In sharp language, the 56-page report complained deficiencies in Health and Human Services policies exposed some of the younger people to “an unacceptable risk of trafficking and other forms of abuse at the hands of their government-approved sponsors.”
Every year thousands of young people — many from Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — enter the United States without their parents or any relative. If they are seized by the U.S. government, Health and Human Services is required to find them safe homes with sponsors.
Since 2003, the government has found care for more than 190,000 of these young people.
A federal indictment last summer accused four people of running or aiding a slave-labor ring that smuggled Guatemalan teenagers as young as 14 into the United States, forcing them to live in horrifying conditions and taking the money they made working at central Ohio egg farms.
Federal prosecutors in Cleveland filed the charges against Aroldo Castillo-Serrano of Pecos, Texas; Conrado Salgado Soto of Raymond, Ohio; Ana Angelica Pedro Juan of Columbus; and Juan Pablo Duran Jr. of Marysville.
Federal officials testifying before the Senate panel expressed dismay at the trafficking in Marion. In remarks prepared for delivery, Mark Greenberg, acting assistant secretary of the Administration for Children and Services at HHS, acknowledged the Marion case “demonstrates the vulnerability of these children.”
But Greenberg, who was repeatedly and sharply questioned by committee members, insisted the department is “committed to releasing each unaccompanied child to an appropriate sponsor,” adding, “We continually work to strengthen our policies and operations in this regard.”
The report was the product of a lengthy investigation by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Committee chaired by Portman.
According to the report, the federal government did not conduct the type of rigorous home studies that are done for regular foster care and that the government “commonly places children with sponsors without ever meeting that sponsor in person or setting eyes on the home in which the child will be placed.
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