Ranking Member Probes HHS Policy That Puts Deportation Priorities Ahead of Child Safety By Ending Direct Reporting of Child Trafficking to Specialists
Washington, D.C. – Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden, D-Ore., today demanded that the Trump administration immediately cancel a new Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) policy that orders care providers to stop reporting suspected instances of human trafficking among unaccompanied minors to an office of experts dedicated to handling such cases, further centralizing the Trump administration’s control over children from federal custody through post-release.
“This procedure follows a pattern of decisions this administration has made that treat the safety of children in ORR care and custody as subordinate to its enforcement priorities,” Wyden wrote in a letter to HHS Secretary Robert Kennedy and Assistant Secretary Alex Adams. “Every day it remains in effect, ORR alone decides which trafficking concerns reach OTIP, the office Congress explicitly supports because it understood that ORR cannot be both the legal custodian of unaccompanied children and the sole arbiter of their protection. Every child ordered removed before OTIP identifies them as a trafficking victim is a child Congress instructed you to protect.”
For years, care providers who suspected an unaccompanied migrant child was a victim of human trafficking or forced labor were required to notify the Office on Trafficking in Persons (OTIP) within 24 hours. Last month, HHS ordered those concerns be directed instead to an internal unit inside the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) that handles background checks and fraud investigations. The ORR unit – not the trafficking specialists – now controls which cases reach experts and which children could face deportation before OTIP ever sees their case.
In April, Wyden raised the alarm about dramatic reductions in trafficking related determinations, following staffing reductions and other changes by the Trump administration. Wyden has continued to spotlight how the Trump administration has undermined the care and treatment of unaccompanied children to serve its anti-immigrant deportation agenda rather than fulfill the statutorily required child welfare responsibilities Congress assigned to HHS.
The text of the letter is here.
A web version of this release is here.
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