[House Hearing, 117 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]




 
    A HUMANE RESPONSE: PRIORITIZING THE WELL-BEING OF UNACCOMPANIED 
                                CHILDREN

=======================================================================

                            VIRTUAL HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

              SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS

                                 OF THE

                    COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE
                        HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             FIRST SESSION

                               __________

                              JUNE 9, 2021

                               __________

                           Serial No. 117-37                         
                           
                           
                           
                           
                           
        [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
                    


     Published for the use of the Committee on Energy and Commerce

                   govinfo.gov/committee/house-energy
                        energycommerce.house.gov
                        
                        
                        
                                ______

                  U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 
 51-210PDF             WASHINGTON : 2023
                       
                        
                        
                        
                        
                    COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND COMMERCE

                     FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey
                                 Chairman
BOBBY L. RUSH, Illinois              CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington
ANNA G. ESHOO, California              Ranking Member
DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado              FRED UPTON, Michigan
MIKE DOYLE, Pennsylvania             MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois             STEVE SCALISE, Louisiana
G. K. BUTTERFIELD, North Carolina    ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio
DORIS O. MATSUI, California          BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky
KATHY CASTOR, Florida                DAVID B. McKINLEY, West Virginia
JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland           ADAM KINZINGER, Illinois
JERRY McNERNEY, California           H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia
PETER WELCH, Vermont                 GUS M. BILIRAKIS, Florida
PAUL TONKO, New York                 BILL JOHNSON, Ohio
YVETTE D. CLARKE, New York           BILLY LONG, Missouri
KURT SCHRADER, Oregon                LARRY BUCSHON, Indiana
TONY CARDENAS, California            MARKWAYNE MULLIN, Oklahoma
RAUL RUIZ, California                RICHARD HUDSON, North Carolina
SCOTT H. PETERS, California          TIM WALBERG, Michigan
DEBBIE DINGELL, Michigan             EARL L. ``BUDDY'' CARTER, Georgia
MARC A. VEASEY, Texas                JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina
ANN M. KUSTER, New Hampshire         GARY J. PALMER, Alabama
ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois, Vice       NEAL P. DUNN, Florida
    Chair                            JOHN R. CURTIS, Utah
NANETTE DIAZ BARRAGAN, California    DEBBBIE LESKO, Arizona
A. DONALD McEACHIN, Virginia         GREG PENCE, Indiana
LISA BLUNT ROCHESTER, Delaware       DAN CRENSHAW, Texas
DARREN SOTO, Florida                 JOHN JOYCE, Pennsylvania
TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona              KELLY ARMSTRONG, North Dakota
KATHLEEN M. RICE, New York
ANGIE CRAIG, Minnesota
KIM SCHRIER, Washington
LORI TRAHAN, Massachusetts
LIZZIE FLETCHER, Texas
                                 ------                                

                           Professional Staff

                   JEFFREY C. CARROLL, Staff Director
                TIFFANY GUARASCIO, Deputy Staff Director
                  NATE HODSON, Minority Staff Director
              Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations

                        DIANA DeGETTE, Colorado
                                  Chair
ANN M. KUSTER, New Hampshire         H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, Virginia
KATHLEEN M. RICE, New York             Ranking Member
JAN SCHAKOWSKY, Illinois             MICHAEL C. BURGESS, Texas
PAUL TONKO, New York                 DAVID B. McKINLEY, West Virginia
RAUL RUIZ, California                BILLY LONG, Missouri
SCOTT H. PETERS, California, Vice    NEAL P. DUNN, Florida
    Chair                            JOHN JOYCE, Pennsylvania
KIM SCHRIER, Washington              GARY J. PALMER, Alabama
LORI TRAHAN, Massachusetts           CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, Washington 
TOM O'HALLERAN, Arizona                  (ex officio)
FRANK PALLONE, Jr., New Jersey (ex 
    officio)
                             C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              
                                                                   Page
Hon. Diana DeGette, a Representative in Congress from the State 
  of Colorado, opening statement.................................     2
    Prepared statement...........................................     4
Hon. H. Morgan Griffith, a Representative in Congress from the 
  Commonwealth of Virginia, opening statement....................     5
    Prepared statement...........................................     6
Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr., a Representative in Congress from the 
  State of New Jersey, opening statement.........................     8
    Prepared statement...........................................     9
Hon. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Representative in Congress from 
  the State of Washington, opening statement.....................    10
    Prepared statement...........................................    12
Hon. Michael C. Burgess, a Representative in Congress from the 
  State of Texas, prepared statement.............................    61

                                Witness

JooYeun Chang, Acting Assistant Secretary, Administration for 
  Children and Families, Department of Health and Human Services.    13
    Prepared statement...........................................    16
    Answers to submitted questions...............................    81

                           Submitted Material

Letter of June 29, 2018, from Rep. Greg Walden, et al., to Alex 
  M. Azar II, Secretary, Department of Health and Human Services, 
  submitted by Mr. Griffith......................................    62
Letter of April 22, 2021, from Mrs. Rodgers, et al., to Vice 
  President Kamala Harris, submitted by Mr. Griffith.............    69


    A HUMANE RESPONSE: PRIORITIZING THE WELL-BEING OF UNACCOMPANIED 
                                CHILDREN

                              ----------                              


                        WEDNESDAY, JUNE 9, 2021

                  House of Representatives,
      Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations,
                          Committee on Energy and Commerce,
                                                    Washington, DC.
    The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 11:29 a.m., via 
Cisco Webex online video conferencing, Hon. Diana DeGette 
(chair of the subcommittee) presiding.
    Members present: Representatives DeGette, Kuster, Rice, 
Schakowsky, Tonko, Ruiz, Peters, Schrier, Trahan, O'Halleran, 
Pallone (ex officio), Griffith (subcommittee ranking member), 
Burgess, McKinley, Dunn, Joyce, Palmer, and Rodgers (ex 
officio).
    Also present: Representatives Cardenas, Bilirakis, Johnson, 
and Carter.
    Staff present: Kevin Barstow, Chief Oversight Counsel; 
Jeffrey C. Carroll, Staff Director; Austin Flack, Policy 
Analyst; Waverly Gordon, General Counsel; Tiffany Guarascio, 
Deputy Staff Director; Perry Hamilton, Clerk; Rebekah Jones, 
Counsel; Chris Knauer,, Oversight Staff Director; Mackenzie 
Kuhl, Digital Assistant; Kevin McAloon, Professional Staff 
Member; Kaitlyn Peel, Digital Director; Tim Robinson, Chief 
Counsel; Benjamin Tabor, Junior Professional Staff Member; 
Caroline Wood, Staff Assistant; C.J. Young, Deputy 
Communications Director; Diane Cutler, Minority Detailee, 
Oversight and Investigations; Theresa Gambo, Minority Financial 
and Office Administrator; Marissa Gervasi, Minority Counsel, 
Oversight and Investigations; Brittany Havens, Minority 
Professional Staff Member, Oversight and Investigations; Nate 
Hodson, Minority Staff Director; Peter Kielty, Minority General 
Counsel; Emily King Minority Member Services Director; Bijan 
Koohmaraie, Minority Chief Counsel, Oversight and 
Investigations Chief Counsel; Clare Paoletta, Minority Policy 
Analyst, Health; Alan Slobodin, Minority Chief Investigative 
Counsel, Oversight and Investigations; Michael Taggart, 
Minority Policy Director; and Everett Winnick, Minority 
Director of Information Technology.
    Ms. DeGette. The Subcommittee on Oversight and 
Investigations hearing will now come to order.
    Today, the committee's holding a hearing entitled ``A 
Humane Response: Prioritizing the Well-Being of Unaccompanied 
Children.''
    Today's hearing will examine the Biden administration's 
efforts to humanely and responsibly care for unaccompanied 
children. Due to the COVID-19 public health emergency, today's 
hearing is being held remotely. All Members, the witnesses, and 
staff, will be participating via video conferencing. As part of 
our proceeding, microphones will be set on mute for purposes of 
eliminating inadvertent background noise.
    Members and our witness, you will need to unmute your 
microphone every time you wish to speak. And if at any time 
during the hearing I'm unable to chair the hearing, the vice 
chair of the subcommittee, Mr. Peters, will serve as chair 
until I'm able to return. Documents for the record can be sent 
to Austin Flack at the same email address that we've provided 
to staff. And all documents will be entered into the record at 
the conclusion of the hearing.
    The Chair now recognizes herself for the purposes of an 
opening statement.

 OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. DIANA DeGETTE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN 
              CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF COLORADO

    Today, we're holding an important hearing on the safety and 
well-being of unaccompanied children that arrive at our border 
without a parent or a legal guardian. This is the committee's 
third hearing on unaccompanied children in the past 2\1/2\ 
years. We've come a long way since the initial hearings that we 
had. Unlike the previous administration, the Biden 
administration is, once again, implementing policies that are 
in the best interest of the vulnerable children in its care. 
But, along with the Department of Health and Human Services, 
and the Office of Refugee Resettlement, they are now faced with 
a steep challenge.
    The numbers of unaccompanied children being transferred 
into the care of HHS this year have been unprecedented. To be 
clear, the Biden administration did not cause this surge. These 
are long-standing, structural root causes for these trends, 
which is why Vice President Harris was in Central America this 
week to talk about long-term solutions to these very thorny 
problems, but regardless of the factors, these children are 
here, and HHS is charged with their care until it can find a 
suitable sponsor for the children.
    When the numbers went up this year, the Biden 
administration took swift action to open urgently needed 
temporary facilities at the border to safely house children, 
while HHS worked to find them beds in licensed facilities 
around the country and then to place them in permanent homes 
with sponsors like a parent or close family relative.
    As a result of those efforts, the number of children 
staying at the Customs and Border Patrol facilities has 
declined dramatically, and HHS is making progress moving 
children out of the temporary facilities and into permanent 
beds, enabling the agency to close some of those facilities 
with more to close in the oncoming weeks.
    But before I talk about the ongoing work and what more 
needs to be done, I want to talk for a minute about the recent 
history of the program and to provide some context about where 
we are today. Every recent administration has faced the 
enormous challenge of unaccompanied children at the border. The 
solutions are never easy, but this country has accepted those 
seeking refuge at our doorstep and treated them with humanity, 
especially children.
    But the Trump administration's response was state-
sanctioned cruelty. It intentionally separated thousands of 
children from their families, unleashing chaos as the 
administration lost track of their parent and spent months 
trying to reunite them. The policy inflicted untold trauma on 
the children, and, unfortunately, hundreds of those parents 
have not even been found today.
    The committee led the condemnation of this shameful policy, 
and we held two hearings and conducted an investigation that 
exposed how HHS, under the Trump administration's political 
leadership, should have done more to stop this travesty. In 
addition, the Trump administration weaponized HHS as an arm of 
immigration enforcement, deterring potential sponsors from 
coming forward to take the children in and further impairing 
the agency's important mission to serve those children.
    That was the state of affairs when the Biden administration 
took office on January 20th: a decimated asylum system, civil 
servants and volunteers discouraged and prevented from doing 
their jobs, and precious time and resources spent on putting 
separated families back together instead of preparing for the 
next surge of migrants.
    And yet, despite those difficulties, the Biden 
administration has made significant progress in responding 
humanely to the enormous challenge before it. In his first days 
in office, President Biden formed an interagency task force to 
find and reunify families, study the fallout from the 
separations policy, and work to correct the injustices. That 
important work continues with our support.
    And then, faced with unprecedented numbers at the border, 
instead of separating families or just turning children away, 
the Biden administration is responding with as much compassion 
as possible.
    But the challenge is not over, and a lot needs to be done. 
HHS needs to continue to work to make sure that temporary 
facilities provide adequate services and are adequately 
staffed, and then it has to find permanent beds for those 
children.
    HHS must remain vigilant in the face of COVID-19, including 
testing and quarantining newly arrived children, and then 
treating any children that's sick. And HHS must also continue 
to thoroughly vet potential sponsors to make sure the children 
are in a safe environment.
    But let me end on one note. I think we can all agree on 
both sides of the aisle, we need a long-term strategy to expand 
the number of permanent, licensed beds so we are not in the 
situation of opening up temporary beds every spring when we get 
a surge.
    This year's surge demonstrated the need to expand that 
network, and history shows this is not going to be the last 
time. So HHS needs to prepare and so does Congress. I really 
want to thank our witness for being here today. It's clear we 
have our work cut out for us, but I'm hoping that we're back on 
the right course and committed to putting the welfare of the 
children first. And we stand ready to assist in those efforts.
    I yield back. And at this time, I'll recognize the ranking 
member of the subcommittee, Mr. Griffith, for 5 minutes for the 
purposes of an opening statement.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. DeGette follows:]

