Child trafficking in Florida – grand jury report

A Florida State-wide grand jury last week issued a preliminary report accusing the federal government of facilitating child trafficking.

Child trafficking – the charges …

The Twenty-first State-wide Grand Jury of Florida had a charter from Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) to investigate the processing, by the federal government, of unaccompanied minor children entering the United States illegally. They began their investigation five months ago, and delivered a preliminary report dated Wednesday, March 29.

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody released the report to the public the next day. In it, the grand jury singled out the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), an arm of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), for a direct accusation of lying to the American public and to State officials. “Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) are brought into our State, and, in too many cases, left to an uncertain fate,” the grand jury said.

If any resident of Florida exposed U.S.-born children to this process, they would be justifiably arrested for child neglect or worse. We do not think children should be less-protected simply because they were born outside our borders and brought here by a government agency.

ORR assures people that they identify such children, care for them, and reunite them with family already in this country. That, says the grand jury, is not the case. Instead,

ORR is facilitating the forced migration, sale, and abuse of foreign children, and some of our fellow Florida residents are (in some cases unwittingly) funding and incentivizing it for primarily economic reasons.

For “sale and abuse” read child trafficking.

… and the details

The grand jury focused on two things: the harrowing journey (or forced transport) of children to America, and what happens to them after they arrive. As to the former, the grand jury cited this case in which many migrants died in an abandoned semi-trailer near San Antonio, Texas – among other, even worse cases. They also have interviews of some of the children involved, by the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF).

The report describes in detail actual ORR processes, which they found worse than sloppy, and willful ignoring of several subpoenas. It also reveals the worst example of ORR brazenly siding with child trafficking to avoid delay in processing:

[W]e only get sued for keeping them too long. We don’t get sued by traffickers. Are we clear?

In one 2016 case, ORR actually placed eight children with members of a child trafficking ring. Not all the trafficking is for sex, however; some is for plain-and-simple menial labor.

Money and profit drive this child trafficking, according to the grand jury. Worse, some of the children involved, no one knows. The grand jury also talks of adults, actually gang members, masquerading as UAC.

Not an accident

To quote one witness who removes all doubt as to whether any of this is happening by accident:

I was there. I saw what was going on. These people (ORR and its contractors) are aware of what’s happening. They aren’t naive—they’re complicit. Emphasis in original

The grand jury agrees – and clearly suggests that Donald Trump did something about it, and Joe Biden undid that something. Now the grand jury suggests Florida officials can and should intervene. In fact they regard this situation as a clear and present public danger – not least because some young adults, posing as minors, have come to Florida and killed innocent residents.

Actual immigration policy is a federal matter, as per the Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 4). But child placement with families is a State matter, and this grand jury finds ORR lacking in this regard. So they recommend that any resident who takes custody of a child not their own report to DCF within thirty days and start legal custody determination procedures. Anyone who fails so to act would be guilty of a third-degree felony. DCF would have a reporting requirement for all such cases. Finally, anyone “reuniting” a UAC with a purported biological parent would have to make and keep appropriate records. These would include DNA tests, a Trumpian policy that Biden discontinued.

Breitbart actually broke the story last week, but it broke again in a second wave at PJ Media, Daily Wire, and Just the News.