Last Tuesday, James O’Keefe highlighted whistleblower and contract specialist for the General Services Administration (GSA) Clarissa Rippee. Rippee agreed to expose an alleged taxpayer-funded $347-million contract that transports alien unaccompanied children (UACs) from the border. She came forward because she felt that UACs, including infants, were being treated like “commodities.” O’Keefe alleges that it’s a “big-money business.”
Ripee was courageous to step forward. In this case, it added a human dimension to previously exposed information. The fact is that NGOs have long been using tax dollars to do the bidding of DHS and USCIS at the border.
The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) often leads in exposing issues like this one. In March 2024, the CIS’s Andrew Arthur used the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to obtain a 113-page, $404-million contract between the federal government “and a private entity to transport unaccompanied alien children (UACs) from shelters run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).”
I have written extensively on the Biden-Harris open borders crisis. The flood of illegal aliens, including countless unaccompanied minors often victimized by the carelessness of this administration. The agreements between NGOs and our government to transport them are but one example of the way these innocents may be placed in harm’s way.
As CIS explains, the federal government farms out the transportation of young children from the border using NGOs and private contractors. The report indicates some effort to properly vet the escorts who transport the children. However, it seems that there is much less rigorous vetting of the sponsors who receive them.
According to Arthur, the Homeland Security Act of 2002 (HSA) changed the way minors were handled at the border by “abolish[ing] the former INS and dispers[ing] its enforcement and adjudication responsibilities across various agencies.” Arthur also states that, with “no debate,” Democrats gave ORR, with “no experience in sheltering children,” the responsibility for housing minors.
Later in 2008, the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), added to DHS mandates the transportation of UACs “from non-contiguous countries to ORR within 72 hours, nearly all for placement with sponsors in the United States,” according to Arthur. As a result, the “number and percentage of UACs apprehended at the border from non-contiguous countries has skyrocketed ever since.”
Reporting in June 2023 from the Congressional Research Service shows massive increases in UACs at the southwest border since FY2009. UAC apprehensions skyrocketed when Biden took office in 2021. UACs “consistently exceeded 8,500 per month, higher than any period since CBP began publishing UC [UAC] statistics,” according to the report.
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It is all too common for parents or guardians in the U.S. and abroad to pay smugglers to bring their children to the U.S. In many cases, these sponsors are “unlawful permanent residents” in the U.S. They are here illegally, sheltering UACs while in hiding — not exactly the best prescription for keeping children safe.
NGOs also play a huge role in sheltering minors and, in some cases, are responsible for abusing them. In July, I wrote a piece for Freedom Forever exposing allegations of ongoing “sexual abuse and harassment of minors” by employees of an NGO, Southwest Key Programs, Inc. The article exposed that “Southwest Key operates 29 shelters that provide temporary housing for UACs in Texas, Arizona, and California, making it the largest housing provider for UACs in the U.S.” The DOJ filed a lawsuit against Southwest Key in July 2024.
Once unaccompanied minors leave those shelters, they may be placed with “unvetted sponsors.” The Trump administration mandated DNA testing of those accompanying minors and sponsors to “prove they were a family unit.” Biden did away with the practice in 2023.
Then, in August, I wrote another article on the real-world consequences of Biden’s border policies, including the brutal murders of American citizens by illegal aliens. Another issue highlighted in the same article centered on how poor the vetting is by our government of U.S.-based sponsors.
Quoting CIS’s research, it seems the Biden administration was “‘cutting corners’ when vetting sponsors.” I reported at the time that there were “up to 140,000” UACs with whom the HHS’s ORR [had] lost contact.” And according to the Judiciary’s Aug. 12, 2024 interim report, an “astonishing 420,000 [UACs] [had been] released to sponsors.”
According to CIS, the Trump administration had a more “robust process” for the vetting of sponsors, but the Biden administration allegedly does not. Part of that is because of the unprecedented numbers of illegals crossing the border. There is simply no way for DHS, ICE, or the Border Patrol to properly vet and process them all. CIS writes,
The Biden administration is under pressure to speed those children out of HHS custody, but doing so risks cutting corners when it comes to its vetting of sponsors and their household members.
Unfortunately, ORR has a history of failure to properly protect children and vet sponsors. A 2016 Senate subcommittee report exposes ORR’s failure to protect UACs “from trafficking and other abuses.” The Senate investigation found “systemic deficiencies in HHS’s UAC placement process.” The subcommittee reviewed case files and found,
HHS does not adequately vet sponsors to ensure that they are willing and able to provide proper care and support to any child—much less children as vulnerable as UACs. Nor does HHS ensure that UACs receive needed services after placement. In fact, HHS claims it is not responsible for a UAC at all once it releases such a child from federal custody to a sponsor. Rather, HHS believes that after release of a UAC’s care is in the purview of local authorities. By the time local authorities become involved, however, it can be too late.
Finally, in an article I wrote in September, I discussed a report obtained in August by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) that exposed “massive fraud in the application process” used by sponsors of aliens seeking parole under the Cuban-Haitian-Nicaragua-Venezuela (CHNV) program. The document exposed thousands of fraudulently completed applications. The fraudulent information included but was not limited to
- the use of fake Social Security numbers,
- fake addresses,
- multiple sponsors applying from a single property,
- identical responses used “by over 10,000 applicants,”
- multiple uses of one sponsor’s phone number,
- emails being used repeatedly, and
- suspicious data changes.
Those transporting UACs may well be the last to see these children safe and alive. My best guess is that the sponsors for UACs are no better vetted than are the ones for the CHNV program.
Rippee was right to come forward. It is scary to think that NGOs are allowed to transport and hand off children, in some cases, to poorly vetted sponsors. Children should enter and settle in the U.S. with their families, not with faceless NGOs. As it stands now, many children are powerless to challenge the process and arguably in harm’s way.
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Image: woodleywonderworks via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.
