Higgins Asks DHS Inspector General About The 'Hundreds Of Thousands Of Missing Tender-Aged Children'

During a House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. NAME asked Inspector General Joseph Cuffari about TOPIC.

Transcript

00:00Thank you, Dr. Khafari, for being here. I recognize myself for five minutes for questioning.

00:08Inspector General Khafari, I'd like to clarify for the record that you and I have been working

00:15together since 2019 pretty closely, have we not? We have had many, many telephone conversations

00:25and back during the horrible COVID era, we had virtual meetings and we've had many personal

00:37meetings, have we not, good sir? Right? So let me clarify for the American people watching

00:46that in all of my interactions with the federal government, there's been, I've had hundreds

00:56and hundreds of interactions with men and women that were embedded and serving within the executive

01:05branch. It's a very small handful of those individuals that I came to understand and know

01:14I could have absolute confidence in. And at the top of that list is Joe Khafari. He was

01:23always accessible and honest and candid, yet careful to protect the integrity of his office

01:33because through the years I asked him some very challenging questions. And Joe Khafari was

01:41squared away. He's here today. No doubt he's going to face some kind of fire. But I'm telling

01:47America, and Americans can tell when a man's telling them the truth, Joe Khafari is squared

01:53away. And he's an honest and dedicated man. So when I ask you, Inspector General Khafari,

02:01are you personally invested in helping the federal government identify, locate, and rescue these scores of

02:13thousands, hundreds of thousands of missing tender age children in our country? I am both as an adult

02:21father, as well as a grandfather. And will you share, will you share with the committee

02:29what that progress looks like regarding, say, the 200,000

02:36young teenagers that have been identified and how the 50,000 of those were chosen to go after?

02:45And would you, will you take us, uh, explain that process to us? Uh, Chairman, from what we,

02:51uh, received in a briefing from, uh, ICE, um, they have formed a team, um, of ICE, um, agents,

02:59HSI, uh, Homeland Security Investigators, plus the- Pardon me, but that team was, is under the,

03:06under the Trump administration? Yes, sir. Okay. Continue, please. It was formed in February of this

03:12year. Thank you. 25, uh, by Secretary Noem, uh, she designated this unit to go out and, um, identify,

03:21locate, and, uh, provide health and welfare checks on, um, unaccompanied alien children who had been

03:28transferred from DHS custody to HHS. So a necessary component of that was for ICE and HHS to work

03:39together, which we understand they are. They are also working with other federal law enforcement

03:44agencies like the FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service to go out and they are, uh, selecting a group of

03:52200,000 round numbers, um, of unaccompanied alien children. They have gone to around 50,000, um,

04:02home. And how, how was that subset with 50,000 doors knocked on, identified, knocked on? How was

04:08that, that 50,000 subset, uh, targeted out of the 200,000 initial selection? Those were identified

04:17by HHS as, um, households where a sponsor had two or more, uh, unaccompanied alien children designated

04:24to that address. So, so listen to that, America. They identified easily 200,000 kids that were at

04:33risk had disappeared into the system. Of those under the Trump administration, they've identified

04:3950,000. Why? Because the 50,000 of them had, had multiple sponsors had multiple kids coming to the

04:47same address. So out of those 50,000, what happened, Joe? They were able to, uh, from what we

04:54understand, they were able to identify and physically locate 12,000, uh, unaccompanied alien children.

05:00And how many sponsors were arrested? Um, the number that we were given is about 400.

05:07About 400. You see where this is going, America? Mr. Kofari, thank you for your testimony.

05:15Unfortunately, my time has expired.