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Floor Speech

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, probably all my colleagues are very concerned that we have learned, over the last few months or couple years, that our Department of HHS is not tracking the 300,000 children--unaccompanied children--under our immigration laws. We don't know where they are. And if you are one of these Senators that is concerned about that, I would like to say, this morning, I want to discuss a Department of Homeland Security inspector general report that everyone in the Senate or their staffs ought to be on top of.

Last week's report confirmed alarm bells that my investigative work had been ringing for a decade. The Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement is responsible for placing unaccompanied children with fully vetted U.S. sponsors. And so what we are finding out is that children are being placed in sponsorship that has not been properly vetted.

Hundreds of thousands of children were unaccounted for during the Biden administration. This inspector general report confirmed that the Biden administration's Health and Human Services failed to take necessary steps to protect and find migrant children.

Last Congress, my oversight attacked these failures on behalf of these children. The Biden administration obstructed my oversight. More than that, the Biden administration also ripped up an agreement made during President Trump's first term allowing much more sharing of sponsor information with law enforcement.

The Biden administration worried that the information would show sponsors were here illegally. This was the Biden administration's priority over the lives and health of children. To emphasize whether or not sponsors were here illegally was more important than protecting the lives of these children.

So simply put, the last administration's conduct, to include its obstruction of my oversight, is a textbook example of what not to do. So I urge my colleagues, please, read the inspector general's report.

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