How the American dream became a nightmare

Why do we still encourage parents from other countries to send their children here to care for smugglers?

These children are exposed to unacceptable dangers when they travel to the United States without a parent or any other person who can be trusted to protect them. This has been famous for a long time. On June 23, 2014, the Minister of Internal Security of former President Barack Obama, Jeh C. Johnson, published an open letter to parents in Central America to warn them of these risks.

“In the hands of smugglers,” he wrote, “Many children are shocked and psychological abuse through their journey, or worse than that, they are beaten, hungry, sexual assault, or selling it in sex trade … … The desire to see a child has a better life in the United States is very understandable.

Despite these warnings, parents continued to send children with their relatives to cross the American border. Indeed, in the year in which Johnson’s speech was published, the number of border concerns of these children reached a record level of 68,541 – and this number continued to increase. Between the fiscal year 2021 and the financial 2023, concerns exceeded 130,000 every year, and there were 8,7475 in the first ten months of the fiscal year 2024.

The Re -Debt Protection Law requires trafficking victims for the year 2008 from the border patrol to transfer children arrested after an illegal crossing to the Ministry of Health and Humanitarian Services within 72 hours. If they are determined to be from Mexico or Canada, they will be examined within 48 hours of fear and return them to their country of origin, unless there is reliable evidence that it will be at risk of trafficking or persecution in their country of origin.

The HHS Refugee Resettlement Office is responsible for caring for these children until they are released to the sponsor. Once it is released, the shepherd becomes responsible for his care; However, the immigration and customs application is still responsible for managing and monitoring their immigration procedures.

In a march, a report issued by the Office of the Inspector General of Internal Security stated that ICE is unable to monitor foreign children unacceptable effectively when they are released from the reserve of the Refugee Resettlement Office, because the agency does not always know where the children are. From the fiscal year 2019 to the fiscal year 2023, more than 31,000 children’s launch titles were “empty or uncompromising or missing residential numbers.”

Moreover, ICE was unable to confirm the accuracy of the rest of more than 400,000 titles; The agency does not have enough officers.

Distinguished, according to a report issued by ICE, the previous administration issued many children to the sponsors who have not been properly examined. The report states that ICE discovered sponsors who have sexual abuse for children; Those who were subjected to children with bad living conditions; Those who put children in forced work. They also found pastors “committed serious crimes, including the crimes of running and running, exacerbation, theft, forgery, drug trafficking, prostitution, and even attempt to kill.”

The Trump administration has since launched a national research in the field of social welfare to locate children who were released to unrestricted sponsors, but researchers face the same restrictions that ICE had to implement its observation responsibilities.

The best way to think about describing this situation is to say that it explains the saying: “The path to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Our laws were aimed at protecting the country illegally, not to encourage parents in other countries to send their children here to take care of smugglers. But this is what happened, and still happens. We will never know the number of these children trafficking in the sex trade or have been subjected to forced work.

Nolan Rapirt It was detailed to the Judicial Committee of the House of Representatives as an expert in the immigration law in the executive branch for a period of three years. He then occupied as a consultant to immigration in the sub -committee for migration, border security and demands for a period of four years. Before working on the judicial committee, he wrote decisions for the Immigration Call Council for 20 years.