9.13.23 – Lumen News
“‘Sound of Freedom’ Hero Tim Ballard – Finding 85,000 Lost Children”
By Susan Berry, Ph.D.
Excerpts from this article:
Former Homeland Security agent Tim Ballard joined Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) Tuesday on Capitol Hill for a press conference at which they introduced legislation that would require the Biden administration to locate the 85,000 unaccompanied migrant children it has lost contact with in the United States since they crossed the southern border.
Smith, who authored the nation’s landmark Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA) of 2000, said during the press conference the Biden administration’s “failed open border policies” have “put tens of thousands of children in grave danger and at great risk of death, child sexual exploitation, and abuse.”
…Smith continued, “there are those who would ignore the real evidence that children are immediately being put at risk for child trafficking.”
“It’s like déjà vu,” he said, observing that, since early 2021, about 345,000 unaccompanied children have crossed the border into the United States and have been placed in the custody of the Health and Human Services (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).
ORR, said Smith, supposedly pursues either “repatriation or safe long-term housing” in the United States for the unaccompanied children.
Nevertheless, the location and well-being of about 85,000 children “is completely unknown, without any sources of contact,” the congressman asserted, noting the children could be “in grave danger and at risk of death, child exploitation and abuse, and severe forms of trafficking in persons, including forced labor and sex trafficking.”
Smith’s bill would require the federal government to:
… report on efforts to locate, establish contact with, conduct wellness checks on, and investigate any suspicion of human trafficking related to approximately 85,000 unaccompanied alien children who crossed the U.S southern border, were released from Federal custody, and with whom subsequent contact has been lost.
Ballard, whose character is portrayed by actor Jim Caviezel in the blockbuster film Sound of Freedom, said traffickers “love” the United States “because we open our borders and it’s a vacuum.” He elaborated:
According to the New York Post, the traffickers along the Mexican border are making $14 million a day. I believe that. I spent 10 years on that border. I believe it. Millions are coming through these countries. They can't handle the movement of the countries. Children are being lost along the way. And those children end up at our borders. And what happens? These kids show up – I've been there, I've seen it. A piece of paper maybe tied to their shirt or with a safety pin in their pocket. With a name and a number – the sponsor.
Ballard, who is senior advisor to The SPEAR Fund, which works to fund anti-trafficking organizations, continued that HHS, Border Patrol, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) are being “ordered” by the Biden administration to essentially “become child trafficking delivery services that human traffickers and child traffickers are able to utilize.”
“They're smarter than we think,” the former DHS agent said. “They know our stupid policies are allowing them to make millions of dollars, and so they attach a little name to the kid or someone calls in and says I'm the sponsor.”
Ballard said all children, American and foreign-born, “deserve the exact same protection.”
“Background checks, DNA, run the whole gamut,” he said. “Do not release these children into the United States. 85,000 are missing, and that's thanks to the Biden administration.”
Ballard will testify Thursday [9.14.23] before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations. Smith will chair the hearing titled “Children are Not for Sale – Global Efforts to Address Child Trafficking.”
Smith’s legislation, Ballard said, will help locate the missing children and prevent other children “from being subjected to what is really slavery in our nation.”
“Human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal enterprise on the face of the earth,” he warned. “There's close to 30 million people according to the State Department, according to the UN, people in slavery and millions of those children, millions of those slaves are children. And their traffickers are trying to get them into this market. This black market, our land our country.”
Ballard concluded with a line spoken by Caviezel in the film Sound of Freedom: “We do all of this because God's children are not for sale.”