Friday, August 02, 2019

Child Trafficking Used by Criminals to Enter U. S.

Earlier this week in discussing the rampant child trafficking at the border, child smuggling used to game entry, I noted that rather suddenly men trying to enter are showing up with children.  I was skeptical about the motives, and I was right, of course: 
The Department of Homeland Security treats the expanded “Flores” decree like God’s word, releasing any illegal alien who crosses the border with a child, even if border personnel can’t confirm identities, criminal records, or whether they are threats to Americans or to the children they’re using as golden tickets.
Senator James Lankford, R-Okla., announced at yesterday’s Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing that border agents told him, on his recent trip to the border, that they found in two separate incidents that an alleged murderer and a convicted pedophile had each been released with a kid as part of the expanded Flores catch-and-release deadline of 20 days.
In one case, “they released an adult with a child and then found out two weeks later that that adult had a murder warrant in their home country, and they just released him into the country, and they could do nothing about it.” In another case, “they had released an adult traveling with a child and then found out after they were released when they got their criminal records in from home country that, that was a convicted pedophile from that country now traveling with a child somewhere in our country, and because we couldn’t detain them for longer than 20 days and we couldn’t get those criminal records, they’re released in the country, and they’re traveling with a child.”
When Lankford asked acting Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Commissioner Mark Morgan whether border personnel were able to verify criminal status within the arbitrary 20-day deadline by the courts, he answered, “Not efficiently.”
So criminals are using child smuggling, combined with the 20 day deadline mandated by a California judge in the Flores decision, to be released into our country to prey on the rest of us.  And in case one thinks I am being alarmist about exceptional situations…
In every single group, almost without fail, there is someone with a criminal record, typically males with single kids,” [an anonymous] agent said. “There is a wide misconception about the majority of these people being females. They are overwhelmingly male. While we try to prioritize referrals for prosecution based on criminal history, we only have so many computers we can utilize and so many staff members.”
When I asked him if that means there are those with confirmed criminal records, even with convictions in the U.S., who have been released, he said, “Absolutely. … They are given a notice to appear in court like anyone else.”
And we know that most do not show up for their court hearings.
Again, sentimental thinking about children and families at the border is enabling child trafficking and other criminality.  Yes, families (not the fake ones) showing up at the border should be kept together . . . by sending them back across the border immediately if they don’t have proper documentation.  If they want and merit a hearing, they can wait for it across the border.  We must stop policies which make children a golden ticket to get in and thereby make them targets of child trafficking.

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