(NewsNation) — Advocacy groups are concerned President Joe Biden’s new asylum policy will inadvertently trigger an increase in unaccompanied minors targeted by sex traffickers.
Sources tell NewsNation that Monday alone, U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered more than 300 unaccompanied juveniles across the southern border.
Texas Department of Safety Lt. Chris Olivarez told NewsNation’s Ali Bradley two of the juveniles traveling were aged 5 and 7 years old from Honduras, and each boy had a note card attached with an address in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.
El Cajon, California, Mayor Bill Wells says he’s “very fearful” that some of the children on the border could be involved in “the most horrific form of sex trafficking.”
“This is serious stuff. We need to stop this. This is not America,” Wells said.
Officials on the front line say Biden’s executive action aimed at restricting asylum is not acting as a deterrent, and not much has changed.
The long-anticipated presidential proclamation bars migrants from being granted asylum when U.S. officials deem that the southern border is overwhelmed. The order goes into effect when the number of border encounters between ports of entry hits 2,500 per day, according to senior administration officials.
According to the latest data obtained by NewsNation, there has not been a single day since its implementation where Border Patrol has encountered less than 2,500 migrants, exceeding that number by 1,000 nearly every day.
Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who last week left the Democratic Party to become an independent, is leading 45 of his Senate Republican colleagues on a resolution to overturn Biden’s administration rule on the care of unaccompanied migrant children.
“We have a crisis at our southern border and its human impacts are absolutely devastating. I have repeatedly called on President Biden to use his executive powers to shut it down and address the cycles of exploitation that illegal immigration empowers. Instead, the Administration is allowing rules like this one to jeopardize the safety of migrant children and trust them in the hands of unvetted sponsors,” Manchin said in a statement.