Finding Missing Children and Addressing Immigration Fraud

The Office of Refugee Resettlement is working to locate hundreds of thousands of Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) who entered the United States during the Biden administration and were placed with sponsors without adequate vetting.

John Fabbricatore, a special advisor at the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), joins host and executive director of the Center, Mark Krikorian, in this episode of Parsing Immigration Policy to discuss the effort to locate these children, investigate reports of abuse and trafficking, and improve his department’s ability to vet sponsors.

Among the topics discussed:

• The effort to locate UACs: Fabbricatore describes the Trump administration’s efforts to locate children placed with sponsors during the Biden administration.
• Reports of abuse, neglect, and trafficking: Fabbricatore discusses thousands of notices of concern involving children, including reports of possible human trafficking, abuse, sexual abuse, and medical emergencies.
• TVPRA: Krikorian and Fabbricatore discuss the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act (TVPRA), which generally treats children from contiguous countries differently from children arriving from noncontiguous countries.
• Legal representation for children: The speakers discuss a recent controversy over a child appearing in immigration court without legal representation, the federal government's previous contract for legal services, and efforts to establish alternative arrangements.

Krikorian concludes the episode by discussing a federal case involving alleged staged armed robberies organized to help illegal aliens fraudulently qualify for U visas, which are available to certain crime victims who assist law enforcement. He argues that the case illustrates the broader issue of fraud in the immigration system.

Host

Mark Krikorian is the Executive Director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

Guest

John Fabbricatore is a Special Advisor at the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).

Links

HHS Office of Refugee Resettlement Identifies Six Types of Fraud in the Biden Administration’s Unaccompanied Alien Children Program

EXCLUSIVE: Fed timeline challenges reports of migrant baby facing immigration judge alone

HHS Rapid Response

Suburban Chicago Man Sentenced to Two Years in Federal Prison for Staging Robberies To Help Others Fraudulently Apply for Immigration Visas

How a Visa for Crime Victims Became a De Facto Amnesty

Intro Montage

Voices in the opening montage:

• Sen. Barack Obama at a 2005 press conference.
• Sen. John McCain in a 2010 election ad.
• President Lyndon Johnson, upon signing the 1965 Immigration Act.
• Booker T. Washington, reading in 1908 from his 1895 Atlanta Exposition speech.
• Laraine Newman as a "Conehead" on SNL in 1977.
• Hillary Clinton in a 2003 radio interview.
• Cesar Chavez in a 1974 interview.
• House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaking to reporters in 2019.
• Prof. George Borjas in...