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.

James Patterson claims Marilyn Monroe was murdered in explosive new book theory

Florida’s Lawsuit Against Planned Parenthood Just the Beginning

Texas girl rescued after sand hole she was digging collapses, burying her

Unbelievable – She Might Actually Win a District Dominated By Trump: Democrat Aftyn Behn’s Most Unhinged Moments

Afghan Suspect Faces First-Degree Murder Charge in National Guard Shooting

WSJ Editorial Board Rushes to Defend Afghan Refugees After Deadly National Guard Attack

Watchdog group hits Letitia James with bar complaint after federal judge tosses case

Inside NORAD’s holiday command: How the same team that tracks Santa guards North America

Former Ukrainian ‘co-president’ Yermak says he’s ‘going to the front’ after shock resignation

National Guardsman shot in DC is ‘hanging on,’ family pleading for prayer, congressman says

Criminal networks exploit US interstates to make human trafficking victims vanish: ‘Real plague’

Meta Tolerated Sex Traffickers With 17-Strike System, Lawsuit Claims

This Is Why You Can’t Trust Public Schools: Teachers Union Teaches ‘Interrupting Whiteness’

Hegseth defends lethal strikes against alleged drug traffickers: ‘Biden coddled terrorists, we kill them’

White House implored to institutionalize DOGE after reports of premature demise

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.