Staff Reporter
Vanity Fair
PHOTO: Twitter
Caleb Ecarma reports for Vanity Fair:
More than two years have passed since Joe Biden took office on the promise of a more humane approach to immigration and the border. But in many ways, the president has struggled to distinguish himself from his hard-line predecessor: His administration has expanded Title 42, the anti-immigration loophole authorized by Donald Trump; failed to resolve the family separation crisis; and proposed a new spin on Trump’s “transit ban” that would make a large percentage of migrants ineligible for asylum.
What’s more, the Biden administration has also apparently failed to adequately protect thousands of migrant children from labor trafficking inside the US. On Monday, The New York Times reported that the Department of Health and Human Services did not intervene after receiving repeated warnings about underage migrants the agency had sent to sponsors who then forced them to work grueling hours in dangerous conditions. While the department is required by law to vet sponsors to help ensure that children placed in their care will not be trafficked or exploited, those vetting requirements reportedly went by the wayside in 2021 amid a scramble to home those children.
The Times noted that at least five HHS staffers have said they were pushed out of their roles after sounding the alarm about child safety concerns. Jallyn Sualog, a former HHS official tasked with overseeing the agency’s response to unaccompanied migrant children, told the paper that she went to great lengths to warn her superiors that children were being put at risk. “They just didn’t want to hear it,” said Sualog, who said she was moved to a different post in 2021 after filing a complaint with the department’s internal watchdog. (She later accused the department of retaliation before settling with the agency and resigning.)
The paper traced the crisis back to Susan Rice, the president’s domestic-policy adviser. In 2021, as Rice was attempting to move throngs of unaccompanied migrant children from HHS shelters to homes, she and her aides reportedly received a memo detailing accounts of abusive sponsors but did nothing. (White House deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told the Times that Rice “did not see the memo and was not made aware of its contents.”
Since the summer of that year, the number of migrant children being trafficked or exploited has skyrocketed. Monthly calls to the HHS reporting trafficking, neglect, or abuse have more than doubled in the two years since Biden entered office, per the Times.
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Read Caleb’s full article at the link.
Two years of ignoring experts, appointing the wrong folks, and NOT FIXING what could and should have been a success in showing how robust, legal, properly generous, refugee and asylum programs, staffed and run by experts, could be a model of good government! Go figure!
The Trumpist GOP “plays” to a right wing extremist base — wedded to un-American and generally unpopular “culture wars” targeting a wide range of groups who basically are America’s future!
By contrast, the Biden Administration “disses, and runs away from” key parts of the Dem Coalition whose humane practical expertise and leadership should be at the core of the message. It’s certainly not that Biden’s misguided “Miller Lite” approach to asylum seekers and children at the border has “peeled off” any Trumpist support or is going to be a “winner” among independent voters!
How bad are the Biden Administration’s proposals? They generated an amazing 51,000+ public comments, the vast majority in opposition, despite a ridiculously short 30-day comment period apparently intended to “squelch” dissent.
Human Rights First has helpfully “catalogued” and summarized the opposition comments from experts, including, of course, our Round Table of Former Immigration Judges and the USCIS Asylum Officers’ Union! https://humanrightsfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Asylum_ban_comments_summary1.pdf
It reads like a “who’s who” of the Dem Social Justice and Racial Equity Coalition! The Dems have a great message to deliver on social justice, immigration, tolerence, women’s rights, individual freedom, and immigration’s positive impact on the economy! Practical, humane, sensible immigration policies are much more “politically salable” on the “grass roots level,” even in some surprising places, than the out of touch “policy wonks” at the Biden White House recognize! See, e.g., https://www.salon.com/2023/04/14/immigration-reformers-quietly-rack-up-series-of-wins-at-state-level/; https://immigrationimpact.com/2023/03/10/state-bills-banning-immigration-detention-centers/.
Robust, generous, properly staffed, legal refugee and asylum admissions, under existing law, are an essential part of America’s legal immigration system. It both benefits many communities in America and is essential for America’s economic future. See, e.g., https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/4/17/bacow-ace-conference/; https://www.ft.com/content/9974c765-3258-4b5c-a244-95ee6fda419f.
Dems need to stop “running scared” on social justice issues and promote American values including the benefits of immigration and the importance of robust, generous, orderly legal asylum and refugee programs! See, e.g., https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/18/biden-democracy-fight-republican-extremism/ (Perry Bacon, Jr. gets everything right in his critique of Biden’s failure take on GOP extremism, EXCEPT for his glaring omission of immigrants rights as a primary “driver” of social justice in America and vice versa).
🇺🇸 Due Process Forever!
PWS
04-20-23