HHS Inspector General: Many Adults Housing Migrant Children Were Never Vetted; Biden Admin Placed Migrant Children with Unvetted Adults, Unmonitored: report

HHS Inspector General: Many Adults Housing Migrant Children Were Never Vetted

The Department of Health and Human Services handed off unaccompanied migrant children to adults who had not even been rudimentarily vetted, according to a report released on Thursday from the HHS Office of the Inspector General.

The report covers the year 2021 and contains some shocking shortcomings by HHS that put children in danger of being exploited on many levels.

The analysis showed that the department failed to run basic safety checks — like address or criminal background checks — and that up to a third of IDs that the sponsors supplied were illegible. That means that the IDs were probably forged.

“We found that children’s case files and sponsor records were not always updated with important documentation and information,” said Haley Lubeck, an analyst for the HHS IG’s office.

HHS placed more than 16,000 children with adult sponsors at that time and failed to follow up with wellness check calls to the children in the required time frame of 30-37 days. It took four times longer to get in touch with the children than required. —>READ MORE HERE

Biden admin placed migrant children with unvetted adults, unmonitored: report

A new report reveals that the Biden administration placed children arriving at the southern border into homes that were not monitored and with adults who were not vetted.

This is according to a federal watchdog report released on Thursday after a review by the Office of Inspector General in the Department of Health and Human Services.

“We found that children’s case files and sponsor records were not always updated with important documentation and information,” Haley Lubeck, an OIG analyst said.

“I would define these gaps as very serious,” Lubeck said. “We know that these children are especially vulnerable to exploitation.”

The Associated Press reported:

The Department of Health and Human Services is required to screen adults who volunteer to take in children arriving in the country without parents. But the analysis concluded that the department failed to prove it ran basic safety checks — like address or criminal background checks — on some adults who took in children. In about a third of the cases reviewed by the federal watchdog, the agency did not have legible documentation for the adults on file.

The case files of more than 300 migrant children were reviewed in the analysis that found that the agency sometimes failed to execute even the bare minimum in handling the influx of children at the U.S.-Mexico border. In March and April of 2021, over 16,000 children were placed with adults by HHS. The adults, referred to as sponsors, were to be issued IDs but the review found a major problem in many of the cases examined.

“But the federal watchdog found that illegible IDs were submitted to HHS in more than a third of the cases analyzed during that time. Some IDs had missing holograms or blurry images, raising questions about whether they were forged documents,” the AP reported. “The agency also failed to provide proof it had conducted basic safety checks – like background checks or address checks – in 16% of the cases, the watchdog found.” —>READ MORE HERE

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