Tim Ballard, a former federal agent whose anti-child trafficking organization inspired box office hit Sound of Freedom, demanded the Biden administration find 85,000 immigrant children that the government lost after releasing them to sponsors.
During an appearance on Capitol Hill Wednesday, Ballard testified to the House Homeland Security Committee that adults in the United States would have an easier time taking custody of an unaccompanied child released from the border than a needy animal at a pet shelter.
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"It's more difficult to adopt a cat from a shelter in the United States than it is to go down and take one of these children out of the custody of [the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services] and claim that I’m the sponsor," said Ballard, who recently left his organization Operation Underground Railroad and joined the related anti-trafficking group, the SPEAR Fund.
"This must stop. We must begin with finding the 85,000 missing unaccompanied children, which this administration claims is not their problem anymore," Ballard told Congress.
Ballard blamed the Biden administration's 2021 decision to stop taking fingerprints and conducting in-depth background checks of adults who step forward to care for children as a grave mistake that led to children being lost after release.
The Biden administration's decision was intended to ease fears among illegal immigrant adults already in the United States from coming forward to claim their child for fear of being deported. The fingerprinting process had led federal officials to arrest 170 illegal immigrant adults who attempted to sponsor a child, nearly half of whom had a criminal record.
"There's no background checks. There's no fingerprinting. Why would you afford a foreign child much less protection than you would an American child? I think it's despicable," Ballard said.
Earlier this year, the New York Times reported that the government could not locate 1-in-4 unaccompanied immigrant children apprehended at the border during follow-up phone calls — roughly 85,000 unanswered calls. The New York Times found children across the country who were forced into prostitution and forced labor, which Ballard said the children cannot escape without major public awareness and action.
"A child can be sold up to 20 times per day, six days a week for ten years or even longer if they are trafficked as a toddler or infant," Ballard testified. "In one case in particular, a young woman was brought across the border at an area where no barriers or protections existed. Her captors brought her to New York City where once in the U.S., she was sold and raped for money up to 30-40 times a day for five years before eventually escaping."
Becerra, the former Democratic attorney general of California, testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce in June that the task of following up with unaccompanied minors after they have left the facilities of the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement was not something the agency was required by Congress to do.
"We don’t have jurisdiction over the kids that are in the hands of sponsors," Becerra said at the time.
Political awareness of the issue began to grow earlier this summer when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) held a special screening for lawmakers to watch the movie Sound of Freedom.
Lawmakers from both parties have introduced bills, conducted committee hearings like the one Wednesday, and held press conferences over the summer to end child trafficking, particularly at the southern border, where more than 300,000 parentless children have come across since President Joe Biden took office.
Sens. Dick Durbin (D-IL) and Alex Padilla (D-CA) pushed HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra during a June hearing to explain how the HHS had received warnings that unaccompanied children were being released to unsafe situations, including forced labor and trafficking, but ignored those warnings.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) reintroduced the End Child Trafficking Act, which would require U.S. border officials to conduct an on-the-spot DNA test of each child who is apprehended at the border to ensure they are related to the adult accompanying them.
Last month, Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R-TX) joined Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Rick Scott (R-FL) and introduced a bill that would require the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services to take certain new steps when releasing an unaccompanied child to a sponsor inside the United States.
Ballard stated that the HHS, FBI, and Department of Homeland Security must jointly track down each child before it can deal with the overall issue.
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"Once we find these children and rescue those in need, we will be in a better position to reform the quality and processes," Ballard said.
The hearing was part three of the committee's five-part series to examine the causes and impacts of the border crisis.