A Florida grand jury has explicitly accused the Biden administration of facilitating “forced migration, sale, and abuse of foreign children” through its criminally negligent immigration policies.
After a five-month investigation conducted at the request of Governor Ron DeSantis, the Statewide Prosecutors’ Office released a scathing 46-page report that denounces the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) for leaving thousands of vulnerable migrant children with unvetted “sponsors”—and then failing to conduct oversight of their welfare.
The Statewide Grand Jury, which is a branch of Attorney General Ashley Moody’s office, released its third presentment regarding unaccompanied alien children (UAC) on Thursday. The report accused the Biden regime of encouraging children “to undertake and/or be subjected to a harrowing trek to our border,” and then ultimately abandoning them. The federal government has lost track of more than 20,000 children, the grand jury found.
“This process exposes children to horrifying health conditions, constant criminal threat, labor and sex trafficking, robbery, rape and other experiences not done justice by mere words,” the presentment states.
The grand jury found that more than 250,000 unaccompanied minors have entered the United States since Joe Biden took office.
These children are immediately shipped to a federal facility where there is “incessant pressure on case managers to process UAC speedily with minimal, if any, scrutiny of sponsors or questionable documents, addresses, or stories told to them,” the report alleges.
The grand jury also accused the Biden regime of misleading the public about the abusive and dangerous situation.
“The public is led to believe that the process described by our federal government in documents and popular media accounts at least resembled the truth,” the report said. “ORR asserts that children fleeing from danger are adequately identified, properly cared for, and reunited with their family here in this country.
“In reality, ORR is facilitating the forced migration, sale, and abuse of foreign children, and some of our fellow Florida residents are (in some cases unwittingly) funding and incentivizing it for primarily economic reasons.”
HHS and the U.S. Department of Justice have received thousands of allegations of sexual abuse, including testimony of a UAC who was “pimped out” by their “aunt” (whom they did not know prior to arriving in the U.S.), according to the presentation. In another case, ORR allegedly placed a teenage girl in the house of unknown men with no private bedroom. A number of UACs have run away from sponsors after being sold for sex, the report alleges.
This sad state of affairs is the result of ORR’s lax verification process for potential sponsors, according to the report. “Criminal history, lack of citizen status and even total refusal to submit to a background check does not disqualify sponsors from receiving a UAC,” Moody pointed out in a press release. “One sponsor was given custody despite having been to Florida prison before for battery on a child.”
The grand jury also found a “disturbing pattern” in which unverified sponsors applied for and received multiple UAC. “One address in Texas showed 44 children sent to a single residence,” Moody noted. “One contractor testified that it placed 598 UAC with only 132 sponsors or each sponsor receiving 4.5 UAC.”
The Florida grand jury’s findings corroborate last year’s whistleblowers allegations regarding the Biden administration’s lax immigration policies. As American Greatness reported in June of 2022, an employee from the ORR’s unaccompanied minors program in Brownsville Texas claimed that the feckless policies were putting children at risk of being exploited by human traffickers and pedophiles.
And last November, whistleblower, Tara Lee Rodas, gave James O’Keefe her first hand account of how the regime’s corrupt child sponsorship program was exploiting and endangering vulnerable UACs.
The grand jury suggested the Biden regime’s corrupt policies amount to criminal child neglect.
The report cited Florida Statute §827.03, which states “neglect of a child” means “a caregiver’s failure to make a reasonable effort to protect a child from abuse, neglect, or exploitation by another person.”
Neglect of a child may be based on repeated conduct or on a single incident or omission that results in, or could reasonably be expected to result in, serious physical or mental injury, or a substantial risk of death, to a child.
While acknowledging Florida’s inability to influence the Biden Regime’s appalling immigration policies, the grand jury said the state “can and should regulate those living among us who seek out the responsibility of raising a child not their own.”
The grand jury called on the Florida Legislature, which enjoys a GOP supermajority, to create new criminal penalties for harboring undocumented immigrants.
Other recommendations include:
▪ Mandating shelters and sponsors to report all unaccompanied children living in the state to the Department of Children and Families within 30 days, and to initiate legal proceedings to determine legal custody of the minors. Failure to do so would be a felony offense of at least the third degree. Investigations of such crimes would be conducted by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and prosecuted by the Office of Statewide Prosecution.
▪ Requiring child placement organizations to document the relationship between an undocumented migrant child with a “purported biological parent” with either a birth certificate or DNA testing.
Moody discussed the grand jury’s findings on Fox and Friends, Wednesday.
It is shocking to me that we are having to talk about such a flimsy case against a former President, instead of talking about a months-long Florida grand jury investigation showing the Biden administration facilitating the trafficking and abuse of children. pic.twitter.com/Jl8WUosfyZ
— AG Ashley Moody (@AGAshleyMoody) April 5, 2023
The Statewide Grand Jury continues to investigate the impact of international human-smuggling networks on the state of Florida and other violations of state laws related to the placement of UACs with sponsors.