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'Heartbreaking and Unconscionable': Biden Admin Ignored Warnings of Migrant Child Labor
"I feel like short of protesting in the streets, I did everything I could to warn them," said one former official. "They just didn't want to hear it."
Apr 18, 2023
The Biden administration received repeated warnings from both within and outside of the federal government in recent years about a rise in the exploitation of migrant children for child labor, but ignored the evidence it was presented with and in some cases retaliated against whistleblowers, an extensive report by The New York Times showed late Monday.
According to the report, officials in the Biden administration including Susan Rice, director of the U.S. Domestic Policy Council, oversaw the loosening of restrictions on vetting potential sponsors for unaccompanied migrants under the age of 18 as emergency shelters that were set up to house the minors struggled to meet demand in 2021. Reports of the problem also reached Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra.
At least five staffers at the the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told the newspaper that they raised concerns about the welfare of children who were sent to live with improperly vetted sponsors, and that they were retaliated against by officials who were growing "exasperated" with employees who insisted the department take steps to protect the minors in its care.
The report includes accounts from a former official at HHS who oversaw the government's program for unaccompanied migrants under the age of 18, a senior employee at an immigrant rights advocacy group, and an immigration lawyer who worked in 2021 vetting prospective sponsors for unaccompanied minors.
The attorney, Linda Brandmiller, told the Times that she immediately flagged at least two suspicious potential sponsors who had contacted HHS to offer to take in some of the unaccompanied minors, allowing them to leave the emergency shelters that had been set up for an influx of young migrants over the U.S.-Mexico border.
One person explicitly said they planned to employ three underage boys at a construction company, and another said they could take in two children who would then have to work off the cost of their travel.
Brandmiller told the shelter she was working at in Texas that no children should be sent to the sponsors and warned that a 14-year-old boy had already been sent to one of the people, as well as emailing HHS supervisors and saying, "This is urgent."
At least one boy was sent to one of the sponsors despite Brandmiller's warnings, and she was abruptly fired from her job with no explanation a few days later.
As such instances of retaliation have been taking place, said Times reporter Hannah Dreier, "the number of children being trafficked or exploited has skyrocketed."
As Common Dreams has reported, companies including Packers Sanitation Services Inc. and Hyundai have been found in recent months to rely on the labor of migrants under the age of 18, in violation of child labor laws. According to the Times, Rice's team was briefed regularly for several months on Packers' employment of more than 100 Spanish-speaking children in meatpacking facilities where they operated the industrial cleaning company's equipment and in some cases were injured while using Packers' sanitation chemicals.
Former U.S. Labor Secretary Martin Walsh told the Times that his department frequently included data about skyrocketing levels of child labor in weekly cabinet-level meetings at the White House, and the agency updated its official data in December to show that child labor law violations had soared by 69% since 2018.
"We sent reports to the White House, so they knew we were working on this stuff," Walsh told the Times.
According to the Times, officials at the Labor Department and HHS each said that the other department was responsible for ensuring that unaccompanied minors were not being exploited for child labor.
Jallyn Sualog, a former career HHS employee who helped oversee the division responsible for migrant children, warned her superiors in 2021 that she had heard reports of children who had been sent to sponsors who'd lied about their identities or who planned to exploit them.
"If nothing continues to be done, there will be a catastrophic event," Sualog told her supervisors, before filing a complaint with the HHS Office of the Inspector General—after which she was removed from her position.
"I feel like short of protesting in the streets, I did everything I could to warn them," Sualog told the Times. "They just didn't want to hear it."
The result of the administration's refusal to listen to whistleblowers including Sualog and Brandmiller was called "heartbreaking and unconscionable" by the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), an economic justice nonprofit group.
Former U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro decried the "stunning lack of oversight and accountability by the Biden administration."
"Imagine if our government spent its time and energy protecting immigrant children from being exploited through child labor," said progressive policy group Justice Democrats, "instead of on separating families and putting immigrants in cages."
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Coalition Urges Biden Admin. to Consider Creating US Human Rights Body
"The United States is lagging behind other nations in translating its global human rights obligations into domestic policies," said the director of the ACLU's Human Rights Program.
Dec 15, 2022
U.S. President Joe Biden declared during a speech last year that the United States must demonstrate that "our commitment to human rights begins at home."
