WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice announced indictments against three illegal immigrants who sought to smuggle more than a dozen children into the US by “exploiting the loopholes created by the last administration.”
The Guatemalan nationals “took part in a wide-ranging conspiracy” that included submitting bogus sponsor applications to care for unaccompanied migrant children, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a Thursday news conference.
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The Biden administration lost track of more than 300,000 migrant children who entered the country between 2021 and 2024, a Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General previously found.
“Oftentimes, the children were abused, assaulted and certainly exploited,” Blanche said. “In some cases, individuals would sponsor multiple children, which required them to lie on to government personnel and on government forms claiming they were close relatives when in fact they were not.”
“They would use fake or stolen identities and make other false claims during the application process in order to obtain custody of the children,” he added.
The DOJ has since identified more than 15,500 similar “super-sponsor” cases.
One involved a 27-year-old man also from Guatemala who was sentenced Thursday for fraudulently claiming to be the sponsor of a 14-year-old girl whom he went on to repeatedly sexually assault.
“These two cases — while only two — help explain how what was going on is really the stuff of nightmares,” Blanche said.