Claim: the U.S. is a middleman in a massive operation of child smuggling at the southern border.

Question

A House Judiciary subcommittee will hear from a witness who will warn that the U.S. is now a middleman of a massive operation of child smuggling at the southern border.

Answer 1

According to the New York Times article linked below, there is validity to this statement. Biden has specifically spoken on this issue and intends to address it again in the near future.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/17/us/politics/migrant-child-labor-biden.html

Comments

Thanks much for this answer. To me the words "middleman"and "smuggling" sound like the US is intentionally bringing them in illegally to put them to work.

But from the article you cited, it sounds like it is happening more as a result of trying to relieve crowded conditions in the shelters.

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@colwell4, so you're saying that the New York Times is providing evidence that the U.S. is indeed a middleman for smuggling migrant children? Is there any specific passage in the article that you think demonstrates that?

Answer 2

Some of the claims in the original Fox News article are true. The article says that there is a surge of unaccompanied children at the border who are being exploited and have to resort to "indentured servitude to pay back smugglers and have worked in dire conditions." 

CBS News agrees with the statement that migrants are being subjected to child labor: "After being released from federal custody, migrant children, most of whom are teenagers, often end up working grueling and dangerous jobs in factories, meat plants and construction sites that violate federal child labor laws." 

This NBC article also agrees that migrant children are being exploited, citing an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security that is looking into "whether a human smuggling scheme brought migrant children to work in multiple slaughterhouses for multiple companies across multiple states." 

Comments

I imagine the NBC article is not implicating the U.S. into the scheme though (re: your last paragraph)?

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Agreed. The NBC article seems to say that the government is looking into child smuggling/labor with intentions to stop it. So I guess the original claim that the US is a "middleman" is a bit exaggerated, since the US is actively trying to stop child smuggling.