                Prepared Statement of Hon. Diana DeGette

    Today, we are holding an important hearing on the safety 
and well-being of unaccompanied children that arrive at our 
border without a parent or legal guardian. This is the 
committee's third hearing on unaccompanied children in the past 
two and a half years.
    We have come a long way since those previous hearings.
    Unlike the previous administration, the Biden 
administration is once again implementing policies that are in 
the best interest of the vulnerable children in its care. But 
the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), along with 
its Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), are now faced with a 
steep challenge.
    The numbers of unaccompanied children being transferred 
into the care of HHS this year have been unprecedented.
    To be clear, the Biden administration did not cause this 
surge. There are long-standing, structural root-causes for 
these migration trends, which is why Vice President Harris was 
in Central America just this week to talk about long-term 
solutions. But regardless of those factors, the children are 
here, and HHS is charged with their care until it can find a 
suitable sponsor for these children.
    When the numbers went up this year, the Biden 
administration took swift action to open urgently needed 
temporary facilities at the border to safely house children 
while HHS worked to find them beds in licensed facilities 
around the country, and then place them in homes with sponsors 
such as a parent or close family relative.
    As a result of those efforts, the number of children 
staying at Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities has 
declined dramatically, and HHS is making progress moving 
children out of the temporary facilities and into permanent 
beds, enabling the agency to close some of those facilities, 
with more planned to close in the coming weeks.
    But before I talk about that ongoing work and what more 
needs to be done, I want to speak for a moment about the recent 
history of this program, and provide some context for where we 
are today.
    Every recent administration has faced the enormous 
challenge of unaccompanied children at the border. The 
solutions are never easy, but this country has accepted those 
seeking refuge at our doorstep, and treated them with 
humanity--especially children.
    But the Trump administration's response was state-
sanctioned cruelty: it intentionally separated thousands of 
children from their families, unleashing chaos as the 
administration lost track of the parents and spent months 
trying to reunite them. This policy inflicted untold trauma on 
these vulnerable children, and many of the parents have still 
not been found even today.
    This committee led the condemnation of that shameful 
policy, and held two hearings and conducted an investigation 
that exposed how HHS under the Trump administration's political 
leadership should have done more to stop this travesty.
    In addition, the Trump administration weaponized HHS as an 
arm of immigration enforcement, deterring potential sponsors 
from coming forward to take these children in, and further 
impairing the agency's important mission to serve these 
children.
    That was the state of affairs when the Biden administration 
took office on January 20th this year: a decimated asylum 
system, civil servants and volunteers discouraged and prevented 
from doing their jobs, and precious time and resources spent on 
putting separated families back together instead of preparing 
for the next surge of migrants.
    And yet, despite those difficulties, the Biden 
administration has made significant progress in responding 
humanely to the enormous challenge before them.
    In his first days in office, President Biden formed an 
Interagency Task Force to find and reunify families, study the 
fallout from the separations policy, and work to correct the 
injustices. That important work continues, with our support.
    And then, faced with unprecedented numbers at the border, 
instead of separating families or just turning children away, 
the Biden administration is responding with as much compassion 
as is possible.
    But the challenge is not over, and more remains to be done.
    HHS must continue to work to ensure that temporary 
facilities provide appropriate services and are adequately 
staffed, and then find permanent beds for these children.
    HHS must remain vigilant in the face of COVID-19, including 
testing and quarantining newly arrived children, then treating 
any child who is sick. HHS must also continue to thoroughly vet 
potential sponsors to ensure we are placing a child in a safe 
environment.
    Let me end, however, on noting that we need a long-term 
strategy to expand the number of permanent, licensed beds so we 
are not back here every year opening up temporary shelters 
again. This year's surge demonstrated the need to expand that 
network, and history shows us that this likely will not be the 
last surge. So HHS needs to prepare, and so does the Congress.
    I thank the witness for being here today. It is clear we 
have our work cut out for us, but the Biden administration has 
put us back on the right course, and is committed to putting 
the welfare of these children first. We stand ready to assist 
in those efforts.
    I yield back.

    Ms. DeGette. Mr. Griffith.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. H. MORGAN GRIFFITH, A REPRESENTATIVE 
         IN CONGRESS FROM THE COMMONWEALTH OF VIRGINIA

    Mr. Griffith. Thank you, Chair DeGette, for holding this 
hearing. This committee's oversight over the U.S. Department of 
Health and Human Services' Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR, 
management, care, and treatment of unaccompanied children, as 
well as the sponsorship process for unaccompanied children 
extends back to 2014 in response to the first major influx of 
children in family units coming across our southern border.
    Because of the work done by this committee and others, 
reforms were made to the ORR program, including improving the 
medical care available to children while in HHS care and 
custody. In the 115th Congress, our work on this issue 
continued after the announcement and then end of the zero-
tolerance policy.
    I want to be very clear: I support strong enforcement of 
our Nation's borders, but I do not support separating children 
from their parents. I care deeply about the safety and well-
being of these children, and these separations caused great 
harm to the children and the families involved.
    In 2019, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and HHS 
experienced another surge of unaccompanied children and family 
units coming across our southern border. ORR received 69,488 
referrals from DHS in fiscal year 2019. That influx was higher 
than it had been in previous years, leading to capacity and 
resource issues at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and 
ORR facilities.
    Over the past few months, the U.S. has been experiencing 
another surge in its southern border. According to the CBP 
southwest land border demographic data, in fiscal year 2021 to 
date, U.S. Border Patrol has had encounters with over 64,600 
unaccompanied children/single minors with over 9,200 encounters 
in February, over 18,700 in March, and over 16,900 in April. 
According to a recent article, the number of migrant children 
in CBP custody peaked at 5,767 on March 28.
    Further, according to ORR, on April 2nd the average time in 
CBP custody was 133 hours, significantly over the 72-hour 
limit. In addition, ORR has more than 23,000 children in its 
care in late April. As we have seen over the years, immigration 
trends can be hard to accurately predict, but the current 
circumstances at the border were not completely unforeseeable.
    President Biden campaigned on easing immigration controls, 
giving migrants a reason to believe that it would be easier for 
them to get into the U.S. if he were elected President. In 
fact, ORR first reached 85 percent operational capacity, also 
referred to as influx capacity, on February 7, 2021, less than 
1 month after President Biden was sworn into office.
    This committee does not have jurisdiction over immigration 
policies, and that is not what we are here to discuss today. 
However, it is ORR's role to care for unaccompanied children 
who are referred to them by immigration officials. And it is 
critical that ORR's prepared for surges in unaccompanied 
children referrals in order to make sure that ORR can 
adequately care for unaccompanied children while they are in 
their custody, especially during a global pandemic. Whether it 
is challenges with bed capacity, hiring, training, and 
adequately vetting personnel at ORR facilities or ensuring that 
sponsors are appropriately screened before placing children in 
their care, all of these components are critical to ensure the 
safety and well-being of these children.
    Over the past few months, we have seen concerning reports, 
including the administration not requiring FBI fingerprint 
background checks of caregivers at its emergency intake sites, 
allegations of neglect or abuse at ORR facilities, children 
being stuck on parked buses for days before going to family or 
to sponsors, and inadequate living conditions at ORR 
facilities, including reports of girls housed at a Houston 
facility being instructed to use plastic bags for toilets 
because there were not enough staff to accompany them to 
restrooms.
    In addition, ORR has implemented policies to expedite the 
release of unaccompanied children to sponsors, and we need to 
ensure these policies do not inadvertently put children in 
danger. I recently visited an ORR facility in Texas, and I 
greatly appreciate all of the hard work of the staff, 
contractors, and volunteers who are helping to care for these 
children.
    But I remain concerned about some of the recent reports and 
ORR's processes when it comes to the management and care of 
these children. I look forward to the opportunity to ask 
questions regarding these concerns at today's hearing. I thank 
Acting Assistant Secretary Chang for being here today and being 
a part of this important discussion.
    And I yield back.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Griffith follows:]

             Prepared Statement of Hon. H. Morgan Griffith

    Thank you, Chair DeGette, for holding this hearing.
    This committee's oversight over the U.S. Department of 
Health and Human Services' (HHS) Office of Refugee 
Resettlement's (ORR) management, care, and treatment of 
unaccompanied children, as well as the sponsorship process for 
unaccompanied children, extends back to 2014 in response to the 
first major influx of children and family units coming across 
our southern border. Because of the work done by this committee 
and others, reforms were made to the ORR program, including 
improving the medical care available to children while in HHS' 
care and custody.
    In the 115th Congress, our work on this issue continued 
after the announcement and then end of the Zero Tolerance 
policy. I want to be very clear, I support strong enforcement 
of our Nation's borders, but I do not support separating 
children from their parents. I care deeply about the safety and 
well-being of these children, and these separations caused 
great harm to the children and families involved.
    In 2019, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and 
HHS experienced another surge of unaccompanied children and 
family units coming across our southern border. ORR received 
69,488 referrals from DHS in Fiscal Year 2019.\1\ That influx 
was higher than it had been in previous years, leading to 
capacity and resource issues at the U.S. Customs and Border 
Protection (CBP) and ORR facilities.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \1\  https://www.acf.hhs.gov/orr/about/ucs/facts-and-data.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Over the past few months, the U.S. has been experiencing 
another surge at its southern border. According to CBP 
Southwest land border demographic data in Fiscal Year 2021 to 
date, U.S. Border Patrol has had encounters with over 64,600 
unaccompanied children/Single Minors, with over 9,200 
encounters in February, over 18,700 in March, and over 16,900 
in April.\2\ According to a recent article, the number of 
migrant children in CBP custody peaked at 5,767 on March 28.\3\ 
Further, according to ORR, on April 2, the average time in CBP 
custody was 133 hours, significantly over the 72-hour limit. In 
addition, ORR had more than 23,000 children in its care in late 
April.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \2\ U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Southwest Land Border 
Encounters, available at https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-
land-border-encounters (last accessed on Apr. 12, 2021).
    \3\ Priscilla Alverez, Number of unaccompanied migrant children in 
Customs and Border Protection custody falls 45%, CNN (Apr. 12, 2021), 
available at https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/12/politics/border-migrant-
children/index.html.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    As we have seen over the years, immigration trends can be 
hard to accurately predict, but the current circumstances at 
the border were not completely unforeseeable. President Biden 
campaigned on easing immigration controls, giving migrants a 
reason to believe that it would be easier for them to get into 
the U.S. if he was elected President. In fact, ORR first 
reached 85 percent operational capacity--also referred to as 
influx capacity--on February 7, 2021, less than one month after 
President Biden was sworn into office. This committee does not 
have jurisdiction over immigration policies and that is not 
what we are here to discuss today. However, it is ORR's role to 
care for unaccompanied children who are referred to them by 
immigration officials, and it is critical that ORR is prepared 
for surges in unaccompanied children referrals, in order to 
make sure that ORR can adequately care for unaccompanied 
children while they are in their custody, especially during a 
global pandemic.
    Whether it is challenges with bed capacity; hiring, 
training, and adequately vetting personnel at ORR facilities; 
or ensuring that sponsors are appropriately screened before 
placing children in their care--all of these components are 
critical to ensure the safety and well-being of these children.
    Over the past few months we have seen concerning reports, 
including the administration not requiring FBI fingerprint 
background checks of caregivers at its emergency intake 
sites;\4\ allegations of neglect and abuse at ORR 
facilities;\5\ children being stuck on parked buses for days 
before going to family or sponsors;\6\ and inadequate living 
conditions at ORR facilities, including reports of girls housed 
at a Houston facility being instructed to use plastic bags for 
toilets because there were not enough staff to accompany them 
to restrooms.\7\ In addition, ORR has implemented policies to 
expedite the release of unaccompanied children to sponsors and 
we need to ensure these policies do not inadvertently put 
children in danger.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    \4\ https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-health-immigration-child-
welfare-coronavirus-pandemic-c4c87f6e76a7fd3ab6e4850ed028c002.
    \5\ https://apnews.com/article/greg-abbott-immigration-child-
welfare-coronavirus-pandemic-san-antonio-
9cb5c714c184a5e442b01a46adc6a434.
    \6\ https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/immigration/some-migrant-
children-stuck-overnight-parked-buses-going-family-or-n1267167.
    \7\ https://abcnews.go.com/US/unbearable-conditions-push-biden-
administration-close-houston-migrant/story?id=77156939.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I recently visited an ORR facility in Texas, and I greatly 
appreciate all of the hard work of the staff, contractors, and 
volunteers who are helping to care for these children, but I 
remain concerned about some of the recent reports and ORR's 
processes when it comes to the management and care for these 
children. I look forward to the opportunity to ask questions 
regarding these concerns at today's hearing.
    I thank Acting Assistant Secretary Chang for being here 
today and being part of this important discussion. I yield 
back.

    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman.
    The Chair now recognizes the chairman of the full 
committee, Mr. Pallone, for an opening statement, 5 minutes.

OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. FRANK PALLONE, Jr., A REPRESENTATIVE 
            IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF NEW JERSEY

    Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Madam Chair. Today, we continue our 
oversight of one of the most challenging issues our country has 
faced in recent years, the unprecedented numbers of 
unaccompanied children at the U.S. border, and this is not a 
new phenomenon. The last three administrations have all faced 
surges of unaccompanied children, and each administration has 
had to decide how to respond to this challenge. We all recall 
the choice the Trump administration made as thousands of 
innocent children were forcibly separated from their families 
at the border. The chaos and devastation from those actions is 
well-documented: children cowering in fear, suffering 
depression and post-traumatic stress. The Trump 
administration's actions were cruel and inhuman, in my opinion. 
And, sadly, the challenges of reunification continue, as the 
parents of nearly 400 children still have not been found as of 
last month.
    The prior administration took other actions to undermine 
the Office of Refugee Resettlement, which is tasked with caring 
for unaccompanied children until it can safely place them with 
a suitable sponsor. The Trump administration instituted a 
hiring freeze and established an information-sharing agreement 
that turned ORR-sponsored vetting program into an arm of 
immigration enforcement. The result left sponsors afraid to 
come forward and children left in the ORR and ORR's care for 
extended periods of time--actions that ORR ultimately deemed 
counterproductive to its mission.
    For the Biden administration, these Trump-era actions in 
the global COVID pandemic only served to compound the 
challenges presented by record numbers of unaccompanied 
children arriving at our border. Fortunately, under President 
Biden's leadership, the approach has been decidedly different. 
Zero tolerance was formally rescinded, unaccompanied children 
are no longer being turned away at the border, and the 
information-sharing agreement that weaponized ORR has been 
terminated.
    ORR's mission to prioritize the well-being of the children 
in its care is being restored, and that isn't to say that this 
administration doesn't face challenge. ORR's licensed bed 
capacity, reduced due to COVID-19, has been nearly half, has 
been at nearly full capacity, I should say, for months. In 
March, thousands of children who crossed the border were 
brought into Customs and Border Protection facilities, which 
are not meant to house children for longer than 72 hours. But 
the Biden administration quickly mobilized resources, and with 
assistance from FEMA and the Department of Defense, ORR added 
capacity for more than 18,000 temporary beds. And as a result, 
even as the influx of unaccompanied children continues, the 
average time a child spends in CBP custody has been 24 hours or 
less since the beginning of May.
    The ORR temporary facilities are not perfect, but they are 
far better for children than a CBP detention center. Basic 
humanitarian requirements are met, children have access to 
food, shelter, clean clothes, medical assessments, and basic 
hygiene. The facilities are working to include legal, 
recreational, and educational services as well.
    So working with the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention, ORR has also taken great strides to mitigate the 
spread of COVID-19 at these sites, instituting a testing 
regiment, quarantine requirements, and providing treatments 
when needed. And just last week, ORR issued guidance to care 
providers that eligible children in their care can now begin to 
receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
    So these temporary facilities are not meant, as we know, 
for the long term, and that's why the Biden administration has 
also ramped up efforts to expand its permanent licensed bed 
capacity and better facilitate sponsor vetting so the children 
can be placed in a safe home. And I think those efforts are 
paying off. In May, ORR averaged 4,100 sponsor unifications per 
week, more than all unifications for the entire month of 
February by comparison. And while this progress demonstrates 
the administration's commitment to the well-being of these 
children, the temporary facilities cannot be a permanent 
solution. We all know that.
    If these patterns of migration continue, we must ensure ORR 
expands its licensed bed network and that it has well-trained 
and vetted staff to care for these vulnerable children. And I 
look forward to hearing from our witnesses today about the 
progress that has been made and what more is needed to develop 
and execute ORR's long-term strategy, and that strategy has to 
start with one priority, and that's the well-being of the 
innocent children placed in ORR's care.
    And I thank Ms. Chang for being here today. We all know 
that this is a difficult task and one that, unfortunately, is 
with us for a while. But I do think that there have been 
significant improvements under your watch, Ms. Chang. So I 
thank you for that.
    And yield back, Madam Chair.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Pallone follows:]

             Prepared Statement of Hon. Frank Pallone, Jr.

    Today, we continue our oversight of one of the most 
challenging issues our country has faced in recent years--the 
unprecedented numbers of unaccompanied children at the U.S. 
border.
    This is not a new phenomenon. The last three 
administrations have all faced surges of unaccompanied 
children. And each administration has had to decide how to 
respond to this challenge.
    We all recall the choice the Trump administration made as 
thousands of innocent children were forcibly separated from 
their families at the border. The chaos and devastation from 
those actions is well-documented--children cowering in fear, 
suffering depression and post-traumatic stress. The Trump 
administration's actions were cruel and inhumane in my opinion. 
And, sadly, the challenges of reunification continue as the 
parents of nearly 400 children still had not been found as of 
last month.
    The prior administration took other actions to undermine 
the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is tasked with 
caring for unaccompanied children until it can safely place 
them with a suitable sponsor. The Trump administration 
instituted a hiring freeze and established an information 
sharing agreement that turned ORR's sponsor vetting program 
into an arm of immigration enforcement. The result left 
sponsors afraid to come forward and children left in ORR care 
for extended periods of time--actions that ORR ultimately 
deemed counter-productive to its mission.
    For the Biden administration, these Trump-era actions and 
the global COVID-19 pandemic only served to compound the 
challenges presented by record numbers of unaccompanied 
children arriving at our border.
    Fortunately, under President Biden's leadership, the 
approach has been decidedly different. ``Zero Tolerance'' was 
formally rescinded, unaccompanied children are no longer being 
turned away at the border, and the information-sharing 
agreement that weaponized ORR has been terminated.
    ORR's mission to prioritize the well-being of the children 
in its care is being restored.
    That isn't to say that the administration doesn't face 
challenges. ORR's licensed bed capacity--reduced due to COVID 
restrictions--has been at nearly full capacity for months. In 
March, thousands of children who crossed the border were 
brought into Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities, 
which are not meant to house children for longer than 72 hours.
    The Biden administration quickly mobilized resources and, 
with assistance from FEMA and the Department of Defense, ORR 
added capacity for more than 18,000 temporary beds. As a 
result, even as the influx of unaccompanied children continues, 
the average time a child spends in CBP custody has been 24 
hours or less since the beginning of May.
    The ORR temporary facilities are not perfect, but they are 
far better for children than a CBP detention center. Basic 
humanitarian requirements are met--children have access to 
food, shelter, clean clothes, medical assessments, and basic 
hygiene. The facilities are working to include legal, 
recreational, and educational services as well.
    Working with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 
(CDC), ORR has also taken great strides to mitigate the spread 
of COVID-19 at these sites--instituting a testing regimen, 
quarantine requirements, and providing treatments when needed. 
And, just last week, ORR issued guidance to care-providers that 
eligible children in their care can now begin to receive a 
COVID-19 vaccine.
    But these temporary facilities are not meant for the long-
term. And that is why the Biden administration has also ramped 
up efforts to expand its permanent, licensed bed capacity and 
better facilitate sponsor-vetting so that children can be 
placed in a safe home. Those efforts are paying off: in May, 
ORR averaged 4,100 sponsor unifications per week--more than all 
unifications for the entire month of February.
    While this progress demonstrates the administration's 
commitment to the well-being of these children, the temporary 
facilities cannot be a permanent solution.
    If these patterns of migration continue, we must ensure ORR 
expands its licensed bed network and that it has well-trained 
and vetted staff to care for these vulnerable children.
    I look forward to hearing from our witness today about the 
progress that has been made, and what more is needed to develop 
and execute ORR's long-term strategy.
    And that strategy must start with one priority: the well-
being of the innocent children placed in ORR's care.
    I thank Ms. Chang for being here today. We all know that 
this is a difficult task, but I do think there have been 
significant improvements under your watch.
    I yield back.

    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman. The Chair now 
recognizes the ranking member of the full committee, Mrs. 
Rodgers, for 5 minutes.

      OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. CATHY McMORRIS RODGERS, A 
    REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF WASHINGTON

    Mrs. Rodgers. Thank you, Madam Chair, and members of the 
committee. There's a humanitarian crisis, a national security 
crisis, and a public health crisis at our southern border. And 
the Biden administration is responsible for this historic 
surge. While running for office and since taking his oath, 
President Biden and his administration have sent a clear 
message to migrants: Our southern border is open, and you 
should come.
    On a debate stage, Biden gave an obvious wink and nod to 
admit migrants when he said he would provide free healthcare 
for illegal immigrants. On Inauguration Day, once again, we 
heard Biden--he issued several Executive orders, five 
immigration Executive orders, some weakening our security and 
the ability to stop the flow of illegal immigrants.
    Just last week, the Biden administration officially ended 
the Trump era Remain in Mexico policy. And for months, 
administration officials had made clear that they would not 
turn away any child trying to cross our borders.
    This is not a humane approach. Encouraging migrants to make 
the dangerous journey north, especially encouraging children, 
is not humane. Yet this administration's policies and rhetorics 
are encouraging the migrants to come at an unprecedented rate.
    The U.S. Border Patrol has had over 54,400 encounters with 
unaccompanied children and single minors already this year. In 
March alone, the number of unaccompanied children Border Patrol 
encountered reached nearly 19,000, smashing the previous high 
by more than 60 percent. At the end of April, ORR had more than 
23,000 children in its care. And more broadly, the 
unaccompanied children in April alone, more than 178,000 
migrants were encountered at the southern border, the highest 
1-month total in more than 2 decades.
    There's also been a dangerous spike in drug trafficking. 
What we are seeing at the southern border is an increase in 
opioids--deadly, extremely lethal opioids. As of April, the 
Customs and Border Patrol seized more fentanyl this year than 
it did all of 2020. And we know that the surge brings with it 
public health concerns, especially during a global pandemic. To 
get this unprecedented crisis under control, we need 
leadership. Unfortunately, we've seen some critical missteps 
which have led to internal finger-pointing. President Biden has 
passed the buck now to Vice President Harris. This happened in 
March. And her team recently tried to distance herself from the 
crisis. She still hasn't been to the southern border. This week 
she met with the heads of Guatemala and Mexico, but as the 
point person, she must do more. It's not a joke or a laughing 
matter.
    Unfortunately, Health and Human Services has also had its 
challenges, especially when it comes to an unprecedented flow 
of unaccompanied children. Our brave Border Patrol officials 
and workers caring for unaccompanied children deserve applause 
and support.
    Sadly, some Members of Congress that were outraged by 
overcrowded Border Patrol facilities and ORR facilities housing 
unaccompanied children are remaining silent now. Those who 
decried the ORR facilities used in the last administration--
some even compared them to concentration camps--now remain 
silent despite this administration using the same facilities.
    And those who criticized conditions of the facilities 
holding unaccompanied children during the last administration 
are now remaining silent, with the recent allegations of abuse, 
neglect, and failures to properly vet staff. We must 
acknowledge this border crisis. Our witness today is only one 
piece of the border issue at the southern border, and our 
discussion will focus on ORR, which is responsible for 
coordinating and implementing the care.
    We expect more, we need to do more to secure our border, 
and this moment calls for leadership. Thank you for this 
discussion.
    And I yield back.
    [The prepared statement of Mrs. Rodgers follows:]

           Prepared Statement of Hon. Cathy McMorris Rodgers

A CRISIS CREATED
    There is a humanitarian crisis, a national security crisis, 
and a public health crisis at our southern border. and the 
Biden administration is responsible for the historic surges.
    While running for office and since taking his oath, 
President Biden and his administration have sent a clear 
message to migrants: our southern border is open, and you 
should come.
     On a debate stage, Biden gave an obvious wink and 
a nod to migrants when he said he would provide free health 
care for illegal immigrants.
     On Inauguration Day, President Biden signed and 
issued five immigration executive orders, some weakening our 
security and ability to stop the flow of illegal immigrants.
     Just last week, the Biden administration 
officially ended the Trump era ``Remain in Mexico'' policy.
     And for months, administration officials have made 
clear that they would not turn away any child trying to cross 
our border.
    Let's be clear. this is NOT a humane approach.
    Encouraging migrants to make the dangerous journey north--
particularly encouraging children--is NOT humane.
    Yet, thanks to this administration's policies and rhetoric, 
we are seeing migrants come at unprecedented rates.
ISSUES
    The U.S. Border Patrol has had over 51,400 encounters with 
unaccompanied children and single minors already this year.
    In March alone, the number of unaccompanied children Border 
Patrol encountered reached nearly 19,000--smashing the previous 
high by more than 60 percent.
    And at the end of April, ORR had more than 23,000 children 
in its care.
    More broadly than unaccompanied children, in April alone 
more than 178,000 migrants were encountered at the southern 
border--the highest one-month total in more than two decades.
    There has also been a dangerous spike in drug trafficking, 
particularly for deadly and extremely lethal opioids.
    As of April, the Customs and Border Protection seized more 
fentanyl this year than it did ALL of 2020.
    And we know the surge brings with it public health 
concerns, especially during the global pandemic.
    To get this unprecedented crisis under control, we need 
clear leadership.
LACK OF LEADERSHIP
    But the Biden administration has made some critical 
missteps which have led to internal finger-pointing.
    President Biden passed the buck in March to Vice President 
Harris. But her team recently tried to distance her from the 
crisis and since taking over, she has not been to our southern 
border.
    This week she met with the heads of Guatemala and Mexico, 
but as our point person, she MUST do more. It's not a joke or 
laughing matter.
    Unfortunately, HHS has also had its challenges, especially 
when it comes to addressing the unprecedented flow of 
unaccompanied children.
    Our brave border patrol officials and workers caring for 
unaccompanied children deserve applause and our support--
particularly given the unprecedented nature of this ongoing 
crisis.
HYPOCRISY
    Sadly, Democrats who were once outraged by overcrowded 
border patrol facilities and ORR facilities housing 
unaccompanied children have largely remained silent.
    Democrats who previously decried ORR facilities used in the 
last administration--some even compared them to ``concentration 
camps''--now remain silent, despite this administration using 
the very same facilities.
    And those that criticized conditions of facilities holding 
unaccompanied children during the last administration are 
nowhere to be found when it comes to recent allegations of 
abuse, neglect, and failures to properly vet staff by this 
administration.
    This administration must acknowledge the border crisis--and 
it is time Democrats find their voice again on these issues.
    Our witness today is only one piece of the broader issue at 
our southern border.
    While our discussion today will focus on ORR--which is 
responsible for coordinating and implementing the care and 
placement of unaccompanied children with appropriate sponsors--
we expect this administration to do more across the board to 
secure or borders.
    This moment calls for real leadership.
    I look forward to today's discussion. I yield back.