That's how dozens of human rights experts and groups began a Thursday letter to Ambassador Susan Rice, director of the Domestic Policy Council, which "drives the development and implementation of the president's domestic policy agenda in the White House and across the federal government."
The coalition of 84 organizations and 37 individuals wrote that they "strongly support that sentiment and believe that this principle--that human rights begin at home--should be the basis for a bold approach to ensuring that everyone in the United States enjoys the rights and freedoms guaranteed by international human rights law."
As the letter details:
The United States has been a historic leader in the global effort to establish universal standards of human rights protection, beginning with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948. At the same time, while state and local authorities have increasingly looked to human rights standards to improve the lives of people, the federal government has not comprehensively integrated the United States' human rights obligations into domestic law and policy and has resisted efforts to create domestic human rights monitoring, enforcement, and accountability mechanisms. Thus, as we mark the adoption of the Universal Declaration 74 years ago this month, we urge the Biden administration to make good on the president's words by reinvigorating that leadership and starting the process of establishing a national human rights institution ("NHRI").
In particular, we propose that the Biden administration establish a national committee of experts to study the creation of an American NHRI, with robust civil society participation, and make recommendations within a year of its establishment.
"When properly constituted and mandated, national human rights bodies can provide valuable oversight and means of implementing a country's international human rights obligations," said Felice Gaer, director of the Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights at the American Jewish Committee, which signed the letter.
"An American NHRI can offer a meaningful path to encourage U.S. institutions, buoyed by civil society, to adhere to human rights commitments that our government has made and to which we routinely call on other countries to adhere," added Gaer, also a longtime former member of the U.N. Committee Against Torture.
The letter says the coalition stands "ready to support you in your efforts to launch such a process and take the first steps toward bringing human rights home," and directs the Biden administration to reach out to Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU's Human Rights Program, and David Kaye, a professor at the University of California, Irvine, School of Law and a former United Nations special rapporteur on freedom of expression.
"Nearly all of the United States' democratic partners worldwide have national institutions to help them meet their human rights commitments," Kaye noted, echoing the letter. "But the United States stands as an exception; it has adopted treaties but done very little to implement them domestically. It's time to make human rights not just a foreign policy issue, as important as that is, but also a question of America's domestic practice."
Dakwar similarly asserted that "the United States is lagging behind other nations in translating its global human rights obligations into domestic policies, and an independent national human rights institution would help advance this goal."
"But such an institution must do more than monitor and implement U.S. human rights commitments," Dakwar continued. "It can educate and make human rights more visible. It can provide a platform for marginalized communities to uphold their human rights. And it can, in a near-term sense, reinforce the Biden administration's own priorities, especially under its Summit for Democracy and National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality."
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ACLU Reminds Biden of 'Moral and Legal Imperative' to Reverse Trump's Unlawful Asylum Policy
The civil liberties group stressed the new administration must "restore the right to asylum and end the government's ongoing violations of law."
Dec 21, 2020
The ACLU on Tuesday reminded President-elect Joe Biden of the "moral and legal imperative" to reverse President Donald Trump's dangerous and illegal asylum policies, following reports that nominees for Biden's Cabinet are already walking back a campaign promise to end them on "day one" of the new administration.
"This is a classic bait and switch. It perpetuates Trump's dehumanization of migrants and breaks a core campaign promise."
--Rep. Ilhan Omar
Common Dreams reported Tuesday that Biden domestic policy adviser Susan Rice and national security adviser-designate Jake Sullivan appeared to be tamping down progressive expectations buoyed by Biden's pledge to end Trump administration's Migration Protection Protocols (MPP), commonly known as the "Remain in Mexico" asylum policy.
Under Trump's policy--part of a "zero tolerance" immigration framework in which thousands of migrants have been imprisoned in concentration camps and thousands of children have been forcibly seized, possibly indefinitely, from their parents--more than 66,000 asylum-seekers have been unlawfully denied entry into the U.S. and have been forced to live in tent encampments on the Mexican side of the border without access to adequate medical care, shelter, or legal aid.
" Donald Trump has slammed the door shut in the face of families fleeing persecution and violence," Biden tweeted in January. "On day one, I will eliminate President Trump's decision to limit asylum and end the MPP program."
However, Rice told Spanish wire service EFE Monday that while Biden "is committed to honoring and restoring our asylum laws," he will "need time" to undo Trump's immigration policies.
