If so, just how many criminal unaccompanied alien children (UACs) are being placed in the homes of unwary American sponsors - and how many innocent alien children are being placed in the homes of convicted rapists, murderers and other criminals?
House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) was forced to subpoena Health and Human Services (HHS) Sec. Xavier Becerra this week, after a year and a half of HHS stonewalling his committee’s repeated requests for answers.
Rep. Jordan is subpoenaing Becerra for data and information about HHS policies relating to the placement of unaccompanied alien children (UAC) with sponsors and sponsor vetting, as well as the placement of criminal and gang-affiliated UACs in sponsor homes.
In particular, the Committee wants answers to questions that HHS’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) director didn’t answer when he was questioned at a hearing last June, such as:
- Whether ORR has a policy to refer known gang members to the Department of Justice before deciding to transfer them to sponsor homes.
- The total number of UACs that ORR has placed in the custody of a known sex offender.
- The total number of sponsor applications rejected based on the potential sponsor being a convicted murderer.
When questioned, ORR Dir. Robin Dunn Marcos pleaded ignorance, but promised HHS would provide the answers following the hearing.
The answers never came, despite multiple follow-up requests by the Committee.
“Accordingly, given HHS’s inadequate voluntary compliance, please find attached a subpoena for the Committee’s requested documents and information,” Chairman Jordan’s writes in the subpoena’s cover letter to Sec. Becerra.
The urgency of gaining answers regarding the vetting and placement of unaccompanied alien minors is highlighted by a Judiciary Committee report describing the case of a 20 year-old woman who was killed and raped, allegedly by a suspected gang member UAC placed in a sponsor home:
"A tragic example of the failure to enforce U.S. immigration law under [DHS] Secretary [Alejandro] Mayorkas’ watch is the murder and sexual assault of autistic 20-year-old Kayla Hamilton in Aberdeen, Maryland in July 2022.”
The UAC had been transferred to the care of a woman identified as his aunt in Frederick, Maryland. He is facing charges of strangling Hamilton to death.
He was placed in a foster home even while his homicide charge was pending and after he was found to be affiliated with MS-13.
The interim report said that the committee’s oversight "revealed that the Biden Administration insufficiently vetted Kayla’s murderer and allowed him to enter the country."
Kayla’s mother, Tammy Nobles, is now suing both the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Human Services (HHS) for $100 million for the wrongful death of her daughter.
Nobles’ suit contends that her daughter would still be alive, if the government had done its job and denied a confirmed MS-13 gang member acceptance into the U.S., to be placed in a home where he had the opportunity to rape and kill Kayla.
“For me, this not a political issue, this a safety issue for everyone living in the United States,” she told a House Homeland Security Committee impeachment hearing into DHS Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas.
“Nobody at the border did their job and checked his background,” Nobles said in an interview on “NewsNation Prime.”
"She was brutally murdered and raped in her room, and he strangled her with the phone cord. And then he just robbed her of $6, and he just left her on the floor like trash and went to lunch with his half-brother like nothing happened," Nobles told Fox News.
The Biden Administration must be held accountable for failing to make even a single phone call to vet the 17 year-old El Salvadoran migrant, Nobles said:
"He had a record, a criminal record in El Salvador in 2020. And he also had gang tattoos. All they had to do was make one phone call to pull up his criminal record in El Salvador to find out… he was on the list for and listed as a known gang member of MS-13. Those two things should have kept him from entering the country."