AP INVESTIGATION: Feds' failures imperil migrant children

LOS ANGELES (AP) — As tens of thousands of children fleeing violence in Central America crossed the border in search of safe harbor, overwhelmed U.S. officials weakened child protection policies, placing some young migrants in homes where they were sexually assaulted, starved or forced to work for little or no pay, an Associated Press investigation has found.

Without enough beds to house the record numbers of young arrivals, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services lowered its safety standards during border surges in the last three years to swiftly move children out of government shelters and into sponsors' homes.

The procedures were increasingly relaxed as the number of young migrants rose in response to spiraling gang and drug violence in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, according to emails, agency memos and operations manuals obtained by AP, some under the Freedom of Information Act.

[...] the government stopped fingerprinting most adults seeking to claim the children.

[...] it eliminated FBI criminal history checks for many sponsors.

Since the rule changes, the AP has identified more than two dozen children who were placed with sponsors who subjected them to sexual abuse, labor trafficking, or severe abuse and neglect.

Advocates say it is hard to gauge the total number of children exposed to dangerous conditions among the more than 89,000 placed with sponsors since October 2013 because many of the migrants designated for follow-up were nowhere to be found when social workers tried to reach them.

Unlike the extensive screenings required in the U.S. foster care system, the ORR had stopped requiring that social workers complete extensive background checks or fingerprint most sponsors when they placed Velasco with his brother-in-law's father.

Weber said the ORR has added more home visits and background checks since July, when federal prosecutors charged sponsors and associates with running a trafficking ring in rural Ohio that forced six unaccompanied minors to work on egg farms.

"[...] many kids were piling up at the Border Patrol stations that the agency had to start emptying their shelter beds," said Jennifer Podkul, senior program officer at the nonprofit Women's Refugee Commission.

The government had sent more than a dozen other children to live there, but the social worker found nothing but an empty apartment, said Hilary Chester, associate director of anti-trafficking programs at U.S. Council of Catholic Bishops, another federal contractor.

The whistleblower alleged that 3,400 sponsors listed in a government database had criminal histories including homicide, child molestation, sexual assault and human trafficking, according to Grassley's office.

Federal immigration agents' recent controversial efforts to round up Central American families for possible deportation have further complicated the situation, creating a climate of fear and instability in communities that are welcoming children, and putting some minors who lack attorneys at risk of deportation, advocates said.