"Processing capacity at the border is not like a light that you can just switch on and off," said Rice. "Migrants and asylum-seekers absolutely should not believe those in the region peddling the idea that the border will be suddenly be fully open to process everyone on day one" of the new administration.
This apparent backpedaling prompted the ACLU to issue a statement reminding the Biden team that "every day the Trump administration's anti-asylum policies remain in place, our country puts peoples' lives at risk."
"It is the Biden administration's moral and legal imperative to expeditiously roll back all these Trump era policies, in order to restore the right to asylum and end the government's ongoing violations of law," the statement said.
It continued:
The ACLU welcomes and supports the commitments the incoming administration has made to end Trump policies and bring fairness to the asylum system. Following through on those commitments requires that the new administration immediately begin to safely process people seeking protection, ensure that no person is subjected to unlawful policies--like forced return to Mexico--and repair the damage Trump wreaked with the high sense of urgency required when life and death is at stake.
Other progressives weren't so gentle. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) fired off a tweet accusing the incoming administration of "a classic bait and switch."
"It perpetuates Trump's dehumanization of migrants and breaks a core campaign promise," Omar wrote. "Democrats lose big when administrations won't fulfill their promise. I urge the Biden transition team to reconsider this position."
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From "Day One" to We Will "Need Time," Team Biden Walks Back Vow to End Trump Attack on Asylum Seekers
"It appears that the inclusion of a policy in a campaign platform, or a promise by a candidate trying to win votes, doesn't actually mean that's what will be done once the person is in power."
Dec 21, 2020
Two of President-elect Joe Biden's top incoming advisers on Tuesday appeared intent on lowering expectations about Biden's plans to roll back President Donald Trump's anti-immigration rules, which have been condemned internationally as violating human rights.
Susan Rice, who Biden has named as his domestic policy adviser, and incoming national security adviser Jake Sullivan told Spanish wire service EFE that policies including "Remain in Mexico," officially known as Migration Protection Protocols (MPP), will not be immediately suspended, contrary to Biden's campaign promise to "end the MPP program" on "day one" of his presidency.
Saying Biden will "need time" to undo Trump's immigration policies, Sullivan acknowledged that the Remain in Mexico policy--under which more than 66,000 asylum-seekers have been turned away at the U.S.-Mexico border and forced to live in tent cities without access to sufficient medical care, suitable shelter, or legal aid--"has led to a humanitarian crisis in northern Mexico" as people wait for their asylum claims to be processed in U.S. courts.
"But putting the new policy into practice will take time," he added, saying Biden will end the program "early in his administration."
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) accused the incoming administration of "a classic bait and switch."
The interview came days after national advocacy group Mi Familia Vota tweeted that Biden must prioritize his commitments to the immigrant and Latinx communities.
Journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted Tuesday that Sullivan and Rice's statements confirm the president-elect's pledges regarding immigration policy, including specific statements about what will be done immediately after he takes office, "doesn't actually mean that's what will be done once [Biden] is in power."
Rice cited public health concerns in explaining why the policy will continue for an unspecified period of time under the Biden administration, but on Monday public health experts issued a statement urging the incoming Biden administration to use "effective, evidence-based public health measures" to mitigate the spread of Covid-19 at the southern border--not "bans, expulsions, and asylum denials."
"The Trump administration has misused public health authority as a ploy to attempt to justify expulsions that endanger human lives. The Biden administration should end this abuse of public health authority."
--Monette Zard, Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health
"The Trump administration has misused public health authority as a ploy to attempt to justify expulsions that endanger human lives," said Monette Zard, associate professor and director of the Program on Forced Migration and Health at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health. "The Biden administration should end this abuse of public health authority, ensure public health decisions are made by public health officials without pressure to advance migration policy or other political objectives and use public health measures to safely process the cases of families, adults and children seeking protection at our borders."
Human rights organizations have also denounced the Trump administration's claims this year that asylum-seekers should be turned away at the border due to the coronavirus pandemic. In May, Human Rights First accused Trump of using the "pandemic as pretext" in order to carry out "its long-held ambition to eliminate humanitarian protections for asylum-seekers."
"Remain in Mexico and CDC expulsions join a long list of other illegal and dangerous Trump administration policies aimed at curtailing asylum," said the group. "These policies are both immoral and illegal. Not only do they spurn the country's tradition of providing safe haven to refugees, they violate U.S. asylum, immigration, and anti-trafficking laws, due process protections, and binding treaty obligations."
