.
The families were drawn by a lax policy, imposed by a federal court, that gives adults a quick release into communities as long as they brought a son or daughter with them.
The result was massive levels of fraud, with adults renting or outright buying unrelated children in order to present themselves as a family, authorities said. In some cases it was a one-off, but in other instances children were “recycled” across the border multiple times, said Derek N. Benner, acting deputy director at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“We’ve identified over 600 children that have been recycled,” he said.
Chinese National Arrested at US University for Poisoning Classmate Engaged in Cutting Edge Cancer Research
Dems Make Historic All-In Midterm Move: Talarico Raises More in Third Quarter Than Any Senate Candidate in History
Politicians Force Their Hands Into Taxpayer Pockets to Fund Agency That Bombed Audit
Fox News Campus Radicals Newsletter: Judeo-Christian values under assault in American schools
State Treasurers Stand Up to the Big 3 Rating Agencies for Punishing Oil-Friendly States with Green-Activist ESG
Cookies, liquor and mocking Nazis fuel final stretch in fiery Texas House race
Cancel Culture Comes for Halloween: School Cancels Parades for ‘Inclusivity’
Watch: SNL’s Michael Che Refuses to Cave to Woke Mob as Interviewer Nags Him About Shane Gillis’ Gym Clothes Joke
Hero dad who took down Oregon school shooter identified along with teacher killed in attack
Kid Rock Opens Up About What Inspired His New Gospel Album, and It’s Quite the Story
Ukraine drone strikes and Iran war split blame on skyrocketing diesel prices
CBS Tried to Trash Trump Again, Now They’re Facing Another Multimillion Suit, This Time from a 15-Year-Old They Trashed
Tish James confronted on camera over Trump’s accusation of bias in Cornell rape case
Democrats’ latest gun-control push runs into inconvenient fact about how school killer was stopped
Obama’s star power gets a reality check from Black voters in crucial Senate race: ‘It’s a turn-off’
That means that once they came across with an unrelated adult, they were then separated by the smuggling operation and taken back south across the border to be brought back again with a new adult, he said.
“Some of them had indicated they’ve made the trip as many as eight times, with separate, unrelated adults each time,” he added.
Mark Morgan, acting commissioner at Customs and Border Protection, recounted one case where they caught a Honduran man who’d “bought a child” for $80, then attempted to cross into the U.S.
“Why did he do it? Because the loopholes in our system told him — and the smugglers made sure he understood — ‘You grab a child, that’s your passport into the United States,’” Mr. Morgan told the Senate Homeland Security Committee.
Mr. Benner detailed another case where a Guatemalan man showed up at the border with a girl he claimed to be his daughter. Authorities didn’t immediately sniff out the fake relationship and under the lax U.S. policies toward families the man and girl were released.
The girl was “repeatedly” sexually abused and beaten, until she was finally rescued, Mr. Benner said.
ICE began in the spring to use DNA testing to try to weed out fraudulent families at the border.
That involved taking people who presented as families, but where suspicions were raised, and testing DNA to try to confirm the purported relationship. At the height, Mr. Benner said, about a quarter of the cases tested came back as fake families.
Cartels began to adjust their strategies and the rate is now 13% to 15%, he said.
Chinese National Arrested at US University for Poisoning Classmate Engaged in Cutting Edge Cancer Research
Dems Make Historic All-In Midterm Move: Talarico Raises More in Third Quarter Than Any Senate Candidate in History
Politicians Force Their Hands Into Taxpayer Pockets to Fund Agency That Bombed Audit
Fox News Campus Radicals Newsletter: Judeo-Christian values under assault in American schools
State Treasurers Stand Up to the Big 3 Rating Agencies for Punishing Oil-Friendly States with Green-Activist ESG
Cookies, liquor and mocking Nazis fuel final stretch in fiery Texas House race
Cancel Culture Comes for Halloween: School Cancels Parades for ‘Inclusivity’
Watch: SNL’s Michael Che Refuses to Cave to Woke Mob as Interviewer Nags Him About Shane Gillis’ Gym Clothes Joke
Hero dad who took down Oregon school shooter identified along with teacher killed in attack
Kid Rock Opens Up About What Inspired His New Gospel Album, and It’s Quite the Story
Ukraine drone strikes and Iran war split blame on skyrocketing diesel prices
CBS Tried to Trash Trump Again, Now They’re Facing Another Multimillion Suit, This Time from a 15-Year-Old They Trashed
Tish James confronted on camera over Trump’s accusation of bias in Cornell rape case
Democrats’ latest gun-control push runs into inconvenient fact about how school killer was stopped
Obama’s star power gets a reality check from Black voters in crucial Senate race: ‘It’s a turn-off’
Mr. Morgan and Mr. Benner testified at a hearing called to examine the border numbers from fiscal year 2019, which ended Sept. 30, closing out the worst year in more than a decade.
Still, things ended on a better note than the nadir in May, when more than 5,000 persons were caught jumping the border on some days. The number is now less than 1,400 a day.
