House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., issued a subpoena to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra regarding the whereabouts of tens of thousands of unaccompanied minor migrant children who are in the United States.
Green subpoenaed Becerra last week after the lawmaker sent a letter to HHS' Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in mid-August to inquire about the "vetting, screening and monitoring" of unaccompanied children's sponsors by the ORR.
Green said Monday that "after weeks of ignoring the Committee, HHS provided more than 700 pages of documents that are wholly unresponsive to the Committee's request, which include hundreds of pages of publicly available documents."
At issue for Green and Republicans are the 520,000 unaccompanied alien children (UAC) that were encountered by Customs and Border Patrol agents from February 2021 through last month. Of those, more than 291,000 have been released into the country without court dates, while another 32,000 who did receive court dates never showed up for their hearings, Green wrote.
"From day one, the Biden-Harris administration made clear they would not return UACs to their families in their home countries, and the consequences have been disastrous," Green said Monday. "The sheer number of unaccompanied, vulnerable minors who have crossed our Southwest border on President Biden and Vice President Harris' watch is difficult to fully comprehend — but that doesn't make it any less tragic.
"Most of these children have witnessed things that would chill us to the bone, and when they arrive in the United States, the nightmare is only beginning," he added.
Green gave Becerra until Oct. 3 to produce documents on the UACs and their sponsors he first asked for in August.
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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