McMorris Rodgers’ panel grills HHS Secretary Becerra on migrant child labor, with legislation nowhere in sight

WASHINGTON – Nearly two hours into a hearing Wednesday on the exploitation of migrant children working dangerous and illegal jobs, Rep. Dan Crenshaw asked the witness a simple, essential question.

Why, the Texas Republican asked Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, are the people responsible for the care of migrant children not required to answer follow-up phone calls from your department?

The issue came into the spotlight when a New York Times investigation revealed in February that migrant children, who have entered the United States without their parents in record numbers in recent years, are working in slaughterhouses, sawmills and other dangerous workplaces across the country – in clear violation of child labor laws.

Becerra explained that HHS, as his department is known, places the vast majority of those children with relatives soon after they are transferred from the custody of the Department of Homeland Security, while some kids are placed with other sponsors who are vetted by the government. While HHS checks on those minors by calling them a month after they start living with their sponsors, that follow-up is voluntary for the sponsors, and the Times reported that the department had failed to reach more than 85,000 children during the course of the two previous years.

“Whose rule is that?” Crenshaw asked. “Is that a statute? Why can’t we make them answer the phone?”

“We do not have the authority to require them to respond to us,” Becerra replied, repeating a point he had made several times before Crenshaw’s turn to ask questions.

“OK, so that’s a statute change that needs to happen?” the congressman said. “OK, that’s helpful.”

Changing statutes, of course, is squarely within the purview of the lawmakers in the hearing room, all members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, led by Rep Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Spokane.

They could write legislation to give the department that authority, either as a standalone bill or as part of a broader effort to shore up an immigration system most Republican and Democrats agree is broken.

But when it comes to updating the country’s immigration policy, Congress has a long track record of letting partisan differences get in the way of legislating. In the absence of new laws, successive presidents have used their limited authority to steer immigration policy – with the frequent intervention of the courts, such as Tuesday’s ruling by a federal judge in California that struck down a Biden administration policy aimed at stemming the flow of migrants seeking asylum in the United States.

The last major overhaul of the nation’s immigration law came in 1986, when then-President Ronald Reagan signed legislation that acknowledged the reality that the U.S. economy runs largely on the labor of unauthorized immigrants. As that law’s shortcomings have become clear over the ensuing four decades, several bipartisan efforts to fix the system have failed, with members of both parties hewing to the demands of their most obstinate supporters.

In keeping with that legacy of inaction, Wednesday’s hearing in the panel’s Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee showed no sign of a solution on the horizon.

The subcommittee got off to an auspicious start, with Chair Morgan Griffith, R-Va., telling Becerra, “You and I do not agree on the policies that brought these children to our border, but I believe – no matter the policies – once they are in our care and we have taken on the responsibility for them, we must properly care for them.”

The panel’s top Democrat, Rep. Kathy Castor of Florida, began her remarks by thanking Griffith for holding the hearing, which she called “the kind of oversight that this subcommittee must be doing.” She thanked Becerra for reforms the administration announced in response to the New York Times’ reporting, including more comprehensive support for migrant children after they are placed in homes.

Then Castor pivoted, criticizing the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Republicans for focusing their oversight resources on an allegation that Becerra had not properly reappointed several top officials at the National Institutes of Health, including former White House medical adviser Anthony Fauci.

Castor argued the GOP claims about the appointments are baseless, because the law in question authorizes the HHS secretary to act through the NIH director. Later, McMorris Rodgers pushed back, demanding that Becerra produce evidence that the officials were correctly appointed when their terms expired in December 2021.

After starting her opening statement by accusing Becerra of a “complete failure to assure the safety and well-being of unaccompanied children crossing the border,” McMorris Rodgers raised concerns about the vetting process and follow-ups after children are placed in homes. She then turned to the NIH appointments issue, which she said was further evidence of “a culture of arrogance and lawlessness” in the department.

In his opening remarks, Becerra said his department sees children being employed illegally and exploited by companies as a serious problem.

“This is real, it’s repulsive and it’s unacceptable,” he said, adding that although the problem isn’t limited to migrant children, they can be more vulnerable to “unscrupulous employers.”

The rest of the nearly three hours of questions from the subcommittee followed a familiar pattern: Republicans, seated stage right, accused Becerra of not doing enough to solve the problem. Democrats, stage left, defended the administration and pointed out that GOP lawmakers had proposed a nearly 60% cut to the budget of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the agency within HHS responsible for placing the children in homes.

Those proposed cuts, Becerra said, would “devastate” his department’s ability to do what Republicans were asking for in the hearing. A final funding bill, which would need to pass the Democratic-controlled Senate, will likely see smaller funding cuts.

Throughout the hearing, Becerra fielded questions from Republicans about the limitations of the vetting process, which he said often – but not always – includes an FBI background check. The secretary, who represented California as a Democrat in the House from 1993 to 2017, repeatedly reminded his former colleagues that they have the power to give HHS the funding and authorities to do more.

“That’s the difficulty here: Our authorities are very limited. If you wish to give us further authorities, we will absolutely work with you towards that.”

Griffith ended the hearing, noting that “some of the questions were not directly on point on what we wanted to talk about” – with legislation to address the problem nowhere in sight.