A government watchdog has thoroughly reviewed the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). However, the report showed serious lapses in how the HHS vetted sponsors in 2021. This was for a wave of migrant children who arrived in the U.S. along the Mexican border without a parent or guardian.
On Thursday, February 15th, the HHS Office of Inspector General released the results of the review. It showed that agency officials failed to show that they conducted basic sponsor safety checks. This included verifying their address and running a criminal background check before releasing children to sponsors’ custody.
This report took into account 300 cases from March and April 2021. In addition, this was when HHS released more than 16,000 children to adult sponsors. However, the lapses that occurred during this period are quite significant.
According to the report, at least 16 percent of unaccompanied children released to sponsors did not carry any documentation that indicated that they passed the required safety checks.
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Furthermore, the agency did not have legible IDs from sponsors in about a third of all the cases the report examined. This was clearly against the set rules that the agency follows.
The regulations state that facility staff should ensure copies of sponsor-submitted IDs include a legible photo and information. However, the report showed sponsor IDs that were blurry and grainy and had missing watermarks or holograms.
Therefore, there is a very high chance that they might be fake. If they are fake, it shows those children may be in harm’s way. In addition, the report found that officials sometimes failed to conduct follow-up safety checks. The HHS staff are supposed to conduct follow-up phone calls with all children.
This is done 30 to 37 days after placing them with adult sponsors. However, the report shows that in 22 percent of all cases, they didn’t make the calls promptly. Most of these calls were delayed for more than three months. The latest follow-up they recorded took almost a year.
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According to reports, this happened in early 2021 when the number of unaccompanied migrant children spiked. It also happened during the COVID-19 pandemic period. This led to staffing shortages and restrictions on the number of beds available at agency-licensed shelters.
Therefore, they ended up releasing children from the shelters too quickly. The adults then exploited the kids by putting them to work in dangerous jobs in violation of child labor laws.
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“We acknowledge that ORR (Office of Refugee Resettlement) received a surge in referrals of unaccompanied children during our review period in 2021, which created operational constraints and hindered its ability to fulfill its mission.
However, the number of unaccompanied children in ORR care has fluctuated widely over time, and [the Administration for Children and Families] needs to be prepared to safely place children with sponsors in the event of future influxes,” the report concluded.
The HHS is taking steps to address all the issues in the report. This includes new training for staff and reviewing all their shortcomings.
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