Unaccompanied minors who illegally enter the United States are being released to child traffickers by the U.S. government, condemning those youth to a life of forced labor or worse, and a business arm of the Cherokee Nation is facilitating that abuse, according to whistle-blower testimony provided last month to members of the U.S. Senate.
“Make no mistake: Children were not going to their parents. They were being trafficked with billions of taxpayer dollars by a contractor failing to vet sponsors and process children safely with government officials complicit in it,” said Deborah White, a career worker at the federal General Services Administration who was lent in May 2021 to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement (HHSORR).
White was among several whistleblowers and experts who addressed a roundtable of U.S. senators on July 9. The event, “The Exploitation Crisis: How the US Government Fails to Protect Migrant Children from Trafficking & Abuse,” was led by U.S. Sens. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
(https://www.youtube.com/live/T5Mkwn2espg )
White repeatedly criticized Cherokee Federal, the non-governmental organization (NGO) that received the federal contract to run the Pomona, California processing site where she temporarily worked.
“Cherokee Federal staffed the site with several unqualified, unvetted, and quite frankly dangerous contractors with access to vulnerable children that did not get the appropriate support, services, or humanity that they deserved after a most treacherous journey,” White said
“I have seen these children. I have interviewed these children. And I have stories that will haunt me for the rest of my life. The HHSORR program is the biggest failure in government history that I have ever witnessed. Despite raising case after case of trafficking, HHSORR leadership and the contractor allowed children to be trafficked on their watch and the taxpayers continue to fund it.”
