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.

Op-Ed: Trump is a Performer – Let Him Perform

California business group unveils Times Square billboard comparing Newsom to NY Jets during Super Bowl week

Mike Johnson backs ‘America Is Back!’ message as Trump debuts new hat design

Jill Biden’s Ex-Husband Charged with Murder

Kristi Noem Issues Blistering Response to ‘Ill-Informed Famous Musicians’ Who Attacked ICE at Grammys

Government shutdown ends as Trump signs bill, but DHS funding deadline looms

NFL’s Roger Goodell Gripes About Lack of Black Head Coaches Ahead of Woke Super Bowl Halftime Circus

GOP senator jabs Jeffries as ‘butt hurt’ over Trump-Schumer deal

My night with Kamala: Harris’s ‘I told you so’ tour comes to Richmond

Judge orders man accused of spraying Ilhan Omar held before trial, possibly in solitary confinement

AI giant’s lobbyist spending exploded as it clashed with Trump administration

California parents who decapitated 2 children, forced other kids to see bodies learn sentence

Florida GOP candidate launches Tinder account to campaign to young female voters

Billie Eilish’s ‘Stolen Land’ Grammy Lecture Hilariously Backfires – Tribe That Claims Land Under Her Mansion Calls Her Out

Mandelson resigns from House of Lords as Keir Starmer hopes to stop Epstein scandal from engulfing him

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.