House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan announced a subpoena Tuesday for the case files of migrant children accused of vicious crimes in the U.S. after the Biden administration hid key information from the committee in files it did turn over.
After months of negotiations, Health and Human Services allowed committee investigators to look at the case files in a secret review. But when the investigators showed up, they found that HHS had redacted critical details, including how the children were smuggled to the U.S. and whether they had tattoos, which can be an indicator of prior gang affiliation.
Mr. Jordan said those redactions aren’t based on any legal authority and seem intended to thwart his investigations.
“The case file materials are not classified or otherwise restricted and no case law, statute, recognized privilege, or other legal principle exempts them from review as part of the committee’s legitimate congressional oversight,” the Ohio Republican wrote.
The Washington Times reported on the battle over the files in November, when Mr. Jordan and Rep. Tom McClintock, chairman of the immigration subcommittee, said HHS was refusing “to provide basic information” about the immigrant children.
Known as Unaccompanied Alien Children, or UACs, they are migrants who arrived at the U.S. border as juveniles and without a parent. Under U.S. law, they are generally granted special treatment and required to be sent from Homeland Security to HHS for care while the government searches for sponsors.
Among the cases that the lawmakers want files on are: Jose Roberto Hernandez-Espinal, who arrived as a UAC in 2013 and is now charged with raping a girl and a woman on a running trail in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, and Juan Carlos Garcia-Rodriguez, who entered as a UAC earlier this year and is now charged with the slaying of an 11-year-old girl in Pasadena, Texas.
The Washington Times has reached out to HHS for this story.
Mr. Jordan, in a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra announcing the subpoena, recounted the negotiations over the data. He said HHS once demanded the ability to control what the committee wanted to do with the information.
Mr. Jordan said he rejected that but agreed to the “extraordinary accommodation” of reviewing the files in camera so HHS could make its case for why some of the data needed to be kept secret.
But when the meeting took place, the committee staffers found the documents had “pervasive redactions.”
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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