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.

Veteran Dem operative says subpar GOP candidates poised to hand over Senate majority

Trump prosecutions under Biden set precedent for DOJ’s Alaska ‘Decoy Dan’ probe, ex-FEC chair says

Biden Propaganda Exposed?: Arrested ‘Shadow Gov’t’ Ex-FBI Official May Have Helped NBC Bury the Hunter Biden Laptop Story

Surface-to-Air Missile System Deployed at Mar-a-Lago: ‘Heightened Threat Environment’

El Sayed asks Haley Stevens to stay away from campaign events in dramatic 11th-hour feud escalation

Why the Ilhan Omar saga isn’t going away

Christian group touts ‘ethical’ tech features as concerns over out-of-control AI tools persist

CodePink leader adds muscle to well-funded fight to ban restaurant delicacy

How to follow 2026 Election Day coverage on Fox News platforms

Tinder killer who believed he was a warlock said he ‘picked the wrong person’ after murdering woman

Virginia’s Dem AG Calls AR-15 Rifles ‘Machine Guns’ in Stunningly Ignorant Brief to SCOTUS

Report: ‘Presbyterian Seminarian’ Talarico Had Account On Adult Hookup Website, Was Looking for ‘Group Sex,’ ‘Fetish’ Partners

Manning: The Truth About Why Dems Demand Endless War in Ukraine Is So Much Worse Than Almost Anyone Imagines

Gavin Newsom touts ‘ruthless’ approach to politics in New Hampshire pitch

Questions still haunt Houdini’s Halloween death 100 years later

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.