A top official at the Department of Health and Human Services said reports that the federal government lost nearly 1,500 immigrant children are “completely false.”
Deputy Secretary Eric Hargan said the agency’s Office of Refugee Resettlement made follow-up calls to the children’s sponsors but had not heard back from many of them.
“These children are not ‘lost’; their sponsors — who are usually parents or family members and in all cases have been vetted for criminality and ability to provide for them — simply did not respond or could not be reached when this voluntary call was made,” Hargan said in a statement released Monday evening.
Complicating the matter, he said, is that many of the sponsors are illegal immigrants.
”While there are many possible reasons for this, in many cases sponsors cannot be reached because they themselves are illegal aliens and do not want to be reached by federal authorities,” he said in the statement.
“This is the core of this issue: In many cases, HHS has been put in the position of placing illegal aliens with the individuals who helped arrange for them to enter the country illegally,” he continued. “This makes the immediate crisis worse and creates a perverse incentive for further violation of federal immigration law.”
The issue arose after Steven Wagner, the acting assistant secretary at the Administration for Children and Families — a part of HHS — told a Senate panel that the agency had lost track of 1,475 children it placed with sponsors between October and December 2017.
The minors had crossed the border unaccompanied by adults.
He testified at the hearing on April 26 that ORR tried to reach 7,635 children and their sponsors during that time frame.
The agency found 6,075 children were still with their sponsors, 28 had run away, five had been deported and 52 were living with someone else.
“ORR was unable to determine with certainty the whereabouts of 1,475” children, Wagner said.
Hargan urged Congress to close the “dangerous loopholes” in immigration law that human traffickers and violent gangs like MS-13 often take advantage of.
”Until these laws are fixed, the American taxpayer is paying the bill for costly programs that aggravate the problem and put children in dangerous situations,” he said.
