The Center Square) – A statewide grand jury in Florida has released some of the findings of its investigation into the Biden administration’s release of hundreds of thousands of unaccompanied minors into the U.S. who were transported to states like Florida.
The Department of Homeland Security and Department of Health and Human Service’s Office of Refugee Resettlement’s management of unaccompanied children's release and transport has resulted in “facilitating the forced migration, sale, and abuse of foreign children,” the grand jury found. “This process exposes children to horrifying health conditions, constant criminal threat, labor and sex trafficking, robbery, rape and other experiences not done justice by mere words.”
Attorney General Ashley Moody announced the grand jury’s findings on Thursday and is calling on Congress to investigate and take action.
She said she was “outraged at how the Biden administration and others in authority have encouraged this nightmare through policy and are neglecting hundreds of thousands of children, subjecting them to abuse and sexual assault even after they cross the border. The federal government is knowingly aiding and abetting trafficking organizations and allowing horrific harm to happen to these children. I am calling upon Congress to investigate and consider federal law to stop these misguided programs.”
The Third Presentment of the Twenty-First Statewide Grand Jury Regarding Unaccompanied Alien Children was released, which “outlines horrible atrocities inflicted on immigrant children in Florida and elsewhere who are under the authority of the Biden administration and nonprofit organizations receiving taxpayer money,” Moody said. “Allegations from the presentment include the federal government losing track of more than 20,000 children, no background checks on the minors’ sponsors, human trafficking and child abuse.”
After Gov. Ron DeSantis first learned last June that the Biden administration was facilitating the flights of unaccompanied minors into Florida, he filed a petition with the Florida Supreme Court requesting it to impanel a statewide grand jury to investigate which organizations were transporting illegal foreign nationals, particularly children, across the southwest border into Florida and other states. The court approved his petition and Moody’s statewide prosecutor serves as legal advisor to the jury.
While the grand jury is still in session, investigations are ongoing, and proceedings remain confidential, it released some of its findings so far. They discovered that over 250,000 unaccompanied minors were released into the U.S. since January 2021. Over a 10-month period in 2021, ORR lost contact with nearly 20,000 of them, previously reported last year.
ORR claims it “promptly places an unaccompanied child in the least restrictive setting that is in the best interests of the child, taking into consideration danger to self, danger to the community, and risk of flight” as well as “the unique nature of each child’s situation and incorporates child welfare principles when making placement, clinical, case management, and release decisions that are in the best interest of the child.”
However, the grand jury found that HHS and the U.S. Department of Justice received thousands of allegations of sexual abuse two years after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott warned, “The Biden administration is presiding over the abuse of children.”
Allegations include a minor’s testimony of being “pimped out” by a so-called “aunt” unknown to the minor prior to arriving in the U.S., others running away from their sponsors to avoid being sold for sex, teenage girls being placed in homes of unknown men with no private bedroom, and released to male sponsors with multiple other unknown men living in the same residence – all unidentified, the grand jury investigation found.
Minors were also placed in dangerous environments and with dangerous sponsors while ORR discouraged checking sponsor’s addresses, the investigation found. Some sponsors claimed they lived at addresses that were actually Jacksonville strip clubs, empty lots surrounded by stacked shipping containers or open fields, the investigation found.
Biden administration case managers only performed home studies in roughly 4.5% of all placements and in less than 1% of discretionary home studies, the investigation found.
One sponsor was given custody of a minor despite having served time in state prison for battery on a child, the investigations found. “Criminal history, lack of citizen status and even total refusal to submit to a background check” doesn’t disqualify sponsors from receiving minors through ORR, the report found.
The grand jury also found that DHS and HHS didn’t coordinate or consult with Florida about the children it was resettling there. “Florida receives no information on backgrounds, criminal history or immigration status of the UAC brought here, nor does the state have any assurance the UAC are in-fact minors,” according to the investigation.
Over a six-month period in 2021, over 70 airplanes arrived at Jacksonville International Airport in the middle of the night transporting thousands of unaccompanied minors. One, who claimed to be a minor, was a 24-year-old Honduran who’d brutally kill his sponsor.
Last year, Gov. DeSantis signed a bill into law prohibiting state and local government entities from contracting with carriers that “knowingly transport illegal aliens into Florida.” The law prohibits them “from executing, amending, or renewing contracts with a person, firm, or corporation that transports a person into Florida knowing that the person is an illegal alien, unless it is to facilitate the detention, removal, or departure of the person from Florida or the United States.”
“Floridians’ tax dollars should not go to corporations that facilitate the international human smuggling operation encouraged by the Biden administration,” he said.
