Six weeks ago, Steve Baker — an investigative journalist and weekly contributor here reporting on the sex trafficking of immigrant kids at our southern border — told us a grim tale of following trafficked children who were being sold into the prostitution underbelly of Houston, Texas. This is NOT El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, or Mexico City. This is happening as you eat your breakfast while reading this in Houston, Texas, and in every other large city across the nation!
Project Veritas released a new video on December 2 featuring a whistleblower working within a federal government agency called the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity & Efficiency [CIGIE].
The whistleblower, Tara Lee Rodas, volunteered to assist the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services [HHS] with the processing of unaccompanied migrant children and was deployed to the Emergency Intake Site in Pomona, California.
Rodas sat down with Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe and described how precarious she believes the current child sponsorship program is for these minors.
“The tax dollars of people who are listening are paying to put children in the hands of criminals,” Rodas told O’Keefe.
“Our sponsors typically are not citizens. They’re not permanent residents. They don’t have a legal presence,” she said.
“The sponsor can hold up an ‘Order of Deportation’ to a [migrant] child and say, ‘This is your Order of Deportation. If you do not do what I say when I say, I’m going to call ICE on you myself.’ We are paying to put children in the hands of criminals.”
The whistleblower affirmed that she has questioned federal government bureaucrats about the potential wrongdoing happening within their institutions, and the response has usually been dismissive of her concerns. She believes she has suffered retaliation at work for raising these issues.
“I said [to the command center executives], ‘We’re getting ready to send another child [to Austin, Texas],’ and they said, ‘Tara, I think you need to understand that we only get sued if we keep kids in care too long. We don’t get sued by traffickers. Are you clear? We don’t get sued by traffickers.’ So, that was the answer of the United States federal government. HHS did not want this information to get out,” Rodas said.
“They knew I had made protected disclosures, and they retaliated against me as a whistleblower and had me kicked off the site so I could no longer research the cases,” she said.
As a result of Rodas’ stepping forward, Project Veritas journalists visited several physical addresses provided by the whistleblower in order to interview individuals and investigate whether trafficking was taking place.
A Veritas journalist spoke to a migrant female minor on one of these occasions, who revealed that she had been put through sexual abuse by her sponsor.
“An aunt [sponsored me], but she kicked me out of her house. She was pimping me, and I didn’t like that. She would pimp me to men,” the child said.
“I just escaped one night. I told her [aunt], ‘I’m going to the laundromat.’ She [aunt] went to the laundromat and didn’t find me there. Later on, she called Immigration.”
Project Veritas will be releasing more information on this issue this week as the story continues to develop. Whistleblowers who are aware of similar situations are invited to contact VeritasTips@protonmail.com with information the public deserves to know about.
Summary
How can any adult be so numbed to the atrocity of selling one human being to another, especially when the sold commodity is children? How can the government of the United States government be so numbed to this atrocity that allowing this to happen at our southern border is unconscionable?
After your few minutes of shock and awe, you need to realize the same thing that I realized: this is happening daily to thousands of children. How many? It’s in the thousands every week!
And the Big One: How could President Joe Biden allow his Department of Homeland Security to continue to allow this to happen on their watch with NO recourse, NO plans at all to target these traffickers, and NO plan to stop the kids from coming across our border to only be handed–off to anyone who will pay a few bucks?
This story nauseates me. And the feelings I have from diving into it make me ashamed to be an American. I thought we were better than this. I thought the U.S. government was better than this. I thought Joe Biden was better than this. But, apparently, we’re not. But for the people that have the power to stop it and don’t, escape from the prices that will be paid for this atrocities may elude them for a while.
But the price WILL be paid.
“Quid Pro Quo…”
Project Veritas is a registered 501(c)3 organization. Project Veritas does not advocate specific resolutions to the issues raised through its investigations.