    Ms. DeGette. The gentlelady yields back.
    The Chair now asks unanimous consent that Members' written 
opening statements be made part of the record, and without 
objection, so ordered. I would like to now introduce our 
witness for today's hearing, JooYeun Chang, who is the Acting 
Assistant Secretary, Administration for Children and Families, 
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
    Thank you so much for coming today. I really appreciate it. 
And I know you're aware, Ms. Chang, that the committee is 
holding an investigative hearing, and when doing so we have the 
practice of taking testimony under oath.
    Do you have any objections to testifying under oath today?
    Ms. Chang. No, Chair DeGette, I do not.
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you. Let the record reflect the witness 
responded no.
    And the Chairwoman advised you that, under the rules of the 
House and the rules of the committee, you're entitled to be 
accompanied by counsel. Do you wish to be accompanied by 
counsel today?
    Ms. Chang. Not today.
    Ms. DeGette. Let the record reflect that the witness has 
responded no.
    In that case, if you would please, raise your right hand so 
you may be sworn in.
    [Witness sworn.]
    Ms. DeGette. Let the record reflect, the witness responded 
affirmatively, and you're now under oath and subject to the 
penalty set forth in title 18, section 1001 of the U.S. Code. 
And the Chair will now recognize our witness for a 5-minute 
summary of her written statement. There's a timer on your 
screen you can see that will count down your time, and it turns 
red when your 5 minutes is over.
    Ms. Chang, you are now recognized.

    STATEMENT OF JOOYEUN CHANG, ACTING ASSISTANT SECRETARY, 
ADMINISTRATION FOR CHILDREN AND FAMILIES, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH 
                       AND HUMAN SERVICES

