On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “José Díaz-Balart Reports,” Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-CO) stated that the federal government losing track of migrant children who were exploited for child labor is an issue where there is “a lot of confusion and there’s been massive change over the last couple of years coming out of the pandemic, coming out of all the problems we’ve had at the border” and that “so many of these problems reflect a high volume of kids coming in, unaccompanied.”
Hickenlooper said, “[W]e are going to reach out to HHS and look at how do we do a better job of maintaining contact and checking in periodically with these sponsor families. I mean, this is an issue where we have, obviously, a lot of confusion and there’s been massive change over the last couple of years coming out of the pandemic, coming out of all the problems we’ve had at the border, and so many of these problems reflect a high volume of kids coming in, unaccompanied. But that makes them vulnerable. And I think we all have a responsibility to step up and say, alright, what is that ecosystem, what’s the chain of command by which we can make sure these kids are protected? And while they go through the adjudication process, while their refugee status or their opportunity to stay permanently in this country — as that goes through the formal paperwork, how do we make sure they’re not being exploited and abused?”
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