Oh Jesus, breathe compassion unto my country

Abuses occurred. Just happened. Regrettable, yes. 

[Beginning in 2011, with soaring murder rates and narcotics crime spreading across Central America, there was a surge in unaccompanied minors — mostly teens — trying to cross the border. Many of these children were apprehended by Border Patrol, and the U.S. obviously didn’t have a good plan for what to do next. Some of the kids were placed with family members, but others ended in foster care or more ambiguous situations. It was a system with a high risk for abuse — and abuses occurred. 

Under pressure, the HHS agency stepped up its efforts to keep track of what is happening to these migrant kids, and so last month top officials in the department made a stunning admission to a federal hearing: When officials tried to follow up from October through December of 2017 on the whereabouts of roughly 7.500 kids the federal government had placed with sponsors, it was unable to find out what happened to 1,475 of them, or roughly one in five.

The agency tasked with placing thousands of kids — the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement — clearly wasn’t up to the task of vetting potential sponsors. An AP investigation found in 2016 that “more than two dozen unaccompanied children had been sent to homes where they were sexually assaulted, starved or forced to work for little or no pay.”]  http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/trump-immigration-policy-border-patrol-separating-families-20180527.html