In July, the International Rescue Committee issued its own report saying the administration was using the pandemic as an excuse to turn away asylum seekers, and wrote that the U.S. government is capable of meeting its humanitarian obligations while mitigating the risk of spreading Covid-19.
"The administration can and should implement public health measures, including screenings carried out by public health officials, to mitigate risks to asylum seekers, and must increase access to health facilities at the border. But current policies merely compound the danger both at home and abroad," said the group.
That report was released soon after the Trump administration issued a new proposal called "Security Bars and Processing," under which the Department of Homeland Security could turn away asylum seekers whose entry "would pose a risk of further spreading infectious or highly contagious illnesses or diseases," such as nurses, doctors, and other frontline workers who have come into contact with Covid-19 patients, or people coming from a country where Covid-19 is prevalent.
According to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council, the Department of Justice sent the regulation to the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs last week to be finalized.
Rice and Sullivan's interview with EFE did not address Biden's plans for continuing or ending the Security Bars and Processing rule.
Rice indicated that the Biden administration may focus on changing immigration policy through legislative steps rather than executive authority.
While "there are areas that can be addressed administratively, and the president-elect has plans to begin tackling those areas right away," Rice said, "the Biden administration will not be able to fix everything on our own."
"We need legislative changes to make enduring repairs to our immigration system, and the president-elect will share his vision with Congress," she added. "He is committed to working collaboratively with Members of Congress to achieve the needed reform that has long eluded the country."
The Washington Post noted Tuesday that Biden's immigration reform proposals, including a path to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants currently in the U.S. "will face long odds in a divided Congress."
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Dems Urged to Say, 'Yes, Snowden Should Be Pardoned' After Trump Floats Possibility
The comment from the president prompted fresh praise for the former intelligence contractor who "blew the whistle on illegal government activity kept secret for years."
Aug 16, 2020
Democrats were urged this weekend to publicly demand a pardon for Edward Snowden after President Donald Trump said Saturday he was considering that action for the National Security Agency whistleblower.
"I'm not that aware of the Snowden situation. But I'm going to start looking at it," Trump said at a press conference his Bedminster, New Jersey golf club when asked if he would pardon Snowden, who's been living in exile in Russia since 2013.
"It seems to be a split decision," the president said, adding that "many people... think that he should be somehow treated differently and other people think he did very bad things. And I'm going to take a very good look at it."
The remarks came days after Trump said in an interview published Thursday by the New York Post that he is open to pardoning Snowden--a comment widely welcomed by whistleblower advocates. Among that chorus was Freedom of the Press Foundation, for which Snowden serves as board president--with that group responding, "No matter your feelings on Trump, a Snowden pardon would be a major win for those who care about fighting back against mass surveillance in the digital age."
The ACLU also restated its support for the whistleblower in the wake of latest comments from Trump, noting in a late Saturday tweet that "Snowden blew the whistle on illegal government activity kept secret for years, sparking a global debate about the proper limits of government surveillance."
"We've said it before and we'll say it again," the group added. "Snowden is a patriot and should be pardoned."
In a Saturday tweet, digital rights activist Evan Greer singled out progressive lawmakers including "Squad" members Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and said they should help "lead their party right now by publicly calling to #PardonSnowden" and protect whistleblowers.
Greer added in tweets later Saturday an accusation that Trump is "a self-serving bag of farts who is only going to 'take a look' at this to score political points" and said Democrats risk being "fucking idiots if they let Trump take this as a win instead of just finally admitting Snowden was right."
One high-profile Democrat who rejected Trump's floating a pardon for Snowden is Susan Rice, national security adviser under the Obama administration.
Rice's response on Twitter--"I. Just. Can't. Congratulations GOP. This is who you are now."--were seized upon by surveillance state critics including Glenn Greenwald, who was among the team of journalists that first reported on the Snowden revelations.
The tweet from Rice also came in for criticism from Mehdi Hasan, a journalist at The Intercept.
"Your former colleague, ex-Attorney General Eric Holder, said Edward Snowden performed a 'public service,'" Hasan responded to Rice. "And everyone from Human Rights Watch and Amnesty to the New York Times and Guardian editorial boards have called for some form of clemency or pardon for Snowden."
