450,000 migrant children unaccounted for: US Homeland Security
Washington, June 26 (IANS/WISHAVWARTA) US Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said that his department was expanding efforts to locate 450,000 migrant children he said were unaccounted for after being released to sponsors during the previous administration, adding that authorities had so far traced 147,000 of them.
Testifying before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, Mullin described the effort to locate vulnerable migrant children as the Department of Homeland Security’s top priority.
“This is probably one of the most disgusting and disturbing things that we’ve dealt with,” Mullin told lawmakers. “It is my biggest passion that I have.”
Mullin said not every child who had been traced was found in danger.
“All of them didn’t have to be recovered,” he said. “Some of them were where they were supposed to be. They were with a family member and they appeared to be doing OK. But we’ve had some horrific cases.”
He said investigations had uncovered trafficking rings in which migrant children were subjected to severe abuse.
“There’s one that’s kind of been out in the media a little bit, where there was a ring of several adults that were keeping kids in an underground bunker in a dungeon,” he said.
Mullin also described cases involving young girls who, he said, had been repeatedly sexually abused after falling into the hands of traffickers.
“You can’t make a horror story that bad,” he said.
Calling the situation preventable, Mullin said DHS was establishing a larger task force to continue searching for migrant children.
“It is our mission… to go and find all 450,000 kids,” he said.
“What frustrates me the most is that this was preventable. And no one can argue that. This was 100 percent preventable.”
Congressman Juan Ciscomani of Arizona said the issue had remained one of his biggest concerns during the previous administration.
“I can only imagine what you’ve actually seen,” Ciscomani told Mullin. “The biggest victims here are those kids.”
Mullin said authorities were also seeing an increase in boys becoming victims of trafficking and elderly people being exploited by criminal organisations.
The issue resurfaced later during a heated exchange with Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, who criticised the Trump administration’s family separation policy during its first term. Mullin countered that lawmakers should also focus on the migrant children he said had gone unaccounted for during the previous administration, prompting repeated interventions from the committee chairman as the exchange grew increasingly confrontational.
Human trafficking remains a major focus of US federal law enforcement agencies, particularly along migration routes linking Central America, Mexico and the United States. Federal authorities work with state and local agencies to dismantle trafficking networks involved in the sexual exploitation of children and forced labour.
Combating human trafficking has been a priority for successive US administrations, although they have sharply differed over immigration and border policies. The welfare of migrant children, detention practices and border enforcement continue to be among the most politically contentious issues in the US immigration debate.
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