Home Committee on Homeland Safety Chair Mark Inexperienced (R-Tenn.) subpoenaed Well being and Human Companies Secretary Xavier Becerra late final week for paperwork on the whereabouts of hundreds of migrant kids in america.
In a letter informing Becerra of the subpoena, Inexperienced wrote he beforehand requested paperwork in August on the “vetting, screening and monitoring” of unaccompanied kids’s sponsors by the Workplace of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) inside HHS.
Since then, Inexperienced wrote, ORR has given the Division of Homeland Safety (DHS) “unsatisfactory responses” to their inquiry.
Final week, HHS lastly responded to DHS’s August request for documentation and despatched the company 717 pages of paperwork, 400 of which contained “nothing more than publicly available information,” in keeping with Inexperienced’s letter.
“HHS’ protracted response and wholly insufficient production constitute a clearly deliberate effort to unnecessarily expend Committee staff time, waste limited government resources, and frustrate legitimate congressional oversight,” the letter provides.
The subpoena offers HHS till 12:00 p.m. on Oct. 3 to ship DHS the requested paperwork on unaccompanied minors and their sponsors.
Final yr, Becerra mentioned HHS didn’t know the standing of greater than 85,000 unaccompanied minors coming into the nation who had been launched from the company’s care however mentioned that 85 p.c of them had been positioned with members of the family in america.
A New York Instances evaluation of HHS knowledge helps Becerra’s numbers, exhibiting that between 2021 and 2023, the company was unable to contact 85,000 unaccompanied minors beneath its care by way of phone.
A DHS report revealed in August claims that the variety of unaccounted for, unaccompanied kids is much decrease than what Becerra mentioned in 2023.
The report states that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) transferred greater than 448,000 unaccompanied kids from the custody of DHS to HHS between 2019 and 2023.
However ICE has been unable to account for the placement of 32,000 unaccompanied minors who didn’t present as much as scheduled immigration courtroom appearances throughout these years, the report reads.
“The available statistics and data regarding UACS are extremely disconcerting and represent a growing humanitarian crisis,” Inexperienced wrote.
The Division of Well being and Human Companies has but to reply to a request for remark from The Hill.
