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.
Mamdani Celebrates ‘Closing’ the Budget: All He Did Was Move Some Numbers Around, and Constituents Are Still Packing for Florida
Watch: Even Murder Victim’s Family Almost Laughs as Court Plays ‘American Idol’ Killer Suspect’s Terrible Love Songs for Mistress
Dem House hopeful endorsed by activist who said ‘evil Jews run the world’
Trump revives rare budget maneuver to rescind $810M in congressionally approved funds
Illegal immigrants, 89 and 73, accused of armed drug trafficking decades after sneaking into US
Mistress may have handed prosecutors missing ‘why’ in ‘American Idol’ alum’s wife murder case: expert
Investigation: ActBlue Got Foreign Cash Then Punished Whistleblower
Watch: Police K-9 Limps Out Hospital to a Round of Applause After Surgery for a Catastrophic On-Duty Injury
Summer school for Ukraine’s future officers
Trump’s Greenland deal shadows Xi visit after years of Beijing eyeing Arctic influence
She grew up under Soviet rule. Now EU’s top diplomat warns Europe against giving Russia what it wants
How Russia turned the tide of the summer air war in Ukraine
The New York City Ballet opens its season with ‘Jewels’
Fulton Sheen became a TV sensation preaching faith, morality and warnings Michael Knowles says still resonate
WATCH: Former Dem Lt Gov reveals why he resigned after sexual harassment probe rocked state
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.
Mamdani Celebrates ‘Closing’ the Budget: All He Did Was Move Some Numbers Around, and Constituents Are Still Packing for Florida
Watch: Even Murder Victim’s Family Almost Laughs as Court Plays ‘American Idol’ Killer Suspect’s Terrible Love Songs for Mistress
Dem House hopeful endorsed by activist who said ‘evil Jews run the world’
Trump revives rare budget maneuver to rescind $810M in congressionally approved funds
Illegal immigrants, 89 and 73, accused of armed drug trafficking decades after sneaking into US
Mistress may have handed prosecutors missing ‘why’ in ‘American Idol’ alum’s wife murder case: expert
Investigation: ActBlue Got Foreign Cash Then Punished Whistleblower
Watch: Police K-9 Limps Out Hospital to a Round of Applause After Surgery for a Catastrophic On-Duty Injury
Summer school for Ukraine’s future officers
Trump’s Greenland deal shadows Xi visit after years of Beijing eyeing Arctic influence
She grew up under Soviet rule. Now EU’s top diplomat warns Europe against giving Russia what it wants
How Russia turned the tide of the summer air war in Ukraine
The New York City Ballet opens its season with ‘Jewels’
Fulton Sheen became a TV sensation preaching faith, morality and warnings Michael Knowles says still resonate
WATCH: Former Dem Lt Gov reveals why he resigned after sexual harassment probe rocked state
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.