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As Biden Mulls VP Pick, Pundits Vie for Most Substance-Free Forecast
Useful coverage would lay out each potential pick’s background and qualifications. While you certainly can find that if you look hard enough, many journalists seem quite content to avoid content.
Aug 07, 2020
As presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden's search for a running mate drags on, press coverage hasn't failed to disappoint.
Useful coverage would lay out each potential pick's background and qualifications. While you certainly can find that if you look hard enough, many journalists seem quite content to avoid content. The Washington Post's Aaron Blake (7/24/20) offered a nice helping of unedifying rankings in his "12 Most Logical Picks for Joe Biden's Vice President, Ranked." At number one, Blake put Kamala Harris:
Another list, another list with Harris at No. 1. While others have been jockeying to climb up, nobody makes more sense than the senator from California right now, which has been the case for a while. About the best argument against her is that her 2020 presidential campaign wasn't exactly a resounding success. But for a campaign showing a wide lead, she's clearly the safest pick. And safe might be what the doctor orders.
Why does "nobody make more sense" than Harris? Why is she the "safest pick"? Perhaps Blake assumes you remember his three-line explanation from June, when he similarly offered rankings--or perhaps he doesn't care. (For the record, she's been the "favorite from the start" because of her "high-ranking resume," her "experience on the national stage" and the fact that "she has shown she is a capable messenger.")
Over at CNN (7/30/20), Chris Cillizza has really been milking the drawn-out process, putting out new rankings so often (he's currently at 16) you'd think he was running a gambling ring.
Much of the problem is that since the top contenders have already been fairly well-established for the last few weeks, most outlets don't have much new ground to break. So what's left? Mainly, politicians and operatives on all sides trying to create positive coverage of their team and negative coverage of their opponents--and journalists that seem happy to go along.
California representative and new short-list candidate Karen Bass took multiple trips to Cuba 40 years ago, and in 2016 called Fidel Castro's death "a great loss to the people of Cuba." Her opponents gleefully pushed out this "Cuba baggage" (AP, 8/6/20) to drum up a story about how this makes her dead in the water (because Florida!), and journalists happily complied. No matter that Cuban Americans make up only 6.5% of the population of Florida, and Cuba is for vanishingly few of them their primary motivating issue when voting.
As the response to Bernie Sanders' positive comments about Cuba's literacy program demonstrated (FAIR.org, 3/6/20), US political orthodoxy does not permit even hints at acknowledgment that longtime Official Enemies like Cuba might not be evil. Bass's supposed Communist sympathies were the subject of widespread coverage--and not only in outlets like Fox News--under headlines like "I'm Not a Communist" (NBCNews.com, 8/3/20) and "Karen Bass Eulogized Communist Party USA Leader" (Politico, 8/4/20); the Atlantic (7/31/20) saw fit to devote nearly 3,000 words to an investigation of Bass's relationship with Cuba.
Sometimes it happens even as journalists appear to be at least somewhat aware of what's going on. In a Washington Post piece headlined, "Biden's Delay in Choosing a Running Mate Intensifies Jockeying Between Potential Picks," Annie Linskey (8/2/20) describes how "Biden allies" worry that the process is "pitting women, especially Black women, against one another."
The piece refers to "nastiness," "backbiting" and "currents...many of them sexist, that have been swirling for weeks," seeming to attribute these largely to "allies of the women"--but it's not always entirely clear who is being blamed. It's certainly not the media, though, which appears merely as the vehicle for the nastiness. (Such as: "One donor implied to CNBC that Harris has too much 'ambition.' And former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a longtime Biden friend, told CNN that Harris can 'rub people the wrong way.'")
At the same time, Linskey offered her own piece as a vehicle for some sexism. Quoting Rendell on the "buzz" around Susan Rice, Linskey ate up without comment a tired trope used repeatedly in the past on women:
Her demeanor on television fueled the speculation, he said. "She was smiling on TV, something that she doesn't do all that readily," Rendell said. "She was actually somewhat charming on TV, something that she has not seemed to care about in the past."
The "Year of the Woman" has come and gone, and come and gone again (Extra!, 9/92, 4/13), and yet we keep talking--in 2020--about how female politicians need to smile more (FAIR.org, 6/14/99; Intercept, 9/26/16). Biden may be breaking the mold by only considering female running mates, but the media sure aren't straying from tradition.
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