    Ms. Chang. Chair DeGette, Ranking Member Griffith, and 
members of the subcommittee, it's my honor to appear on behalf 
of the Department of Health and Human Services. My name is 
JooYeun Chang, and I'm the Acting Assistant Secretary for the 
Administration for Children and Families. As the Acting 
Assistant Secretary, I oversee the work of the Office of 
Refugee Resettlement, or ORR, which is responsible for the care 
and placement of unaccompanied children in HHS custody.
    Today, I want to share with you ACF'S efforts to increase 
capacity while quickly and safely unifying unaccompanied 
children with a sponsor, typically a parent or a close family 
member. This is a challenging time for the UC program. A 
combination of extremely high levels of referrals from DHS, 
COVID health and safety protocols that forced nearly 40 percent 
of ORR licensed beds offline, and programmatic and policy 
decisions made by the previous administration created very 
difficult circumstances.
    Despite these challenges, we have a moral and legal 
obligation to safely care for every child referred to us, and 
we are meeting our obligation by taking action in three key 
areas: one, by increasing both emergency and State-licensed bed 
capacity; two, implementing policy and operational changes to 
quickly and safely place children with their sponsors; and 
finally, by deploying additional Federal staff in the field to 
support this critical mission.
    Despite continuing challenges, we are making tremendous 
progress. Due to increased capacity and interagency 
coordination, unaccompanied children are moving quickly out of 
CBP facilities, spending only 24 hours in CBP care on average, 
with only a few unaccompanied children in custody longer than 
72 hours each week. As of yesterday, there were less than 700 
unaccompanied children in CBP facilities, compared to over 
5,000 at the end of March, when the average time in custody was 
nearly 5 days.
    Working closely and collaboratively with our interagency 
partners, we are also bringing down the overall census in ORR 
shelters and have reduced the number of children in our care by 
25 percent in the last month alone, from a high of 23,000 at 
the end of April to just around 16,000 today, due to both a 
recent decline in referrals as well as ORR's significant 
progress in safely accelerating unifications. We have reduced 
the number of children staying in temporary emergency 
facilities by 50 percent over the past month and have 
demobilized four of our emergency intake shelters to date, with 
more to come.
    Since January 20th, ORR has unified more than 38,000 
children with their vetted sponsors. We've made this progress 
by first aggressively working to safely regain licensed beds 
taken offline, due to COVID-19, by implementing updated CDC 
guidance to the field. ORR has authorized over 4,000 beds to 
come back online in State-licensed facilities.
    Second, ORR has stood up over 19,000 temporary beds. In 
addition to activating the influx care facility at Carrizo 
Springs, Texas, ORR has deployed a third category of care 
provider facility, the emergency intake site. We've done this 
in coordination with our interagency partners, including FEMA 
and DOD.
    ORR currently has 10 active emergency intake sites, which 
meet the immediate need for additional capacity to keep pace 
with the number of referrals of unaccompanied children to ORR 
and allow us to begin case management. In addition to increased 
bed capacity, we have taken action to enhance case management 
resources, including ensuring robust case management at all of 
our EIS sites. We are addressing hurdles to unification with 
sponsors through both policy and process modifications.
    For example, HHS has terminated the 2018 memorandum of 
agreement with DHS regarding information sharing of sponsor and 
sponsor household information, which advocates have cited as a 
negative influence on sponsors coming forward. At EIS 
facilities, we have utilized virtual case management, and ORR 
has also created an expedited unification process for Category 
1 children so that they can be more safely and quickly unified 
with a parent or legal guardian.
    I want to stress that this expedited process does not 
eliminate background checks for the parent or legal guardian. 
The expedited process streamlines vetting procedures and 
eliminates bureaucracies in order to avoid unnecessarily 
prolonging the time that children remain in Government custody.
    These efforts have allowed us to safely unite tens of 
thousands of children with a vetted sponsor. HHS has also 
utilized Federal staff to help support the UC mission. This 
included deployment of HHS employees, including the U.S. public 
health service commissioned corps members to support emergency 
intake sites. DHS has also provided hundreds of volunteers, 
including over 300 USCIS employees, who have been trained as 
ORR case managers.
    Federal staff from other agencies have also responded to 
the call for support of ORR missions, and their service has 
allowed us to quickly and safely increase capacity.
    Looking forward, ACF is committed to improving ORR's 
ability to successfully implement the unaccompanied children's 
program and adapt its capacity and service delivery to emerging 
referral pattern, both during periods of influx as well as low 
occupancy, and look forward to working with you on this issue.
    Thank you for this opportunity to update you on ORR's 
efforts in the unaccompanied children program and for your 
commitment to the safety and well-being of unaccompanied 
children. I look forward to working with you on our continued 
enhancement of policies and procedures, and I'd be happy to 
answer any questions.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Chang follows:]
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    Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much, Ms. Chang. We appreciate 
you giving us an update of what's happening.
    The Chair will now recognize herself for 5 minutes for 
questions.
    The first thing I want to talk to you about is what the 
Biden administration faced when it came into the office on 
January 20th. As I mentioned in my opening statement, there 
were a number of issues in the previous administration that 
impacted what happened this spring. So I want to ask you first, 
what was the state of the unaccompanied children program when 
the Biden administration started at the beginning of the year?
    Ms. Chang. Chair DeGette, we really faced three significant 
challenges all at the same time. One of those issues, as you 
mentioned, were some of the policy and administrative decisions 
that the last administration made that really left us 
unprepared for the significant surge and the impacts of COVID. 
Those things included hiring freezes, that meant we did not 
have enough staff to address the daily needs of an ORR program.
    It included policies, decisions like the memorandum of 
understanding that made it unlikely that sponsors would come 
forward, which is absolutely critical to move children safely 
out of our program. But, in addition to that, we had historical 
number of referrals from DHS. Someone noted earlier that the 
single largest month of referrals before this year had been a 
high of 10,000 many years ago. Just as a point of comparison, 
in the month of April this year, we had nearly double the 
number when you think about the highest--previous highest month 
of referrals.
    You have, on top of that, a complete impact of COVID on our 
licensed bed capacity, which is the network that ORR typically 
relies on to care for the children who are referred to us by 
DHS. COVID restrictions took off 40 percent of our beds, and 
the previous administration did not take actions to address 
that gap.
    Ms. DeGette. And I just have to ask you, if you know, Ms. 
Chang, do the number of unaccompanied minors have historic 
patterns? Do they tend to go up in the springtime over time? 
Have you seen that?
    Ms. Chang. Yes, ma'am. There are seasonal patterns that we 
see in the ORR program. There are usually a few months in the 
spring, and perhaps in the fall, where we see, kind of, 
increases in the numbers but, again, the numbers that we saw 
starting in March are simply unprecedented, especially the jump 
that we saw and the volume that we saw in each of those months.
    Ms. DeGette. And so, I wonder if you can tell me briefly, 
what can you do to build this program up, not just to deal with 
the crisis right now but to make sure that we don't have this 
crisis every time we have a seasonal increase, whether it's as 
large as this year or even not, because it does tend to 
fluctuate?
    Ms. Chang. Yes. Thank you for the question. It's absolutely 
something that is on the leadership's mind here at HHS. We 
recognize that living from challenge to challenge simply isn't 
the right way to do our work. The President's budget request 
has a proposal that we think would really transform our 
system's ability to respond to these challenging influxes, and 
we look forward to working with you, Chairwoman DeGette and 
members of this subcommittee, to think about how we can 
fundamentally transform our program.
    Ms. DeGette. And are there some other steps HHS can take to 
ensure that children are safely placed with appropriate 
sponsors?
    Ms. Chang. So, you know, one of the things that we've been 
doing is talking very closely and working closely with child 
advocates who have been working in this space as well as other 
immigration experts. And one of the things that has become 
clear to me, and, certainly, my--a little bit of my history: 
I'm a little new to the unaccompanied children's program, but I 
spent the last 20 years of my career working on child welfare 
issues.
    And in the child welfare world, we often think about how we 
can prevent these things from bubbling up to challenge, but 
also really focusing on the services that children need once 
they actually go home.
    And so one of the things that has become apparent to me is 
that this program focuses so much on what it does for the short 
period of time that children are in its care and custody while 
we are identifying and vetting sponsors and spends less 
resources and time with a child after they are unified and 
where they actually need perhaps even more support and 
services.
    As we know, when families come back together and they are 
struggling, they may need mental health services, social 
services to make sure that that child remains safe. And so, I 
would love to see us invest further in those postrelease 
services.
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much. My time's expired, and I'm 
now very pleased to recognize Mr. Griffith for 5 minutes for 
questioning.
    Mr. Griffith. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Your written testimony notes that in the months since 
January 20th, the Office of Refugee Resettlement, ORR, has 
implemented policy and operational changes to expedite the 
release of unaccompanied children. It describes some of these 
changes, including paying for transportation, sharing 
information across agencies, and streamlining vetting of 
sponsors.
    Will you commit to providing me with a written list of all 
the policy changes that have been made for this purpose? Yes or 
no?
    Ms. Chang. Absolutely. Yes, we will do that.
    Mr. Griffith. Thank you.
    In stressing the safety of ORR's efforts to expedite the 
unification of children with a sponsor, you noted in your 
written statement that ORR does not eliminate the background 
checks for parents or legal guardians. Expedited processes or 
not, I have serious concerns about what ORR considers to be a 
satisfactory background check.
    Three weeks ago I visited Fort Bliss, an ORR facility with 
4,500 children at the time I was there at the southern border. 
I regret not having gone sooner because what I learned there 
was, frankly, shocking and disappointing.
    Staff at the facility told visiting Members that potential 
sponsors must undergo a criminal public records check and, in 
most cases, a sex offender registry check. I asked if they 
worked with the FBI or other national databases to find 
information about all sponsors. They said no.
    Additional discussion about their so-called public records 
check led me to conclude that ORR relies primarily on widely 
available internet search engines, sites any of us could access 
for around $20 a month, to vet the sponsors.
    If a website like Spokeo or Checkmate doesn't show evidence 
of abuse or neglect, the sponsor is approved. That troubles me. 
The information on these websites is not always accurate or up 
to date, and legally it is neglect to turn your minor child 
over to a criminal cartel or to send them off on their own for 
whatever distance and for how many ever days to seek the border 
themselves.
    The Federal Government maintains sources of information 
that can be used to conduct background checks in a timely 
matter, including the National Instant Criminal Background 
Check System, NICS, the National Crime Information Center, 
NCIC, and the integrated automated fingerprint identification 
system. Further, each State's Department of Social Services 
keeps a list of founded cases for abuse and neglect.
    But even after I made my frustration and my ire clear, no 
one there said, ``We are using these on a routine basis'' or 
``Oh, yes, we forgot to tell you that in the big meeting.'' 
That didn't happen.
    Our social services systems conduct interviews in home 
studies when we're evaluating child welfare. Yet ORR is 
releasing children to people in homes they know little or 
nothing about. Is that safe? Is that humane? We must not 
sacrifice children's safety in the interest of an expedited 
process. These are children, not commodities.
    While I do not agree with President Biden's immigration 
policy, I believe that we have an obligation to ensure the 
safety of children once they are here, and it seems to me that 
ORR is failing to meet that obligation. All that being said, I 
would like a complete list of the sources ORR uses to vet every 
sponsor, and if you need permission or resources from Congress 
to be able to improve the vetting process, then let me know 
that too.
    Can you commit to getting me that information?
    Ms. Chang. Yes. Ranking Member Griffith, we will absolutely 
get you all of our policies and all of the information about 
the vetting process.
    Mr. Griffith. And to be fair, this is not--this is not--
from what I've learned, this is not something that you all 
changed. This is what they've been doing over a number of 
administrations. That doesn't make it right. I don't think 
we're checking these enough, particularly when, if we were in 
any of the juvenile courts that I used to practice in, the 
courts would say that's neglect and then we'd turn them over if 
we don't see something that flashes up on a fairly minor site, 
particularly when they don't have reference to information from 
the home country because they haven't gone to check for it, and 
sometimes they do if they see a problem, but they don't 
generally check for that. And so we don't have a complete 
picture, and I just don't think we're doing it right.
    And I would ask you as a final question, the budget that 
you referenced earlier about things they were going to do 
better once they were back reunited with their family that let 
them go with a criminal cartel that drops little kids over 
fences. We saw that spot where two little girls were dropped 
over. If that's not neglect, I don't know what it is, but does 
your budget include money for a better vetting process for all 
sponsors, not just the ones that flag up on the site as maybe 
having a problem, but ones that have a problem just inherently 
because they let their children go with a criminal cartel?
    Ms. Chang. So, Ranking Member Griffith, first, thank you 
for your passionate focus on child safety and for visiting our 
kids at Fort Bliss. You know, we share with you that commitment 
to safety and the well-being of children who are in our care 
and custody. I can assure you that it is not only my personal 
top priority, but it is absolutely the clear mandate from the 
Secretary that this is not only our legal but moral obligation 
to keep children safe. And we look forward to working with you 
about how we can improve those practices.
    Mr. Griffith. Thank you.
    I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman.
    The Chair now recognizes Mr. Pallone for 5 minutes for 
questioning.
    Mr. Pallone. Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to take a 
moment to talk about why we have this unaccompanied children 
program, Ms. Chang. These children seek refuge in the U.S. for 
a number of reasons, including fleeing violence in their home 
countries. And I think it's vital that we have a humane system 
in place to care for them, and both HHS and ORR have facilities 
that are staffed with child welfare experts and healthcare 
providers, and they are not only taking them in and providing 
appropriate services, but then working to find safe and 
suitable sponsors.
    So, Ms. Chang, can you speak--or, I'm going to go back to 
another question. Just walk us through why it's important to 
remember that ORR is not an immigration enforcement agency and 
instead cares for the health and well-being of these children? 
Why is that distinction so critical, and how does that inform 
everything that ORR does? I know you already mentioned it, but 
if you could talk about it a little more, I'd appreciate it.
    Ms. Chang. Yes. Chairman Pallone, thank you for that 
opportunity. As you mentioned, there are a number of reasons 
that children may be coming to us as unaccompanied. They may be 
fleeing violence in their home communities, natural disasters, 
and Congress in its wisdom has made clear that HHS is to have a 
very specific role in actually caring for the safety and well-
being of these children, to identify and vet sponsors.
    The data is clear that most of these children are coming 
here to be with family members, usually parents or legal 
guardians or other close family members like a grandmother or 
aunt like me who may have helped raise a child before. And so, 
we have a very distinct role in this process, and it is not to 
be part of the immigration or law enforcement process, but as 
Congress has mandated for us to play a humanitarian role in 
making sure that these children are safe, that we screen them 
for any trafficking risk, and that we appropriately address 
those risk factors.
    Mr. Pallone. And thank you. And, you know, I guess my 
problem is that--I don't know if it's my problem, but my bias, 
if you will, is that I just felt that the Trump administration 
was primarily looking at this as an immigration enforcement 
issue and then they came up with this zero-tolerance policy, 
which I thought was a disaster, because of that ideology that, 
you know, what we're doing here is really about enforcing 
immigration.
    And then, you know, the Trump administration, therefore, 
implemented policies that, in my opinion, weren't in the best 
interests of the children, and I continue to have concerns 
regarding the long-term implications for kids who were subject 
to this zero-tolerance policy, or even were never reunited with 
their parents.
    So, Ms. Chang, again, at a high level, what is HHS doing 
across the board to realign its policies and actions to ensure 
that we are putting the health and welfare of these kids first, 
if you would?
    Ms. Chang. Yes, sir. I apologize. It may just be on my end, 
but we have some backgrund noise [inaudible], I apologize. I'm 
having some technical difficulties.
    Mr. Pallone. We can hear you, it's just we have music in 
the background. So go ahead.
    Ms. Chang. OK. I think that's taken care of. I apologize, 
sir. So, yes, our mission has been clear. We have a legal 
mandate to care for the safety and well-being of children. I 
will say that, as you know, I've had a chance to work with 
State child welfare staff from across the country, and most 
recently in Michigan, where I oversaw the child welfare and 
juvenile justice systems. And people who do this work do it 
usually for one reason and one reason alone, and that is 
