Migrant children face 'systemic vulnerability' to abuse and trafficking, say Senators

The US has failed to protect migrant children from exploitation, hard labour and human trafficking, a bi-partisan Senate probe has discovered.

Some children have been released to "guardians" - convicted felons of child abuse - as the responsible government department has not carried out proper background checks.

A Senate hearing on Thursday, run by Republican Senator Rob Portman and Democrat Senator Claire McCaskill, accused the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) of failing to protect the children.

The probe was prompted by a case last summer in Senator Portman’s home state of Ohio, where at least six children from Guatemala were forced to work long hours on egg farms and live in a trailer in Marion County.

Several of the people charged had already been indicted of child abuse before they were approved to be guardians for the migrant children, said Senator McCaskill.

“It is intolerable that human trafficking - modern-day slavery - could occur in our own backyard,” said Senator Portman. "But what makes the Marion cases even more alarming is that a US government agency was responsible for delivering some of the victims into the hands of their abusers."

Senator Portman wants to adopt “commonsense measures” to prevent “systemic vulnerabilities” of these children to abuse.

Senator McCaskill said she had “little confidence” that HHS’ new policies, yet to be established, would not prevent further abuse.

“We’re talking about [giving children to] convicted felons of child abuse. Hello!” she said.

HHS Acting Assistant Secretary Mark Greenberg, who was questioned in the hearing, said the number of migrant children in temporary care by the government agency has leapt from an average 6,000 per year to 57,496 in the fiscal year of 2014 and 33,726 in the fiscal year of 2015.

HHS has placed around 90,000 migrant children with adult sponsors in the US, most of whom come from Central America, and has "never terminated a contract" with a child sponsor.

HHS officials said they had struggled to cope with the influx and there were “inadequate resources”.

Senator Portman said that this “notion“ of inadequate resources was not an “excuse”.

HHS was allocated $900 million in 2014 but 25% of the budget was left unspent. In 2015 the allocation to the agency increased to $948 million yet $278 million of that was not spent.

Mr Greenberg said he will read the committee’s report, share it with staff and “actively discuss the findings” and what the implications are for existing policies.

Doris Meissner, director of the Migration Policy Institute in the US, told The Independent that migrant children are “inherently vulnerable”.

She said she saw similar problems in the 1990s when she was Commissioner of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service when the country saw large inflows of Chinese children.

“That [the exploited children in Ohio] was the worst case I’ve seen in the current flow of migrant children, but over time we have seen other things that are quite terrible, including using young women - and sometimes young men - as sex workers."