Mike Lee says migrants are exploiting children to cross the border. His new bill wants to change that

WASHINGTON — Utah Sen. Mike Lee is seeking ways to close what he views as loopholes in federal immigration law that allow adults to take advantage of children to enter the United States illegally.

Lee introduced the Stopping Border Surges Act on Monday that would amend immigration laws that he says incentivize child trafficking and undermine the U.S. asylum system. The bill targets several immigration policies, including those dealing with detainment, removal hearings, asylum interviews and more.

“Child traffickers have smuggled abused children across our border thanks to the Biden administration’s policies that made it easier for them to cross by claiming to have a child,” Lee said in a statement. “On top of that, many of these kids were released into their kidnapper’s arms. This is not merciful; it’s a Democrat-concocted system that favored traffickers. All the while, these coyotes were claiming to seek asylum, passing multiple safe countries on their way here without stopping.”

The bill seeks to narrow the Flores Settlement Agreement, a landmark consent decree enacted in 1997 that establishes national standards for the treatment, placement and release of immigrant children in government custody. Part of those guidelines mandate the government release unaccompanied minors after 20 days of detention, regardless of whether they are with an adult.

That loophole, Lee says, has incentivized adults to claim unaccompanied children in custody so they may also be released into the country.

Lee’s bill would narrow those guidelines to allow children to remain with their parent or guardian “for the duration of the parent’s adjudication” to “disincentivize non-parents from claiming an unknown child as their own.” The legislation would also require children who are released to be placed “into the custody of a parent or legal guardian.”

“Unfortunately, non-parents are increasingly using children as a get-out-of-jail-free card at the child’s expense,” Lee’s office said in a press release. “These children are often ‘recycled’ by smugglers and forced to cross multiple times to ensure admission for more adults.”

The bill also targets the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, a federal framework intended to crack down on child trafficking. Lee pointed to current U.S. laws that return unaccompanied children from Mexico and Canada “quickly and safely” if they are deemed not to be human trafficking victims and are not “found to have a credible fear of persecution.”

However, children who enter the U.S. from other countries must undergo lengthy removal proceedings. While those processes drag out, children are released to a family member or “suitable sponsor,” which can include the adults who smuggled them into the country in the first place.

“This process incentivizes adults to enlist coyotes to smuggle children across the border,” Lee’s office wrote. “Extending the same seamless process available to children from Mexico and Canada to all unaccompanied alien children would remove this incentive and protect children.”

Specifically, the bill would require “each victim of trafficking” to receive a hearing within 14 days of their arrival, and the Department of Health and Human Services must provide the Department of Homeland Security with the biographical information of the adults to whom the children are released.

The legislation includes several provisions seeking to tighten immigration laws, such as requiring asylum-seekers to be denied asylum “in at least one of the safe countries on their route to the United States”; requiring DHS to incorporate quality assurance procedures in screening interviews; restricting asylum to those who enter through a port of entry; and requiring immigrants to claim asylum within six months of arriving in the United States, among other things.

The bill has so far garnered the support of six other Republican senators. However, it’s unlikely to be considered until later this year, as the Senate is in recess until mid-September. Even when lawmakers reconvene, they face a hefty to-do list before the midterm elections.