On 28 January 2016, a congressional report was released on a human trafficking ring that smuggled children from Guatemala to the US and forced them to work on an egg farm run by Trillium in Marion, Ohio for 6 to 7 days a week, 12 hours per day.
On 17 December 2014, federal agents and police officers raided a trailer park in Marion and detained 40 undocumented Guatemalans from 16 trailers. Many of the victims were younger than 18.
The Ohio trafficking ring promised to smuggle their kids from Guatemala to the US where they could receive an education and other opportunities. The families had to pay thousands of dollars to the trafficker.
The traffickers threatened the children and their families with physical harm or even death if they were unwilling to cooperate.
If the child was caught by border authorities, they’d be given an immigration hearing date and were handed over to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
The HHS was responsible for finding a sponsor who would take care of the child until their immigration hearing. But the HHS didn’t really do background checks on the “sponsors” and actually released at least 8 children to the human traffickers in Marion, posing as a relative or friend of the family. From 2013 through 2015, the HHS performed home studies in less than 4.3% of cases.
It’s a policy of the HHS that sponsors can simply refuse that case workers do a follow up on the child. If that “sponsor” was exploiting or abusing the child, he could simply deny permission to the case worker’s request.
In an 18 month period, 40% of the minors did not arrive for their immigration hearings!
Thousands of children have fled Central American countries like Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, and attempt to cross the border to the US in search of the American dream.
In 2008, the number of unaccompanied children caught by border services was 8,000. Numbers have been rising then, and in just October and November 2015 alone that figure stood at 10,588: http://hopeforthesold.com/government...n-traffickers/
(archived here: http://archive.is/UFgvg)
See some excerpts from the January 2016 report:https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/med...016-01-282.pdfOn July 1, 2015, a federal grand jury indicted four defendants for allegedly recruiting and smuggling Guatemalan nationals into the United States for the purpose of forced labor as agricultural workers at an egg farm in Marion, Ohio. The victims in the case include several minors who were placed with sponsors through HHS’s Unaccompanied Children Program. According to the indictment, beginning in 2011, the defendants and unnamed conspirators brought Guatemalan nationals to the United States to work in forced labor. Around March 2014, the defendants started recruiting minors, as they believed they would “be easier to bring successfully into the country, easier to control, and harder workers.”143 The indictment further alleges that the traffickers obtained deeds to real property from the victims’ families to secure the victims’ smuggling debt and would retain the deeds to the properties if any part of the debt went unpaid.144
(...)
Once HHS released the minor victims to the defendants, they were forced to work at egg farms in Marion and other locations for six or seven days a week, twelve hours per day.149 The work was physically demanding and, according to the indictment, included tasks such as de-beaking chickens and cleaning chicken coops.150 The minor victims were forced to live in “substandard” trailers owned by the traffickers.151 The traffickers withheld the victims’ paychecks and gave them very little money for food and necessities.
152 The traffickers would threaten the victims and their family members with physical harm, and even death, if they did not work or surrender their entire paychecks.153 The minor victims were not given an accounting of their debt and often had their debt increased beyond what was initially agreed upon.154 One of the traffickers assaulted a victim for refusing to turn over his paycheck.155 The traffickers punished another minor victim when he complained about working at the egg farm by moving him to a different trailer “that was unsanitary and unsafe, with no bed, no heat, no hot water, no working toilets, and vermin.”156 The traffickers then called the minor victim’s father and threatened to shoot the father in the head if the minor victim did not work.157 The traffickers used physical violence against the minor victims to keep them in line and to ensure they continued to do as they were told.158 The indictment alleges that the defendants “used a combination of threats, humiliation, deprivation, financial coercion, debt manipulation, and monitoring to create a climate of fear and helplessness that would compel [the victims’] compliance.”159
Last April a PBS Frontline documentary titled "Trafficked in America" was broadcast, focusing on the labour trafficking ring that was centred at the Marion County egg farm.
The documentary traces the story of Central American teenagers who were smuggled into the US and forced to work at Trillium Farms for long hours, low pay and, in some cases, under threat of violence.
Seven people have been indicted in US District Court in Ohio in connection with the forced labour ring uncovered in Marion County, 3 were convicted of forced labour charges and sentenced to federal prison and 3 others were convicted of immigration offenses.
Vice president of Trillium Farms, J.T. Dean, defended Trillium by claiming that his company “did not know”.
The filmmakers also interviewed the alleged mastermind of the trafficking scheme, Pablo Duran, Sr., who had a multi-million dollar contract with Trillium Farms to provide workers.
Since 2003, the government has found “care” for more than 190,000 minors that enter the US without parents or any relative: https://eu.marionstar.com/story/news...nty/542277002/
See some excerpts from the documentary.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/f...ca/transcript/MARCO DURAN: I remember when I was working there, I was 14-and-a-half, 14-and-a-half, 15 at the time. So they were kids like me, working like that.
AMANDA RICKMAN: They had no running water. There was no toilet. No toilet. When I came in, there was a five-gallon bucket that had feces and stuff already that was already in there. So it was stinking up the whole trailer. I mean, it was really nasty.
