Editorial: We Must Protect These Minors

For many Central American minors who defied the dangers of a long journey to get to the U.S., the real tragedy is to end up in a home where they are exploited for labor and sex.

This reality was discussed yesterday by a Senate committee after news emerged that 6 Guatemalan minors who arrived unaccompanied in Ohio were relocated by human traffickers.  Instead of providing them with education, they forced the youths to work 12 hours a day in a farm under death threats.

This is not an isolated case. It is not known how many minors are being held performing slave labor, but it is estimated that at least 3,400 of sponsors (12%) — people willing to keep these youths who have no relatives in the U.S. — have some kind of history of domestic violence, child abuse, sexual aggression or human trafficking.

According to the authorities, this oversight is due to the drastic increase in young people from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras who have arrived at the country’s southern border escaping widespread violence in their countries. An Associated Press report revealed that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) relaxed the requirements sponsors were asked to fulfill, starting with fingerprints and ending with the background checks that the FBI used to perform.

The position taken by the HHS is no less worrying: Their responsibility over the fate and living conditions of the minors ends when they hand over custody of the child from the detention centers to the sponsors. The federal agency said that only 4% of all foster homes were visited, but they blamed Congress for not passing a law to make this type of supervision mandatory, a normal requirement for regular foster homes.

It is a cause for concern when a dispute over who has the authority to do something arises in cases of child mistreatment and abuse. Congress is right in overseeing that these minors are well treated, and it must also approve the necessary laws to do so. In the meantime, the government must assume its responsibility, or else become an accomplice of the exploitation.