because they care deeply about child well-being. Certainly not 
for any glory or money, because there's none to be found in 
this work, but because they have that deep personal commitment 
to doing good humanitarian work, and the staff that I have seen 
do this work, both here at ORR and across the Federal 
Government, are no different.
    These are folks who are committed to one thing and one 
thing alone, and that is to care for children, make sure they 
are safe, that they have everything that they need to be safely 
unified with their family members. And we are staying single-
mindedly focused on that, and that is one of the reasons why it 
was very important to us to officially terminate the memorandum 
of agreement with DHS that the last administration had put in 
place, because it did create confusion and conflicting messages 
about what ORR's role was about. And it also had a chilling 
effect on the very people who loved these children and would be 
in the position to care for them from coming forward.
    And so, we felt it was important, even though we had 
immediately stopped putting into effect that agreement, to 
officially and publicly signal that that was no longer what ORR 
was doing.
    Mr. Pallone. Thank you so much. And thank you, Madam Chair.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman.
    The Chair now recognizes Mrs. Rodgers for 5 minutes.
    Mrs. Rodgers. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    When I visited these facilities, it's really been 
heartbreaking to hear the stories of these unaccompanied 
minors. The one that I visited was all young ladies, very young 
ladies, who had made the trip, and story after story to a 
person was one of abuse, assault, just heartbreaking stories. 
And we are all committed, and we must be committed to the 
health and welfare of these children.
    You mentioned that--that when you took over, you felt that 
you were left unprepared and that COVID restrictions had taken 
40 percent of your capacity. ORR had kept two facilities in 
warm status, and this was in the case of a surge, so these were 
facilities that were going to be easy to access in case it was 
an unprecedented surge, and that's what we've seen. We've seen 
the largest levels of apprehension, 170,000 apprehensions, 
three straight months since 2000. Two of these facilities are 
Carrizo Springs and Biscayne Bay.
    So, now, ORR reopened the Carrizo Springs in February, but 
it refused to reopen Biscayne Bay despite the record surge. We 
needed additional capacity, children were being kept in 
overcrowded CBP facilities for longer than the law allows, but 
yet this facility remained unused.
    Ms. Chang, can you please explain why ORR didn't reactivate 
Biscayne Bay?
    Ms. Chang. Thank you, ma'am. So the focus of ORR's work, as 
we've partnered with our interagency partners, was to quickly 
add capacity, because our goal was to safely move children out 
of CBP detention facilities. I also had a chance early on when 
I joined HHS to visit one of those CBP detention facilities, 
and, as I think perhaps you noted, the staff at CBP employees 
who were there were heroic in their attempt to do everything in 
their power to care for these children.
    But it was clear, and they were the first to tell me, these 
sites were not designed nor were they the right place for any 
child to be. And I couldn't agree more. So we felt a very 
urgent need to try and move as many of those children safely 
and quickly as possible. So we did look at all of our options, 
including the Biscayne facility that you mentioned. We, as you 
noted, did open the Carrizo Springs facility in early February 
before----
    Mrs. Rodgers. Excuse me. Excuse me. I'm sorry, Ms. Chang. 
I'm going to run out of time. Can you just answer why you 
didn't choose to open Biscayne Bay?
    Ms. Chang. Sure. For a couple of reasons. One is that the 
time to stand up Biscayne was approximately 2 months, and we 
were looking to open up places in a matter of days, not even 
weeks, much less months. In addition to that, Biscayne Bay was 
slated to only house up to 800 children, and at that time we 
had 5,000 children who were already spending too much time in 
the facility. So it was really about time and numbers.
    Mrs. Rodgers. OK. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Chang.
    So, in 2019 Vice President Harris had visited the facility 
and criticized the use of Biscayne Bay. I wanted to ask, did 
any officials from Health and Human Services, or ORR, visit 
Biscayne before making the decision not to reactivate?
    Ms. Chang. I'll have to get back to you, ma'am. I honestly 
don't know. I did not myself.
    Mrs. Rodgers. OK. Thank you. Thank you.
    Why do you believe it would have taken longer to reactivate 
Biscayne Bay compared to other facilities?
    Ms. Chang. That's what the contractors and contract 
administrators had estimated based on the proposals, initial 
proposals, that had come back.
    Mrs. Rodgers. OK. In March, senior administration officials 
visited the border. I understand you visited the border. What 
information and insight did that visit provide you?
    Ms. Chang. It really told me two things: that the Federal 
employees at CBP were doing extraordinary humanitarian work, 
but that CBP facilities were no place for children. It really 
was heartbreaking to see the conditions that kids were in, and 
it made me realize that we had to do everything in our power to 
stand up emergency sites that could safely house these kids and 
get them out of CBP detention facilities.
    Mrs. Rodgers. OK. Well, thank you for being with us. I do 
have more questions. I'll follow up in writing. Thank you, 
Madam Chair.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentlelady.
    The Chair now recognizes Ms. Kuster for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Kuster. Thank you very much, Chairwoman DeGette, for 
organizing this very important hearing. Most Americans assume 
that people with important cases pending before our courts are 
represented by an attorney. If they can't afford to pay for 
representation, Americans assume people in courtrooms will have 
access to a public defender. However, every year, thousands of 
children in our country go before a judge to plead the most 
important case of their lives without the assistance of legal 
counsel. Less than half of unaccompanied children in 
immigration court are represented by an attorney. This leaves 
boys and girls, many of whom have fled unthinkable trauma and 
violence, all alone in an American courtroom.
    Immigration courts are adversarial in nature. Asylum 
seekers having the right to present testimony and evidence to 
challenge the Government's case against them and to file 
appeals, but without an attorney children are simply unable to 
navigate this complex process. Unsurprisingly, children 
represented by counsel are 70 times more likely than children 
without counsel to have their asylum claims granted. And when 
children have legal representation, they are more likely to 
show up at their immigration court proceedings, which helps the 
court work through their cases in a timely manner.
    While I, along with Chairwoman DeGette and Representative 
Peters, have advocated for and secured increased funding for 
legal services for unaccompanied children over the past 2 
years, unaccompanied children seeking asylum still walk into 
court alone every day in this country. It's a fundamental 
violation of due process and a miscarriage of justice that the 
fate of a child fleeing gang and sexual violence hinges on 
whether they're lucky enough to receive legal representation.
    Acting Assistant Secretary Chang, can you explain why it's 
difficult for a child without an attorney to successfully 
demonstrate to an immigration judge that they meet the complex 
legal qualifications for asylum or other humanitarian relief?
    Ms. Chang. Well, first, Representative Kuster, I want to 
thank you and Chairwoman DeGette and Representative Peters for 
your longstanding commitment and support for legal 
representation for these very vulnerable children for all the 
reasons that you explained. I, myself, have spent my career in 
the child welfare system fighting to ensure that children, 
foster youth, and their parents also have the right to legal 
representation for the very reasons you explained. There is--
this is an adversarial system.
    There is a difference of power, and people have the need 
for legal representation to be able to tell their story and to 
understand their rights. It makes the entire system work 
better, more fairly, and more efficiently,
    And so we look forward to working with you and others to 
ensure that we can truly make legal representation available 
for all of our kids.
    Ms. Kuster. And given some of these challenges that you 
just outlined, what actions is ORR taking to increase the 
percentage of unaccompanied children who do receive postrelease 
legal services?
    Ms. Chang. So, one of the things that we are doing is 
trying to find additional resources that we can commit to this 
very service. So right now, one out of four of our children 
receives postrelease services, which includes legal 
representation and support. We have recently announced that we 
have increased our investment in this space so that even more 
children can benefit from these services, but, again, we really 
look forward to working with you and other members of the 
subcommittee to make that promise true for everyone.
    Ms. Kuster. Great. Thank you.
    Now, child advocates also play an important role in the 
immigration system. These highly trained workers are tasked 
with providing recommendations about the best interests of 
especially vulnerable children, like those who are victims of 
abuse or trafficking or children who are under aged 12.
    These recommendations are then supposed to inform how your 
agency, the Department of Justice, and the Department of 
Homeland Security approaches the child's case moving forward, 
but despite this invaluable service, child advocates are not 
available at all locations where children are in ORR custody, 
and there's greater demand for these services than advocates 
available.
    Secretary Chang, do you believe that child advocates play 
an important role in the asylum process,and what steps will you 
take to expand access to these services?
    Ms. Chang. Absolutely. These child advocates are incredibly 
important to the entire process and ensuring that children are 
not only safe while they're with us so that we are making 
decisions about where they go and the services that they might 
need long after they leave our care. Again, like any other 
postrelease service or legal services, our greatest constraints 
are budget constraints, but we look forward to working with you 
and other members of the subcommittee to address this issue.
    Ms. Kuster. Great. Thank you so much. We'll be working on 
that.
    And with that, I yield back to Chairwoman DeGette.
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much.
    The Chair now recognizes Mr. Burgess for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Burgess. I thank you for the recognition.
    Let me just ask, because it came up with the--and thank you 
for being here, Acting Secretary.
    It came up previously on the questioning with Mrs. McMorris 
Rodgers with the former facility at Homestead. And I did go to 
that facility, and I was impressed at the care that they were 
providing there. I've also been to Carrizo Springs a couple of 
times. I was there very recently. Again, they do a very good 
job.
    Now, Monday I had the opportunity to visit the facility at 
El Paso. And, again, that was a very recent--that facility was 
very recently stood up.
    But--I understand that there was some urgency with how you 
had to deal with the numbers that you were facing, but it just 
doesn't make sense to me that Homestead would take more time to 
bring back on line than standing up the massive facility at 
Fort Bliss.
    Make no mistake about it, it's a tribute to the people who 
were able to get it up and functioning at the time. It has got 
to be a phenomenally expensive undertaking. But no one could 
tell me exactly what the cost per child was at Fort Bliss.
    But, again, I'd just wonder why Homestead was not kept in 
the mix when you were having such a severe crisis.
    Ms. Chang. So, Dr. Burgess, one, thank you for the 
attention that you've given and for visiting our kids both at 
Bliss and in Carrizo Springs.
    As I said, I did not have a chance to visit Homestead, but 
it absolutely--or Biscayne--but it absolutely was part of the 
mix. Our staff were looking at that as an option, including all 
of the options on the table.
    And, as you noted, we made decisions based on the urgency 
of the need to stand up these emergency facilities in a matter 
of days and the ability to care for the large number who were 
backing up in the CBP facilities.
    I would----
    Mr. Burgess. Yes. And, again, I'm not questioning that. I 
really would be grateful if you could provide us a little of 
the material, the background material, you used to base that 
decision.
    I will tell you, one of the ironic things in going out to 
Fort Bliss on Monday was, I also made several trips out to a 
similar facility located also near El Paso, at a town called 
Tornillo, a couple of years ago. And a very similar facility 
was set up at Tornillo, soft-sided facility, so tents, in the 
desert. But the kids were well taken care of. And that was 
taken down, I guess, when the number of unaccompanied minors 
diminished, and you've then rebuilt the same facility on the 
other side of the freeway.
    Now, Tornillo was the subject of a great deal of criticism 
the entire time it was up during that administration. And Fort 
Bliss is, of course, not receiving the same level of criticism, 
though it is a very, very similar facility.
    Let me just ask you a question, and perhaps you can get 
back to me with the actual data. I asked a question about 
vaccine administration both when I was down at the Dallas 
Convention Center--and the 2,400 unaccompanied 13-to-17-year-
olds were brought there--and then again I asked the same 
question out in El Paso on Monday.
    In Dallas, I was told that the kids were going to receive 
eight vaccinations but they weren't all available to them, and 
they were waiting to be able to do that. Now, out in El Paso, I 
was told that the kids get an MMR, the measles-mumps-rubella 
vaccine.
    So, obviously, there's a discrepancy there. Perhaps if you 
could have someone follow up, just exactly what is the 
vaccination regimen that is being administered to the kids.
    It's important, because this committee, this subcommittee, 
was the one that actually first identified that there was a 
problem with placing children in communities after they've been 
released from a facility, placed with a family. Now they're 
going to be placed at our community schools, and if they were 
not adequately protected with the usual childhood illness 
vaccinations like any other child enrolling in school, that was 
going to be a problem.
    So, if you would, follow up with me about that.
    And then one other thing--and, again, I'd appreciate maybe 
an answer in writing, because I know our time is short. I was 
also told when I was out at the facility on Monday that there 
were females being held there, and all of the females were 
administered a pregnancy test upon their arrival. And what is 
not clear to me is, was there any screening for sexual assault 
that those kids had available to them?
    It is obviously a concern, because people are being tested, 
being given pregnancy tests, but a question about or screening 
for sexual assault seems to be a critically important part of 
that. That's come up time and again during our hearings on ORR 
facilities, and I would just ask you to look into that and 
perhaps get back to me with that information.
    Ms. Chang. I would be happy to do that.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman.
    The Chair now will recognize Miss Rice for 5 minutes.
    Miss Rice. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    Ms. Chang, I'd like to ask you some questions about the 
functions of the task force.
    The Executive order specifically focuses on three areas: 
identifying the children who were separated as a result of the 
zero-tolerance policy or related initiatives; facilitate and 
enable the reunification of these children with their families; 
and provide recommendations regarding additional services and 
support for the children and their families, including 
behavioral health services, et cetera.
    So how difficult was it to identify all of the children who 
were separated during that--you know, it gives a 4-year time 
period, January 20, 2017, to January 20, 2021. How difficult 
was it to identify every child who was separated?
    Ms. Chang. So----
    [Audio interruption.]
    Ms. Chang. Is that my line? OK. I think it's gone.
    So, yes, as you note, HHS is a member of the multiagency 
task force and is assisting with the identification of families 
as well as supporting reunifications and providing services.
    In the first 120 days of the task force, we identified 
nearly all of the children who were separated from their 
parents as a result of the zero-tolerance policy, but, however, 
we have only been able to reunify 1,800 of them.
    It is really heartbreaking to think about the 2,100 
children who have not been reunified.
    Miss Rice. So I guess the problem is in the actual 
reunification process. And is that because there was no system 
set in place before this policy was initiated to ensure that 
there was a way to put child with parent together at a future 
date? What was the big problem there?
    Ms. Chang. That's exactly right, ma'am. There wasn't a 
clear process to track and keep data about these children and 
their parents to ensure that that kind of reunification could 
happen. And so, as I noted, it's not about finding the kids, 
it's about identifying and tracking down their parents that has 
been so challenging.
    Miss Rice. OK.
    I'm just curious, like, so what is the process, as far as 
you know, as to, is there any kind of--are there any 
breadcrumbs to help figure out who the family members are?
    Ms. Chang. Yes. And we can certainly circle back with you 
and get you more detailed information about what the 
interagency task force is working on. But one of the first 
things that ORR did was to voluntarily share any information we 
had received or collected, based on our care and custody of the 
children, to try and help locate and identify those parents.
    But, again, that was long after the fact. It was not put in 
place as a protective measure from the start. And so it was a 
lot of catching up of information.
    Miss Rice. Thank you.
    So just my final question: You know, so far, what I've 
heard during our discussion here today is, you know, it's not a 
political discussion. Every single person has expressed concern 
about these children and the trauma that they have experienced 
as a result of being separated from their families.
    So the recommendations--I think that everyone would agree 
that it is so incredibly important to not just reunify the 
families but to address the trauma that they suffered on both 
ends and facilitate giving them behavioral health services with 
a focus on trauma-informed care. How is that plan going?
    Ms. Chang. So some of those features and outlines of that 
is included in the President's budget proposal.
    But, absolutely, ma'am, we recognize that the children 
themselves, if they didn't experience trauma before they took 
this perilous journey, they certainly experienced it on their 
way here and then further may have experienced trauma once they 
arrived.
    And so, yes, I think part of our humanitarian aid has to 
extend beyond the time that they are in our physical care and 
custody. And we look forward to working with you and others on 
making that happen.
    Miss Rice. Thank you so much, Ms. Chang.
    And I yield back, Madam Chair. Thank you.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentlelady.
    The Chair now recognizes Mr. McKinley for 5 minutes.
