Quote:I thought I was going to help place children in loving homes. Instead, I discovered that children are being trafficked through a sophisticated network that begins with being recruited in home country, smuggled to the US border, and ends when ORR delivers a child to a Sponsors – some sponsors are criminals and traffickers and members of Transnational Criminal Organizations. Some sponsors view children as commodities and assets to be used for earning income - this is why we are witnessing an explosion of labor trafficking.

Whether intentional or not, it can be argued that the US Government has become the middleman in a large scale, multi-billion-dollar, child trafficking operation run by bad actors seeking to profit off the lives of children.

As for me, my interest is in the safety of the children. I don’t view this as a politcal issue. I view this as a humanitarian issue. My motives are the highest and best. I want to see the children protected, so I want to tell you some what I witnessed at the Pomona Fairplex:

• I saw vulnerable indigenous children from Guatemala who speak Mayan dialects and can’t speak Spanish. That means they can’t ask for help in English and they can’t ask for help in Spanish. These children become captive to their Sponsors.
• I’ve sat with Case Managers as they cried retelling horrific things that were done to children on the journey.
• I saw apartment buildings where 20, 30 & 40 unaccompanied children have been released.
• I saw sponsors trying to simultaneously sponsor children from multiple ORR sites.
• I saw sponsors using multiple addresses to obtain sponsorships of children.
• I saw numerous cases of children in debt bondage and the child knew they had to stay with the sponsor until the debt was paid.