ALBERTO, father of trafficked child: They called us on the phone. They said there was that opportunity, that if we had a deed, he could leave the next day. Our boy had to work over there and pay off the debt of $15.000. When he paid off the debt, we would get back the deed.
GARANCE BURKE, Associated Press: First the federal government decided to stop fingerprinting most of these sponsors who were coming in to claim children. And then over a period of months later, they decided to stop requiring that sponsors submit original or certified copies of their birth certificates. And then finally, they stopped requiring FBI criminal background checks for many sponsors.
SONIA PARRAS, Immigration Attorney: The plant was raided several times throughout several years, and no one looked into human trafficking. No one looked into exploitation of workers.
FORMER TRILLIUM WORKER: When someone didn’t want to give up their money or they didn’t want to pay, or complain, they would call their family. “We’re going to take away your land and you’re going to lose all your money.” Or they would issue death threats. Many of my friends told me that they received death threats─ they would kill their father, their mother─ if they didn’t want to pay or work.
UNCLE OF CHILD VICTIM: When my nephew called me, he said the man had told him, “If you don’t pay back your debt, I’m going to shoot your dad two or three times.” So he was scared. He was worried. He would cry to me, pleading for me to fight for him. So I said, “Yes, I will find a way.” So I called the sheriff.
MARISOL SCHLOENDORN, Sheriff’s Office, Collier Cty., FL: One day, I received a phone call. There was a gentleman that had a nephew that had been smuggled into the country from Guatemala and was being kept to work against his will in Ohio. And within 24 hours, I had a conference call from the head of the FBI, HSI and the U.S. attorney’s office in that region.
DAFFODIL ALTAN, reporter: Two months later, federal and local law enforcement moved in.
GARANCE BURKE: It was not just the Ohio egg farm case, there were other cases in which multiple children were placed with sponsors in homes where they were subject to human trafficking, sexual abuse and other severe forms of abuse and exploitation. More than 180,000 unaccompanied minors had been placed in communities across the country, but because there’s so little follow-up with them once they’re out of the government’s care, we have no idea what’s happened to them.
J.T. DEAN, Vice president Trillium Farms: We don’t supervise those contract service providers. So our managers, our supervisors, they’re checking that the work is complete. They’re checking that the work gets done adequately, but they’re not actually telling this person to go here or that person to go do this. So we’re not directly supervising the people doing that work.
(archived here: http://archive.is/aBUJ1)
Top official with the HHS Steven Wagner told Congress that his agency did a routine check-up on 7,635 children who had been placed with “sponsors” between October and December of 2017 and found that: 6,075 children remained with their sponsors; 28 had run away; 5 had left the US; 52 had relocated to live with someone else; and 1,475 children were unaccounted for (about 19%).
Wagner:Sens. Rob Portman and Tom Carper told about the (no) follow-up on promises made by federal officials.There's no reason to believe that anything has happened to the kids. If you call a friend and they don't answer the phone, you don't assume that they've been kidnapped.
I have confidence in our decision to select sponsors in all categories.
The HHS had signed a memorandum of understanding in 2016 to prevent similar episodes, but in April 2018, they still had not made any improvements.
HHS said it isn’t legally responsible for children after they have been “released” to “sponsors”.
Portman said:Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, called the HHS "the worst foster parents in the world": https://eu.marionstar.com/story/news...obe/554284002/HHS told this subcommittee that once it places children with sponsors — even sponsors who are not related to the children — it no longer has legal responsibility for them. Not if they're abused. Not if they miss their court hearings. No responsibility.
Placing “illegal migrant” children that aren’t accompanied by their parents (or other relatives) with sponsors is a policy that was started during the Obama administration.
The Trump administration separates children from their families that are caught illegally entering the US. Children have been placed in foster care when their parents were criminally charged with an immigration violation.
They insist this is not a new policy, but was implemented during the time George W. Bush was US President.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that the guilty egg farmers (that profit from the slave labour) or the government officials that release children to child traffickers won’t be prosecuted, but only the smugglers and the illegal aliens will be punished:https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/p...der/650755002/If you cross this border unlawfully, then we will prosecute you. It's that simple. If you smuggle illegal aliens across our border, then we will prosecute you. If you are smuggling a child, then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law. If you don't like that, then don't smuggle children over our border.
See the video with a statement by US Senator Rob Portman (Ohio).
Summary
The HHS is responsible for finding a sponsor for unaccompanied children illegally entering the US.
The HHS doesn’t really do background checks on the “sponsors” and has released at least 8 children to child traffickers in Marion, Ohio.
The HHS doesn’t do a real follow up after the child has been “released” to a sponsor. If the sponsor doesn’t pick up the phone or refuses that case workers visit the child, the HHS simply looks the other way.
The HHS told Congress that they couldn’t account for some 1500 children of the 7,635 children checked.
Because of the policy of the HHS since at least 2014, it seems highly improbable that Marion, Ohio was the only place where kids were “released” to child traffickers.
Since 2014, the HHS still has not made any improvements.
The guilty parties simply defend their participation in this scandal with the claim to “not know”.
The Trump administration separates accompanied children illegally entering the US from their families. This makes it easier to turn them over to child traffickers.
It appears that not a single attorney has sued the HHS for damages after they “released” children to traffickers that forced them to slave labour.
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