Failure in Pomona: Thousands of Migrant Children Missing

There are 85,000 migrant children in the country that the federal government cannot find.  There are thousands more who were sent to dodgy “sponsors” with fake addresses. There are at least 6,000 working illegally, in violation of child labor laws. And it, grotesquely appears, that many of them have fallen victim to child sex traffickers.

And many of them were processed at the Pomona Emergency Intake Site created hastily at the Fairplex, home of the L.A. County Fair, by overwhelmed feds.

Since President Biden threw open the border moments after he took office, millions of people – including terrorists, spies, and murderers – have flooded into the country. Amongst that group have been about 500,000 “unaccompanied minors.”

Upon arrival, the minors were shunted off to intake sites for processing like the Fairplex, which handled at least 8,300 kids.

The process was supposed to work like this: the minor usually had a name or at least a phone number of a potential “sponsor” already in the country and the feds and their contractors would then check out the sponsor to see if it was legit (a relative or something like that) and then send the child there. They would then follow-up with a single phone call about a month later to check on the child.

The problem is that that very simple, basic procedure was not being followed consistently and the children were sent places they had no reason being. One address was an empty field in Michigan. Other addresses were fake. And many individual addresses “received” dozens of children.

As was the case of California’s Employment Development Department, which sent hundreds of pre-loaded debit cards to the same address on multiple occasions, the Department of Health and Human Services’ “Office of Refugee Resettlement” did not pro-actively track that clear red flag.

In other words, when checking on an address they didn’t check to see if another – or 49 other children, in one case – had already been sent there.  Note – I’m not a computer programmer, but even I use the “find” feature in a spreadsheet.

Tuesday, a pair of whistleblowers who worked at the Pomona site (the federal workers were “seconded” there from other duties and worked with a federal contractor called Cherokee Federal to process the children) testified in front of a United States Senate “roundtable” meeting (it was not technically a hearing – most Lilley the Democratic majority on the committee did not want it to be “official” in that way.)

The tales were harrowing.

Deborah White told the committee she realized something was wrong early on but was stymied by administrators when she brought up any issues with the system.

“These children were not being sent to their parents,” White told the senators.  “They were being trafficked.”

Fraudulent documents abounded in the program and officials who were meant to meet face-to-face with sponsors often didn’t bother, White said.

“Children were sent to addresses that were abandoned houses or nonexistent in some cases,” White said. “In Michigan, a child was sent to an open field, even after we reported making a 911 call after hearing someone screaming for help, yet the child was still sent….Please understand, this is nothing less than taxpayer-funded child slavery, sanctioned by the government.”

When she pointed out issues with the sponsors, she was told it was “not her job to investigate” them.

Fellow whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas told the story of Carmen, a 16-year-old Guatemalan girl who was supposedly sent to stay with her “brother.”

Following up on the case, Rodas found social media showed him touching her sexually: “it was clear her sponsor was not her brother,” she said. 

A short time later, Carmen was “advertised” on the “brother’s” social media site, her shirt un-buttoned and looking clearly drugged.

Carmen “was for sale,” Rodas said. “What keeps me up at night is wondering if Carmen is safe.”

Children were also sent to known gang members. In one instance, Rodas said she tried to flag a placement to a member of MS-13 to be stopped but was not only ignored but she herself was placed under investigation by the HHS.

HHS Secretary, California’s own Xavier Becerra (or Bockarrhea, as Biden said when he nominated him for the job) has in the past claimed that exactly zero kids have gone missing.  Of course, that’s government pedantry because once the child is placed the HHS considers the case closed and does not follow up to see if the child is where they are supposed to be and okay.

By the way, that 30 day follow-up call that was mentioned above? They stopped doing them, White said.

The HHS did not respond to a request for comment, nor did the contractor Cherokee Federal.  Here’s their “humanitarian solutions” page on their website –the government gobbledygook is numbing.

White said that Cherokee Federal prioritized “speed over safety” and was staffed with unqualified and “frankly dangerous people who had access to vulnerable children.”

The roundtable was hosted by Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA,) Bill Cassidy (R-LA,) and Ron Johnson (R-WI).  Grassley has even filed a “Potential for Human Trafficking for Labor and Sex” criminal referral with both the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI.  

“HHS, Congress and the American people must face the facts: HHS’ UC program has glaring defects that are harming innocent children,” Grassley said. “The records I’m releasing today … ought to send a chill up every person’s spine. I’m not going to stop fighting until the UC program is fixed, and HHS and its contractors end their obstruction and fully respond to my oversight requests.”

Each of the senators expressed not only their disgust with the situation but their ire at the Biden admiration’s apparent stonewalling of their investigative requests for information, even going so far as to allegedly tell a different private contractor not to talk to the group.

“This blatant lack of transparency with the American people is reprehensible,”  Cassidy said. “Frankly, it is hard to see this as anything other than an effort to cover up and shield the Biden administration from scrutiny for its mistreatment and mishandling of unaccompanied children.”

As to the whistleblowers, both have faced backlash and in Rodas’ case it was significant. She told the committee that after she expressed her concerns and the gang member placement, she was:

• I was taken off the MS-13 case by ORR’s Federal Field Specialist (FFS),

• The FFS told me I was under investigation,

• I was escorted off my job by the FFS & security, and

• My badge was taken.

• For my personal safety, my home agency offered to send armed agents to escort me from California back to Washington, DC.

A 20 year veteran of federal employment, Rodas was stunned by the operation.

“If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I would not believe that a federal government agency is using billions of taxpayer dollars to place vulnerable migrant children into the hands of sponsors who have criminal history and gang affiliation,” Rodas said.  “It’s shocking and shameful.”

You can watch the entire roundtable here.