Federal prosecutors announced charges Monday against a man they say smuggled in an illegal immigrant child and then produced child pornography with the minor, a case that implicates President Biden’s more relaxed approach to illegal immigrant children.
Authorities say Natividad Aguilera Garcia, 37, smuggled at least three illegal immigrants, including two of them who were juveniles. One, identified in the federal indictment as Minor A, was later used for child pornography.
Mr. Garcia lied to the federal government in claiming he was the child’s uncle and produced a false birth certificate to back up his claim, the indictment charges. The Biden administration’s Office of Refugee Resettlement turned the child over to him based on that bogus relationship.
Prosecutors say Mr. Garcia launched the scheme in May 2021, just as the Biden administration unleashed a flood of illegal immigrant children and reduced the checks being made to vet sponsors trying to gain custody of them.
It wasn’t clear from the court documents how Mr. Garcia connected with the victim and the other illegal immigrants in the first place, though the indictment indicated he was sharing pornographic images of Minor A in May 2021, or months before he fabricated his relationship in the summer and fall to take custody of the child.
Mr. Garcia, charged in federal court in the Eastern District of Kentucky, faces seven counts: one charge of production of child pornography, one charge of receipt of child pornography, one count of enticement of a juvenile for sex, one count of transportation of a juvenile for sex, one county of encouraging illegal entry, one count of making a false statement to the government and one count of presenting a false document.
Health and Human Services, which oversees ORR, didn’t respond to a request for comment on the case, which experts said is another in a string of tragedies resulting from how the government handles illegal immigrant children.
“It’s horrifying and sad but it is not at all surprising that this happened,” said Jessica Vaughan at the Center for Immigration Studies. “No state has a foster placement system that is this negligent.”
Under federal law, illegal immigrant children who arrive at the border without a parent are deemed “unaccompanied.” Children from Mexico and Canada can be quickly sent back, but those from further afield are required to be quickly turned over to HHS, which then holds them in custody while it searches for sponsors to take them.
After the country during the Obama administration faced a flood of Unaccompanied Alien Children or UACs, as they’re known in government-speak, the government struggled with the balance between processing them quickly and trying to vet the sponsors who came forward to take them.
The Trump administration erred heavily on the side of safety but the Biden administration, overwhelmed by the sheer numbers it has invited, has swung heavily the other way and pushed children out of custody without the same level of checks.
The amount of time it took to complete the checks and place a UAC went from 102 days under President Trump in 2020 to 35 days in the early months of the Biden administration. It now stands at just 31 days, according to the latest government data.
Ms. Vaughan said there are a host of unanswered questions about the victim in Mr. Garcia’s case, including how they connected and whether parents were involved. In the past some children have been kidnapped and trafficked while in other cases parents were duped into delivering their children, believing traffickers’ promises of giving them a better life here.
The New York Times reported last year on UACs who ended up in forced labor.
HHS, while speeding the kids’ releases, says it has no control over what happens to them once it pushes them out the door.
“We can’t track them because there’s no obligation on their part or the sponsors’ part to stay in touch with us,” Secretary Xavier Becerra told Congress in testimony last month. “That’s why it’s so important for us to do a good vetting process because once we do the hand-off, Congress did not give us authority to try to monitor them.”
Years ago, most UACs were placed with parents already living here, most of them illegally or with tentative legal status. But more now are released to people purporting to be distant relatives — such as the uncle Mr. Garcia purported to be in the Kentucky case, Ms. Vaughan said.
She said the law should be changed, or at least reinterpreted, to be much stricter on who is deemed a UAC. But she also said the Biden administration should reverse its relaxed vetting.
“This case could have been prevented through better policies: Better vetting of this sponsor, follow-up once a child is placed in the custody of someone who is not their parents,” she said.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.