    Mr. McKinley. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    And welcome, Ms. Chang.
    At the President's press conference on March 24th, the 
President appointed Kamala Harris to, quote, ``lead the effort 
to stem the migration across our southern border,'' close 
quote. But in the last 77 days, she's not visited the border.
    Anyone trying to solve this crisis involving unaccompanied 
minors without visiting the border is really like a doctor 
diagnosing a patient without examining them.
    Ms. Chang, wouldn't it be helpful to you, HHS, and ORR if 
Vice President Harris visited the border? It's a ``yes'' or 
``no.''
    Ms. Chang. This has been an all-of-government response----
    Mr. McKinley. It's a ``yes'' or ``no,'' please. I've got 
three other questions I'd like to get through. It's a ``yes'' 
or ``no.''
    Ms. Chang. Representative McKinley, we focus----
    Mr. McKinley. Would it be helpful?
    Ms. Chang [continguing]. We focus on ACS mandate, and we 
are focused on doing what Congress has asked us to do, which is 
to care for the safety and well-being----
    Mr. McKinley. OK. So, yes, I've got to reclaim my time. I'm 
sorry. You're not going to answer it.
    Under the Trump administration, the maximum number of 
unaccompanied minors reached 2,600, and they were excoriated. 
But, as of June 2nd, according to HHS, there are now 17,000 
unaccompanied minors under your care.
    Now, rather than using a diplomatic approach to solve this 
crisis, Vice President Harris has invoked politics, blaming the 
influx on everything from the Trump administration to climate 
change.
    Fortunately, at a meeting with the Guatemala President, 
Giammattei, he stated that the Biden administration's 
policies--Giammattei did--he stated that the Biden 
administration policies were the ones to blame for this crisis 
and they were inviting migration, including unaccompanied 
minors, because of our open border policy.
    So, Ms. Chang, do you agree with President Giammattei that 
the Biden administration's policy may have contributed to this 
crisis involving minors?
    Ms. Chang. What I can tell you, sir, is that I agree with 
the wisdom of Congress when they implemented the law that says 
that HHS should be in charge of our humanitarian response to 
caring for vulnerable children--
    Mr. McKinley. OK. You're not going to answer that again. So 
thank you. You're not.
    So let me ask a third question. Ms. Chang, the President of 
Guatemala has claimed that many of the children that are 
brought here come from coyotes, or human traffickers, and 
should be classified as unaccompanied minors.
    President Obama and Trump both used the fencing techniques 
that we've seen in the press to segregate children and women 
from the men, but that policy was widely criticized and 
stopped. President Biden appears to be reinstating that policy.
    But I'm curious, if we could just role play for a minute. 
For example, if a 35-year-old man brings a 3-year-old child 
across the border and is apprehended, he claims the child is 
his. Until that can be verified, do you keep the two separated?
    Ms. Chang. So we actually only care for unaccompanied 
children. And as part of our----
    Mr. McKinley. Is this child considered an--you don't know. 
Is this child an unaccompanied minor with a 35-, 40-year-old 
person?
    Ms. Chang. So our role----
    Mr. McKinley. How do you determine? Maybe that is. Maybe 
this person has been trafficked. Maybe--go on. How do we 
separate--how do we make that determination? And how long do we 
wait until we determine this child does not belong to that 
adult?
    Ms. Chang. So I can only speak for ACF and HHS's role, 
which is to care for unaccompanied children who have been 
referred to us by DHS.
    Mr. McKinley. So--if I could, then--so if this child is 
ultimately determined not to be a father or a relative, what I 
understand from your testimony, they are placed in childcare 
until they reach the age of 18, after which--I'm trying to 
understand the mechanics.
    Then, do you go to that family, that foster family that 
maybe the child has been there for 7 or 8 years and then 
extract that family--extract that person from the family and 
deport them?
    Ms. Chang. So I'll try to answer that question as best I 
can, sir. So, for children who we cannot find a sponsor for--
but I will say, we never give up on finding a----
    Mr. McKinley. I'm talking--you've got a foster parent. You 
know where they are. They're in Tulsa, Oklahoma. They've been 
in your care now for 5 years, 6 years. Do you go back when 
they're 18 and extract them out and deport them?
    Ms. Chang. So there are certainly some children who age out 
of ORR's custody. Again, we care for children, which means 
until they reach the age of 18, whether that's in our care and 
custody or after we have placed them in a licensed provider or 
a long-term foster home. It is possible they are there until 
they reach age 18 or their asylum proceedings have concluded.
    Mr. McKinley. I'm sorry, Madam Chairman, that we didn't get 
the answers on that. I'd still like to know whether----
    Ms. DeGette. The gentleman's time has expired.
    The Chair now recognizes----
    Mr. McKinley. Thank you.
    Ms. DeGette [continuing]. Ms. Schakowsky for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Schakowsky. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
    In the 2022 budget proposal by the President, HHS requests 
a $2 billion increase to prepare for future influxes of 
children, as I'm sure you well know.
    The past few months, we have seen a dramatic increase in 
the use of large, unlicensed facilities to house thousands of 
children, while the hiring and training of case managers was a 
secondary priority, even though case managers are responsible 
for making release recommendations.
    So, Ms. Chang, here's my question: Given this budget 
request and the past few months, how can we avert the reliance 
on unlicensed facilities moving forward? And how are you 
ensuring that children are promptly transferred to licensed 
beds?
    Ms. Chang. Thank you, Representative, for that question.
    That is absolutely our top priority as we speak. Even as we 
are shutting down emergency intake sites, we are focused very 
squarely on making sure that children who may need to be--may 
take longer to get to their sponsor or who have special needs 
either never go to an emergency intake site or are quickly 
transferred to a licensed bed provider in our network.
    We are also working very hard each day--we have a team 
dedicated to working with our licensed bed provider network to 
try to bring those beds back on line so that we will need our 
emergency intake sites less and less. And we've started to see 
that happening already.
    So that is absolutely a priority. We hope that in the next 
year or whatever time that these seasonal patterns emerge again 
that we are prepared, through a larger network of licensed beds 
that are ready when our children are coming to the border, to 
care for them in that licensed network.
    Ms. Schakowsky. So child welfare experts view small-scale, 
family-based placements as in the children's best interest, 
over the large covenant--over the agreement. And so what steps 
are you taking at HHS to put children in these smaller 
settings? I know we've got some in the Chicago area. But what 
are you doing to make sure that happens?
    Ms. Chang. So, Representative Schakowsky, I actually have 
spent most of my career in child welfare trying to shut down 
large shelters, as to your point, because we know that children 
are safe and do best when they are in familylike environments. 
I couldn't agree with you more.
    One of the things that has been a recent trend in the child 
welfare domestic foster care programs is to recognize that long 
stays in these types of large congregate spaces are not good 
for kids unless it is medically necessary. And so we certainly 
know that that's true here.
    That's why I want to emphasize that these emergency intake 
sites are designed to be exactly that: emergency intake sites 
that are temporary in nature. We actually have an initiative 
here, and our staff--every morning, the staff get to hear me 
emphasize that our goal is to make sure that kids are in these 
sites for only as long as they absolutely need to to safely and 
timely get to their sponsor.
    So we are working on case management, intensive case 
management. We have specialized teams that are working with 
longer stayers. We are moving kids with complex--kids to----
    Ms. Schakowsky. I do have one more question. I have less 
than a minute, but I have--so let me just ask: What efforts are 
being made for HHS to quickly hire qualified caseworkers across 
intake sites to speed the reunion with family and a sponsor?
    Ms. Chang. So there are a couple of things that we're 
doing. We've been working very closely with our contractors to 
not only support them hiring staff but, more importantly, 
ma'am, to train them on the policies and procedures. We have a 
dedicated contract that is experienced in training these folks.
    We are also training them with our trafficking-in-persons 
team here at ACF so that they know which risk factors to look 
for as they are doing case management.
    Ms. Schakowsky. And, with that, I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much.
    The Chair now recognizes Mr. Palmer for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Palmer. Thank you, Madam Chairman.
    According to a Reuters article from March 23rd, multiple 
smugglers told Reuters that they have been encouraging parents 
to send their children alone as a result in the shift in U.S. 
policy.
    This is particularly concerning since Teresa Ulloa 
Ziaurriz, the director of the Latin America branch of the 
Coalition Against Trafficking International, estimates that a 
shocking 60 percent of Latin American children who set out 
across the border alone or with smugglers have been caught by 
the cartels and are being abused in child pornography or for 
drug trafficking.
    Even President Obama acknowledged the dangers of children 
being smuggled alone. In 2014, he said this, and this is a 
quote from President Obama: ``Our message absolutely is, don't 
send your children unaccompanied or on trains or through a 
bunch of smugglers. We don't even know how many of these kids 
don't make it and may have been waylaid into sex trafficking or 
killed because they fell off the train.'' That's President 
Obama.
    I would argue that the crisis at the border is the result 
of the Biden policy of encouraging parents to send their kids 
to the border. And I think that is consistent with the view of 
President Giammattei in Guatemala.
    So, when you talk about the fact that this is a Trump 
problem and that we have this surge of children at the border 
and we don't have the facilities for them, it's because the 
Trump administration made it clear that they could not enter 
the country. We had the ``stay in Mexico'' policy.
    How would you respond to that? Because the humanitarian 
crisis is not the overcrowding; it's the danger that these 
children are being exposed to.
    Ms. Chang. So, sir, I would respond to that in a couple of 
ways.
    One is that we take very seriously our responsibility at 
ACF to safely care and provide humane care for children 
referred to us by DHS----
    Mr. Palmer. No, you're not answering the question. I know 
what you're doing or trying to do at the border. I mean, it's 
like you want us to put up a Motel 6 along the border.
    I'm asking about the fact that we're encouraging these 
people to send their kids here, and these kids are being 
exploited. And some of them, I think, are being murdered. Some 
of them are dying in the desert.
    Does the Biden administration's policy justify that risk? 
It's a simple ``yes'' or ``no.''
    The answer is ``no.''
    Chairman Pallone justified the migration of these children 
in order to escape violence in their countries of origin. Do 
you agree with that? That's a ``yes'' or ``no.''
    Ms. Chang. So that is certainly one of the reasons that we 
hear from the children in our care----
    Mr. Palmer. Well, let me point out something out to you. 
The homicide rate per 100,000 people in Honduras is 37.6. 
That's very high. In El Salvador, it's 19.7. In Guatemala, it's 
15.4. But in Baltimore it's 58.6. In Philadelphia--in St. Louis 
it's 87 per 100,000.
    So what is your administration doing for those children to 
help them escape violence in these American cities?
    Ms. Chang. I'm afraid, sir, I can only respond to the 
responsibilities that we have here at HHS, at ACF, to care for 
the kids that are referred to us by DHS.
    Mr. Palmer. Well, the thing that concerns me about all of 
this is that you've got all these kids crowded down there 
because the Biden administration basically said, ``The border 
is open, send everybody,'' and they came, as you would expect 
them to.
    And I understand that you're recruiting people from other 
Federal agencies to try to go to the border to care for these 
kids. Are you vetting these people?
    Ms. Chang. So, absolutely, sir. And I also just want to 
start by thanking all of our incredible Federal agency 
volunteers who have stepped forward----
    Mr. Palmer. You can do that on your own time, but what I 
want to find out is, are these people properly vetted? Can you 
ensure that they're placed with appropriate guardians? Can you 
certify that no children have been placed with anyone 
affiliated with a gang or any other criminal organization?
    Ms. Chang. So----
    Mr. Palmer. Because this is a humanitarian tragedy that the 
Biden administration has inflicted on these children. That's my 
view. That may not be the view of my colleagues, but that's my 
view.
    You're not going to answer.
    I yield back.
    Ms. Chang. I----
    Ms. DeGette. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Tonko for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you, Madam Chair. You can hear me, I hope?
    Ms. DeGette. Loud and clear.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you.
    As the Biden administration works to address the well-being 
of the unaccompanied children in its care, we cannot forget 
that we are still dealing with the fallout of the previous 
administration's actions.
    A report released this week by the Interagency Task Force 
on the Reunification of Families found that more than 3,900 
children were separated from their families as a result of the 
Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy. The results of 
that cruel policy were devastating, and the repercussions are 
still being felt by all involved.
    A September 2019 HHS Office of Inspector General report 
found that, while all unaccompanied children have experienced 
some type of trauma, those children who were unexpectedly 
separated from their parents exhibited, and I quote, ``more 
fear, feelings of abandonment, and post-traumatic stress than 
other children in ORR's care.''
    So, Ms. Chang, you were not involved in that policy, but 
you have devoted, as you indicated, your career to child 
welfare. What can you tell us about the effects of the trauma 
those children experienced and likely continue to struggle 
with?
    Ms. Chang. Thank you, sir.
    It's heartbreaking to imagine children being separated from 
their families in the manner that we know happened. I can tell 
you that, even when it is absolutely necessary to do that in 
child abuse and neglect cases, the act of separation itself is 
very traumatic for children.
    And the longer that children are separated from their 
families, the less they are certain about their surroundings. 
The more time that they are not with a caring and dedicated 
adult caregiver who they trust and know, the more that trauma 
compounds.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you.
    And this committee's investigation last Congress found that 
career HHS staffers were sounding the alarm about family 
separations and imploring HHS's political leadership not to 
allow it to happen, but those warnings were not heeded.
    So my question to you, Ms. Chang, is, can you tell us what 
effect that policy and that whole era had on the morale of HHS 
employees who have dedicated their careers to the welfare of 
these children? And how is the administration working to repair 
that relationship and empower these civil servants?
    Ms. Chang. Yes, sir. Thank you for recognizing our 
incredible staff. As you noted, they really are public servants 
who have dedicated their careers to caring for some of our most 
vulnerable populations, and they do it because they are 
passionate about humanitarian work.
    And, as you suggest, I think it was deeply troubling, to 
say the least, for them to work under those policies, and, as 
you suggested, some of them resisted that.
    It is--I don't know that we've even had a chance to fully 
address some of the trauma that our staff experienced, quite 
frankly, because we have immediately had to respond to the 
challenges before us in caring for the tens of thousands of 
kids who have been brought to our care and custody.
    But what I will say, to their credit, is, it hasn't stopped 
them. You know, our staff work 7 days a week, often more than 
12 hours a day, because they are just that committed to doing 
what's best for the kids.
    Mr. Tonko. Thank you.
    And, finally, I'd like to turn to the effects on ORR care 
providers. The September 2019 HHS Office of Inspector General 
report found that the family separation policy made the jobs of 
ORR providers more difficult. One program director interviewed 
said, and I quote, ``We're seen as the enemy.''
    So, Ms. Chang, can you speak about the lasting impact that 
the family separation policy had on ORR care providers and what 
the Biden administration is doing to rebuild trust in ORR?
    Ms. Chang. Yes. As you noted, many of our providers, I 
think, were deeply affected by the last administration's 
policies, as well as the children and families themselves. I 
think these providers take great pride in being a part of a 
larger system who they see as being humanitarian in nature and 
doing the right thing by children and families.
    You know, we have over 200 providers across the country who 
do this work, many of whom are faith-based, and, if not, 
certainly child and family mission-oriented. And so, you know, 
the thing that I am grateful for is that they stayed committed 
to this mission and are doing whatever they can to support the 
situation we have now.
    Mr. Tonko. Well, thank you. And I appreciate the work the 
Biden administration and the civil servants are doing to 
rebuild trust.
    And, with that, Madam Chair, I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman.
    The Chair now recognizes Mr. Dunn for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Dunn. Thank you very much, Madam Chair.
    I appreciate the opportunity to conduct oversight of the 
HHS Office of Refuge--we're going to call it ``ORR.'' And I 
especially am interested in ensuring, of course, that these 
unaccompanied children receive adequate medical care.
    As we know, unaccompanied minors that enter our country 
illegally are placed in the care of HHS, which is then 
responsible for their health and safety. I think it's 
abundantly clear we have a crisis at our southern border. The 
fate of these children is really just one aspect of that 
crisis.
    I fear that the unsustainable increases in border crossings 
jeopardizes the agency's ability to monitor, track, and trace 
COVID-19 among these illegal immigrants, putting them, the 
unaccompanied children under your care, and the American people 
at risk. And I'd like to hear more about the health and safety 
protocols and how they're functioning in light of the COVID-19 
pandemic.
    So, to that end, Secretary Chang, first, can you tell me 
how many children in ORR's care have tested positive for COVID-
19 to date, as a raw number or a percentage or both?
    Ms. Chang. Representative Dunn, I apologize, I don't have 
that number in front of me, but I'm happy to get that to you 
after this hearing.
    Mr. Dunn. Yes, I think we'd appreciate hearing that, 
actually. Do you have any rough guesstimate?
    Ms. Chang. I'd hate to guess, but I know that it's less 
