OPINION:
Proving the adage that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, America’s policy of allowing unaccompanied alien children, known as UACs, who arrive at our border to enter and remain here is inflicting grievous harm on the children themselves and on communities across the country where they are placed.
Under a 1997 legal agreement known as the Flores Settlement, UACs are released to sponsors in the United States or placed in suitable shelters as quickly as possible.
Eleven years later, Congress, with the best of intentions, reauthorized the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which includes provisions requiring the Border Patrol to turn UACs over to the Department of Health and Human Services within 72 hours to be placed with sponsors inside the country.
Predictably, Flores and the Victims Protection Act resulted in growing numbers of UACs turning up at our borders. A policy motivated by our admirable desire to protect vulnerable children quickly devolved into an immoral one that actually encourages the exploitation of children.
At its most innocuous level, admitting any minor who turns up at our border serves as a catalyst for family separation. We all remember the firestorm that sparked when the Trump administration rightfully separated children from the adults who accompanied them to the border — in most cases temporarily, but also to ensure that the adults traveling with them were their parents or guardians.
President Biden was so critical of his predecessor’s policy that early in his administration, he engaged in failed negotiations to pay reparations to families that were separated at the border.
Nevertheless, the Biden administration has taken no steps to end the inducements for UACs, who continue to arrive in record numbers, most brought here by criminal cartels that reap billions in profits from this trade. In fiscal 2022, some 152,000 UACs arrived at our borders — a figure that is double the number in fiscal 2019 when the Trump administration was in control. By definition, each of these UACs represents a separated family.
In addition, the administration has taken no meaningful steps to curb widespread abuses that allow many adults — some as old as their mid-20s — to gain entry by posing as minors.
With few safeguards to ensure these aliens are under the age of 18, adult aliens can claim to be minors to receive the benefits of UAC status, infiltrate our schools, and threaten the safety of our communities. We know of far too many instances where an adult alien has posed as a minor and later committed serious — and even fatal — crimes.
Even more disturbing than the abuse of our laws is the abuse of many of the UACs themselves.
The criminal cartels that lure parents to send their children to the United States with the promise that they will enjoy a better life are not acting out of the goodness of their hearts.
They expect to get paid, which often means children as young as preteens find themselves working in dangerous jobs. Others face a worse fate in the sex trafficking industry.
The situation has become so abhorrent that even The New York Times (not noted for its strong stance against illegal immigration) could not ignore the exploitation.
“Migrant children, who have been coming into the United States without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country. This shadow workforce extends across industries in every state, flouting child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century,” the newspaper reported this past February.
Moreover, in its zeal to release the record numbers of UACs who are arriving, the administration is sacrificing due diligence before releasing children into the custody of “sponsors” who, in many cases, turn out to be agents of the cartels that got them here.
The same New York Times piece uncovered HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra’s exhorting of agency personnel to cut corners.
“This is not the way you do an assembly line,” he complained.
This is not the way an enlightened 21st-century society should act. Even in the current hyperpartisan atmosphere, we should be able to agree that legal settlements and outdated laws that encourage the separation of children from their parents, the burden on communities across the country, and the exploitation of children must end.
First, it is time for Congress to override the ill-conceived Flores Settlement by enacting legislation that requires that UACs — and those pretending to be — be reunited with their families in their homelands, rather than given a free pass into the United States.
Second, Congress must revise the Trafficking Victims Protection Act to ensure that the law ends the trafficking and smuggling of minors instead of encouraging it.
The damage being done by Flores and the Victims Protection Act is undeniable and grievous. Fixing it is not a political issue; it is a moral imperative.
• Rep. Troy E. Nehls, a Republican, represents Texas’ 22nd Congressional District. From 2013 to 2021, he served as sheriff of Fort Bend County, Texas. Dan Stein is president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
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