Federal officials on Thursday said they have accounted for 146,000 unaccompanied migrant children who were smuggled into the U.S. during former President Joseph R. Biden’s administration and, at times, forced into labor or sex trafficking rings.
Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin and Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said there are still roughly 300,000 children who are unaccounted for by federal agencies, with authorities saying those minors have been victimized by the human smugglers who brought them to the U.S.
“Oftentimes the children were abused, assaulted, and certainly exploited,” Mr. Blanche said. “When government fails to protect our borders, it is the most vulnerable who suffer.”
A cadre of “super sponsors,” or people who sponsor at least three unrelated migrant children, are powering the child exploitation racket, federal officials said. Super sponsors secure custody of minors by using fraudulent documents to portray themselves as close relatives.
Three illegal immigrants from Guatemala were accused of immigration fraud and smuggling after prosecutors said they harbored the children in Ohio, with one of the children being sexually abused by her sponsor.
Authorities charged Maritza Azucena Cahuec Coc, 38, and her brother Carlos Agustin Cahuec Coc, 33, in the smuggling conspiracy that saw more than a dozen children trafficked into the U.S. between 2020-23. The siblings face up to 10 years behind bars if they are convicted.
Another Guatemalan national, 27-year-old Juan Tiul Xi, pleaded guilty to smuggling a 14-year-old girl into the country by submitting phony sponsorship paperwork that claimed he was the girl’s older brother. Prosecutors said Xi then victimized the girl by sexually assaulting her, crimes for which he was convicted in state court.
“He was entrusted with her care and sexually assaulted her multiple times,” said Assistant Attorney General Tysen Duva, who heads up the department’s criminal division. “He told her the sex was repayment for bringing her to the United States.”
Xi will spend more than 10 years in prison for the document fraud and sexual assault.
Mr. Mullin said some of the children they have made contact with claim to have been raped up to 700 times. Mr. Blanche said the DOJ is looking into more than 15,000 super sponsor cases that have been tied to hundreds of thousands of migrant children trafficked into the U.S.
Acting head of the Office of Refugee Resettlement Angie Salazar, whose office is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, said some of the 146,000 children who were located by federal agents were either dead or had been linked to heinous crimes.
Authorities are still working through a list of 81,000 addresses that are connected to the unaccounted-for children, she said. Ms. Salazar added that the Trump administration is trying to fix problems created by the former White House in which children were handed over to people who were rarely seen in person by federal officials and sent to live at addresses that were not visited or verified.
“It’s negligent at best and criminal at worst,” Mr. Mullin said. “When you’re not taking care of the kids that you’re entrusted to take care of, negligence can turn into [a crime].”
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