You’ve heard the horror stories of illegal immigrant children forced into sex trafficking or labor trafficking. Jarrod Sadulski, an expert on smuggling, can tell you how those children end up in the hands of the cartels in the first place.
Mr. Sadulski has been studying the cartels and talking with migrants on both sides of the border and is revealing horrifying details of what the smugglers do to children.
Nearly every single migrant from Central America or South America is robbed in some way, he said. Some are killed if they can’t pay. Others are kidnapped and taken to Western Union to collect money from family members.
Children are stolen from families south of the border and become unaccompanied alien children in the U.S. The government sends them to communities across the country, where a grim fate often awaits: occasionally sex trafficking, but usually forced labor.
“The cartels are exploiting this by having children placed with sponsors who exploit the children for profit,” Mr. Sadulski said.
He is scheduled to appear before a Republican Senate roundtable on Tuesday to talk about his findings.
Mr. Sadulski recently completed a border trip, including a shelter visit in McAllen, Texas. The facility’s staff told him one woman refused to let go of her child. When pressed, she told the staffers the child was all she had left.
“She explained that en route to the southwest border, just south of Reynosa, Mexico, she was robbed by the Sinaloa cartel. Not only were all of her belongings taken from her, but so were her other two children because she had no money for bribes,” Mr. Sadulski said.
Those taken children are typically brought to the border separately and crossed over as unaccompanied minors, he said. They are told to give the U.S. government the name of a potential sponsor. Once they are released to that sponsor, they are forced into child labor.
Mr. Sadulski said he spoke with a criminal investigator tasked with following up with 25 children at their sponsors’ homes. He was unable to track down 23 of the children.
“They never arrived with the sponsor or were taken away by unknown men after they arrived,” Mr. Sadulski said. “The way that the cartels are doing this, tracking all this, is the cloud. So there’s a digital footprint to this.”
Mr. Sadulski underscored the centrality of the cartels to the smuggling economy and their ruthless approach to those they bring north.
He said cartels place operatives inside migrant groups or at shelters along the way. Those operatives look for migrants who can be robbed or kidnapped.
Migrants who can’t make the payments may suffer a worse fate.
“I spoke with someone from Venezuela. He also came through the violent Darien Gap. While in the Darien Gap, he observed two people raped and murdered because they did not have bribe money,” Mr. Sadulski said.
In Progreso, Mexico, he saw migrants sleeping on sidewalks. He spoke with some Russians waiting their turn at one of President Biden’s “parole” programs.
Unaccompanied children have troubled the U.S. government since at least the 1980s, but the challenge has become more acute over the past decade as the numbers reach tidal wave proportions.
Under U.S. policy, Mexican or Canadian children can be quickly deported. Those from farther afield must be turned over to the Health and Human Services Department, which holds them until a sponsor can be found.
When the numbers become overwhelming, the government cuts corners to find sponsors. That’s when things can turn ugly.
The surge of children crossing the border during the Obama administration and early in the Trump years proved fertile recruiting ground for MS-13, helping fuel a violent resurgence of the gang late last decade.
Unaccompanied children who have arrived under Mr. Biden have been linked to horrifying crimes, including the stabbing death of a Florida man and the strangulation death of a 20-year-old autistic girl in Maryland.
HHS says it has no responsibility for the children once they are placed with sponsors.
Some members of Congress disagree and have prodded the department to do more.
The New York Times won a Pulitzer prize for its reporting last year on forced labor industries that rely on illegal immigrant children. An estimated 200,000 migrant children are at work in violation of the law.
The children are also stressing school systems, which can’t hire English language learning teachers fast enough.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.