Republicans are outraged after federal prosecutors charged an illegal immigrant with smuggling minors into the country and producing child pornography with one of them.
‘If Joe Biden and the Democrats really cared about addressing humanitarian issues, they would start by reversing their open border policies that are exploiting children and fueling human trafficking.
“Every day that their self-created border crisis continues is another day that innocent lives are put at risk,” Republican Leader Tom Emmer, R-Minn., told DailyMail.com.
Natividad Aguilera GarcÃa, 37, of Shelbyville, Kentucky, is accused of smuggling at least three illegal immigrants, including two minors. Garcia appeared in federal court for her arraignment on Monday.
The minor who was used in pornography is known as Minor A.
Migrants, including children, move in a caravan on their way to the United States from Tapachula, Mexico, on March 25, 2024.
Migrant child gives a soft smile on his walk through Mexico to the border with the United States
Garcia had falsely told the federal government that he was Minor A’s uncle and presented a false birth certificate to support the claim, the indictment says. The Biden administration’s Office of Refugee Resettlement handed over the child under these pretexts.
“These horrible stories will continue to happen as long as President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas refuse to enforce our laws,” Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., told DailyMail.com in a statement.
‘These minors are regularly abused, exploited and used by cartels in all kinds of inhumane ways. Once they get here, the Biden administration turns most of them over to ‘sponsors’ with minimal vetting,’ he continued.
‘As one witness told my Committee last year: “It has been said that it is more difficult to adopt a cat than to sponsor an unaccompanied minor.” President Biden, Secretary Mayorkas, and their Democratic enablers in Congress may see political benefit in this crisis, but all I see are shattered lives and shattered futures for some of the most innocent among us.’
According to the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Kentucky, the scheme began on May 1, 2021, four months into the Biden administration, when illegal immigrants flooded the US-Mexico border.
An explosive report released in February revealed that the US agency responsible for caring for unaccompanied migrant children failed to provide evidence that it had fully vetted US sponsors before handing over children to them during a 2021 migration rush.
The report, issued by the inspector general of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found that 16 percent of children’s case files in March and April 2021 lacked documentation of background checks on sponsors by the HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement.
A U.S. Border Patrol agent holds a Venezuelan girl as her parents cross the barbed wire at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Migrant crosses the Rio Grande holding his daughter in the air to prevent her from getting wet
In 19 percent of cases in which children were released to sponsors pending state or FBI checks, case files were never updated with the results, the watchdog found.
The report raised questions about the government’s ability to vet sponsors, fears that were confirmed in the indictment against Garcia.
During the surge of migrants at the start of the Biden administration, the HHS refugee office struggled to move children from overcrowded border processing centers to shelters or into the custody of relatives.
Garcia has been charged with one count of production of child pornography, one count of receipt of child pornography, one count of online enticement of a minor to engage in prohibited sexual activity, one count of transportation of a minor to engage in one count of prohibited sexual activity, one count of encouraging criminal trespass, one count of making a false statement to a federal agency and one count of presenting a false document to a federal agency.
In recent years it has been revealed that undocumented children were working illegally at poultry plants and auto suppliers after being released from federal custody.
Migrant encounters at the border reached new record levels late last year and remained high until early this year. In February, border agents encountered about 190,000 people trying to cross the border.
Some 470,000 unaccompanied children have crossed into the United States since Biden took office, and the border patrol has made 45,000 arrests of illegal immigrants with criminal records, nearly double the number in the first three years of the Trump administration.
There are currently 617,000 non-detained aliens with criminal convictions or pending charges currently in the United States, up from 407,983 in January 2023.