More than 600 Children ‘Recycled’ by Migrant Smugglers At Border: ICE

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.

ICE says immigrant who died in Texas detention center committed suicide

Judge and wife shot in broad daylight in Indiana, sparking massive multi-agency investigation

Dem Senator Warner admits Biden ‘screwed up’ the border, but claims ICE now targeting noncriminals

Trump says media focuses too much on Minnesota ICE coverage, not enough on corruption allegations

Maryland Democrat’s bill seeks to ‘digitally unmask’ ICE agents after fatal Minneapolis shooting

Bill Cassidy challenger digs in against Trump’s preferred GOP Senate candidate

Florida repeat offender allegedly killed 3 tourists minutes from Magic Kingdom after run of violence: records

ISIS fighters reportedly escape from Kurdish prisons amid fighting with government

Piers Morgan Hospitalized After Suffering Serious Injury at Restaurant

UN chief accuses US of ditching international law as Trump blasts global bodies

Minneapolis software engineers mistaken for ICE agents while eating lunch harassed by anti-ICE crowd

Oops: Leader of Anti-ICE Church Invasion Just Made Prosecutors’ Job a Lot Easier

Bruce Springsteen Pauses Concert to Deliver Vulgar Anti-ICE Message

Watch: US National Anthem Heckled at London NBA Game

Prominent Catholic bishop slams anti-ICE agitators who disrupted MN church service: ‘Unacceptable’

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.