than--it ranges. It's less than 10 percent in most of our 
emergency intakes sites. And I will note that we regular--we 
know this because we regularly test all of our unaccompanied--
--
    Mr. Dunn. That's a great--so I'm glad you said that. Now, 
are they all tested upon intake by Border Patrol or ORR?
    Ms. Chang. They are tested immediately before they actually 
even come into ORR custody. Before they get on whatever 
transportation they're going to take to come to one of our 
emergency intake sites, we do test them.
    And, sir, that's because we want to make sure that we are 
protecting them even on the way to the emergency intake site so 
that we can separate----
    Mr. Dunn. Good.
    Ms. Chang [continuing]. Kids who are testing positive----
    Mr. Dunn. So you would say, then, that these somewhere-
south-of-10-percent kids, that they're actually getting the 
COVID-19--they're coming in with that, that's not something 
they're picking up at your facilities? Or do those outbreaks 
happen at your facilities?
    Ms. Chang. It's hard to say, sir, exactly where they may 
have been exposed to COVID-19. But what we want to do is take 
every precaution to identify and then separate them and isolate 
them as necessary----
    Mr. Dunn. OK.
    How about your staff, the ORR staff? And I include the 
contractors involved here. How many of them have tested 
positive for COVID-19?
    Ms. Chang. Again, sir, I'm sorry, I don't have that number 
in front of me. We do have it, because we do track that, and 
we'll be sure to get that to you after this hearing.
    Mr. Dunn. Good.
    Ms. Chang. We do track that by testing them at least twice 
a week. So, again, try--you know, we worked very closely with 
the CDC to set up our public----
    Mr. Dunn. Good, good. So I'm going to keep going, because 
we only have a little time left here.
    So my understanding is that you've been working hard to 
vaccinate the staff--the ORR staff, contractors, and 
volunteers. What percentage of your staff, all of those, have 
been vaccinated to date?
    Ms. Chang. I actually don't even know if we have that 
information, but I certainly can check on that, sir, and get 
back to you. We do make it----
    Mr. Dunn. OK.
    Ms. Chang [continuing]. Available to every one of our----
    Mr. Dunn. We think tracking vaccination rates is reasonable 
in a medical facility.
    Are the children required to test negative before they are 
placed with a sponsor or prior to being transferred to another 
ORR facility?
    Ms. Chang. So we do test all children regularly. What I 
will tell you is that any child who has tested positive does 
not leave and move to another facility until they have 
quarantined, isolated, and tested negative.
    Mr. Dunn. So that's interesting. They complete the 
quarantine period. And what quarantine period is ORR using? Is 
it 10 days, 14 days, or 3 weeks? I don't know.
    Ms. Chang. Ten days, sir.
    Mr. Dunn. Ten days. OK.
    So are you under the impression that no children have, 
let's say since the first of the year, no children have been 
released to a sponsor or transferred out before testing 
negative or completing quarantine?
    Ms. Chang. I'll have to--I certainly can't speak in 
absolutes, sir, but what I can tell you is that we have worked 
with the CDC to put in safety protocols to avoid exactly that. 
And we have a safety and health officer at each of our 
emergency intake sites to oversee that, because that is a top 
priority.
    Mr. Dunn. Well, thank you very much for that, Secretary 
Chang.
    Madam Chair, I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman.
    The Chair now recognizes Mr. Ruiz for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Ruiz. Thank you, Chairwoman DeGette.
    Ms. Chang, thank you for being here today. It's great to 
see you again.
    As an emergency physician, public health expert, and chair 
of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, I am encouraged to see 
the Biden administration working to reverse the failed policies 
implemented by the previous administration based on hate, fear, 
demonization of immigrants, cruel, intentional, traumatizing 
separation of children from their mothers that harmed children 
and made things worse--policies that were supported and 
justified by Republicans that were here in Congress and that 
are now here in this hearing who are now saying they are 
concerned.
    Look, last Congress, I introduced legislation to combat 
these harsh policies. My bill, the Humanitarian Standards for 
Individuals in CBP Custody Act, creates basic humanitarian 
standards for health, nutrition, sanitation, water, hygiene, 
and shelter for migrant children, women, elders, and families 
in the custody of CBP.
    This bill passed the House, and every Republican on this 
hearing who voted voted against these humanitarian standards, 
voted against basic humanitarian provisions like diapers, age-
appropriate food like baby food, basic health screenings to 
prevent children from dying, basic provisions worthy of human 
dignity.
    So don't come now with your newfound concerns about the 
plight of children in U.S. custody when you were justifying and 
defending the policy of ripping children from their mothers' 
arms, especially now when the Biden administration has improved 
the situation with a professional and humane approach.
    So, now, Ms. Chang, in regards to solutions, in recent 
months we've seen the Biden administration working to help 
ensure the children are safely and swiftly transferred from CBP 
to ORR facilities. Ms. Chang, can you explain why these 
facilities were necessary and why they are better for children 
than the alternatives?
    Ms. Chang. Thank you, Dr. Ruiz. And let me first just thank 
you for your long championing of these issues and for all the 
work that you and the CHC has done to support these vulnerable 
children.
    As I mentioned earlier, I had the chance to visit one of 
our CBP facilities, and it was clearly--and I think the CBP 
officials there will tell you the same--these facilities were 
never designed for children, nor were they designed for 
children to----
    Mr. Ruiz. And so why are these ORR facilities better?
    Ms. Chang. So we have in place basic humanitarian 
standards, where children can have recreational activities, 
where they get case management first and foremost. That is 
critical. They all get medical care. They get mental health----
    Mr. Ruiz. Great. So they're specialized in child welfare.
    Ms. Chang. That's right.
    Mr. Ruiz. And so, but news reports have detailed that in 
certain cases children are sleeping in rooms with hundreds of 
others, especially in these large facilities. And I'm concerned 
about the prospect of any child staying for a long period in 
these type of facilities.
    So, Ms. Chang, how long are children staying at these 
facilities now? And can you speak about efforts to reunify them 
with families as quickly as possible or move them into licensed 
facilities?
    Ms. Chang. Yes, Dr. Ruiz, we're happy to get you detailed 
information about the length of stay for different children in 
different facilities. But I can tell you that we are committed 
to doing a couple of things.
    We have specialized case management teams. We have case 
management leaders with a great deal of experience working to 
organize their staff so that no child stays one day longer than 
they need to and that, if they have complex cases that require 
more time, they are moved to licensed facilities.
    Mr. Ruiz. Thank you. And, look, we all know that the 
smaller the group, the more attention the child can take to 
meet their needs. And so these large facilities are not the 
ideal. We want them into the smaller facilities.
    Look, I've spoken with President Biden and Secretaries 
Mayorkas and Becerra about developing a civilian humanitarian 
response team to help with border crossing surges. The civilian 
humanitarian response team would be modeled after the DMAT 
team, the Desert Medical Assistance Team. The civilians will 
predominantly be composed of caseworkers, social workers, 
nurses, but not limited to those.
    The civilian humanitarian response team would be able to 
rapidly deploy to areas to quickly process unaccompanied 
asylum-seeking children, find their relatives, ensure they get 
tested for COVID, meet their quarantine needs, and assist them 
in their logistics or transportation, access to counsel, and 
returning for their immigration court date.
    Ms. Chang, would a humanitarian civilian response team help 
address the needs associated with border crossing surges?
    Ms. Chang. Absolutely.
    Mr. Ruiz. Thank you.
    Thank you, Ms. Chang. I appreciate your efforts and the 
professional, humane activities that you are doing to improve 
the situation. There has been great progress. And we're here to 
ensure that children are our priority in this matter.
    With that, I yield back my time.
    Ms. DeGette. The Chair now recognizes Mr. Joyce for 5 
minutes.
    Mr. Joyce. Thank you, Chair DeGette and Ranking Member 
Griffith, for having today's subcommittee hearing and to Acting 
Assistant Secretary Chang for being with us.
    Ms. Chang, in order to ensure that the Office of Refugee 
Resettlement, ORR, provides a safe environment for children in 
its care, ORR imposes requirements for preventing and 
addressing potential dangers, including an examination of the 
background and the qualification of facility employees who have 
direct contact with the children and minimum staff-to-child 
ratios.
    In March, the Associated Press reported that the Biden 
administration was, quote, ``not requiring FBI fingerprint 
background checks of caregivers at the rapidly expanding 
network of emergency sites,'' continuing that ``alarming child 
welfare experts, who say the waiver compromises safety.''
    In the agency's response to a letter sent by committee 
Republicans this past spring, HHS noted ORR may waive or modify 
background check requirements on a facility-to-facility basis.
    Ms. Chang, has ORR waived or modified background check 
requirements for any of its facilities since January 20, 2021?
    Ms. Chang. So, Representative, the one that comes to mind 
most immediately is a State Child Abuse and Neglect Registry 
check for our Carrizo Springs influx site. As you noted, we do 
waive those requirements on a case-by-case basis. The State 
simply wasn't able to complete those checks in a timely manner.
    But I will note that every one of those staff members did a 
fingerprint FBI criminal background check, as well as the 
Department of Justice Sex Offender Registry check that every 
single staff member is required to pass in order to work with 
our kids.
    Mr. Joyce. For any additional facilities, Ms. Chang, were 
these requirements waived or additionally modified?
    Ms. Chang. So I will have to check, and I'm happy to get 
back to you, sir, with any details, but I don't have that 
information at my fingertips.
    Mr. Joyce. As Representative Griffith stated earlier, when 
these children are in our custody, their safety is our 
responsibility. And I share his concerns that we must make sure 
that those caring for them are not criminals, have not been 
associated with criminal activity, or any indication that they 
should not be around children.
    In response to the committee's Republicans' April letter, 
Ms. Chang, HHS notified, quote, ``staff and volunteers who 
provide direct care must pass public criminal background checks 
for deployment at EIS.''
    Can you state, did all staff and all contractors and all 
volunteers pass background checks before staffing these influx 
care facilities and emergency intake sites?
    Ms. Chang. So what I can tell you about--contract staff and 
deployed Federal employees who do provide direct care have to 
pass a public criminal background check as well as DOJ's sex 
offender check. We also require that all of our Federal 
deployed employees have up-to-date criminal background checks. 
That includes a fingerprint check on the FBI's criminal 
database.
    And I just want to iterate that child safety is absolutely 
our top priority, and we have zero tolerance for any type of 
abuse or misconduct or mistreatment of our children. We have 
trained all of our Federal volunteers as well as our 
contractors about the importance of being vigilant, to 
appropriately report any concerns that they might have about 
child safety. And we take those issues very seriously and 
report them as necessary if any concerns exist.
    Mr. Joyce. And, to that point, have any staff or 
contractors or volunteers failed background checks after having 
started to work at any of ORR's facilities?
    Ms. Chang. I can't think of any, sir, but I can't say that 
with any certainty. So I'll have to check our records, and I'm 
happy to get back to you on that.
    Mr. Joyce. These children are of quite concern to all 
Members on this committee. Please do follow up with that.
    And, in my few seconds that are left, in March, President 
Biden asked Federal employees to volunteer to serve in a 4-
month detail to ORR. The Trump administration also sought 
volunteers throughout government to address the surge of 
migrants in 2019.
    How is HHS working with OPM to acquire volunteers to assist 
with unaccompanied children along the border?
    Ms. Chang. So we are working very closely with OPM and all 
of our interagency partners to help them understand the nature 
of the mission and the type of volunteers that we are seeking.
    And we have been really, really grateful to everyone who 
has stepped up with such a generosity of spirit. We have heard 
folks talk about how committed they are to the mission and how 
it's profoundly impacted them, because they do come into this 
work for public-service mission-oriented needs, and we are 
really, really grateful for their sacrifice.
    Mr. Joyce. My time has expired. Chair DeGette, I yield.
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you.
    The Chair now is pleased to recognize the vice chairman of 
the subcommittee, Mr. Peters, for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Peters. Thank you so much, Madam Chair.
    And, Ms. Chang, I want to thank you for your testimony. I 
have to say, as a member of this committee, you have been one 
of the more direct, responsive, and educational witnesses that 
we've had. And I just want to say that I really know it's not 
easy to sit there all this time, but you've done a great job, 
and I appreciate it.
    I wanted to address the number of referrals of 
unaccompanied children from Customs and Border Protection in 
the temporary facilities. There's 14 set up--there have been 14 
set up to house those children. One of those sites is in my 
district, the San Diego Convention Center, and we were the 
first community in California to open up to host one of these. 
And I want to commend Mayor Todd Gloria and County Board of 
Supervisors Chairman Nathan Fletcher for their leadership in 
opening our community to those children seeking asylum.
    And I had the opportunity to see the operation twice, and 
it's really--the work is really heroic. And so I want to thank 
you, Ms. Chang, and your HHS team on the ground in San Diego: 
Heidi Staples, Bonnie Preston, Pete Weldy, Matthew Steele, 
Stephen Fields, and Carol Fiertz.
    And I also want to thank the local community partners like 
the Convention Center, South Bay Community Services, Rady 
Children's Hospital, and the city and county of San Diego for 
their tireless efforts to coordinate care for these kids.
    Ms. Chang, in your testimony you state that HHS has now 
reduced the average time spent by children in CBP facilities to 
24 hours, which is well below the limit of 72 hours.
    I know that temporary facilities are not perfect, but can 
you walk us through why they play such an important role with 
this problem, and maybe with a focus on the site in San Diego?
    Ms. Chang. Thank you, Representative Peters. And I just 
want to thank you and everyone in San Diego County and City who 
stepped up.
    At the beginning of these challenging times, you know, I 
thought about San Diego as a possible site because San Diego 
has one of the best child welfare systems in the country. It is 
led by Nick Macchione, who is a trailblazer. And they were 
incredibly generous to open up their arms and hearts and space 
to care for our kids and to demonstrate that it could be done 
well, that our kids could be safe and that their well-being 
needs could be met.
    So I just want to also just give such a note of warm thanks 
to everyone in your community and to you for making that 
possible.
    These facilities were so important to us. As you noted, in 
early March we had thousands of children in CBP detention 
facilities for days on end. These sites were not appropriate 
for any child to spend 1 day, 3 days, much less 5 days. And we 
needed sites that could be stood up within a matter of days 
with child welfare experts, with pediatricians, with mental 
health specialists, caseworkers who could identify and treat 
the trauma that these kids may have experienced and to work 
their cases so that they could get home.
    And these emergency intake sites, most notably San Diego, 
stepped forward in a matter of days and weeks and did exactly 
that, and we are extremely grateful.
    Mr. Peters. If I could ask you, too: The facilities are 
meant to be temporary. The goal is to move these children out 
of them and put them into beds in a licensed facility.
    There's a little irony here that some of our colleagues on 
the Republican side are expressing concern about how the Biden 
administration is caring for these children when the Republican 
Governor of Texas just threatened to revoke the licenses of the 
very facilities that could provide these children a stable and 
caring environment.
    But, aside from that, Ms. Chang, can you talk about what 
HHS is doing to move kids more quickly to permanent beds and 
how you're supporting those State-licensed facilities?
    Ms. Chang. Absolutely, sir.
    There are a couple of things that we're doing. One of the 
most important, perhaps, happened early on, and that was to 
partner with the CDC to really clarify what kind of protections 
and actions our licensed providers needed to take in order to 
keep the children safe, their staff and their community.
    We worked with them closely to talk about acquiring 
appropriate PPE and what isolation and quarantine actually 
required. And we provided technical assistance site by site, if 
necessary.
    And we also worked with our facilities, because one of the 
challenges is staffing shortages. That's something that lots of 
industries are facing, but certainly the fears of working in a 
congregate-care setting during the middle of a pandemic 
certainly impacted our licensed bed providers from hiring 
appropriately.
    And so making sure that those staff were eligible early on 
for vaccines, making sure that they had appropriate PPE and 
guidance from the CDC were some of the things that we did to 
support them.
    Mr. Peters. Thank you again for your testimony, your 
excellent testimony, and your great work.
    My time has expired, and I yield back. Thank you, Madam 
Chair.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman.
    The Chair now recognizes Ms. Schrier for 5 minutes.
    Ms. Schrier. Thank you, Madam Chair.
    And thank you, Acting Assistant Secretary Chang. Having 
visited ORR's licensed ORR facilities in Texas last Congress 
and as a pediatrician, I really appreciate your concerted 
effort to act in the best interests of these children.
    And I think that the quality of the services provided at 
your State-licensed facilities is frequently lost in public 
discourse. And what I saw at a licensed facility were well-
cared-for children, two to a bedroom, bunk beds, clean 
bathrooms, outdoor play areas, classrooms, and access to 
pediatricians, social workers, case managers, and more.
    These facilities are not intended for long-term stays, and 
children should be reunited with their sponsors as quickly as 
possible, but in the meantime I am very grateful for the care 
that these licensed facilities continue to provide for these 
unaccompanied children.
    Now, when I visited, the emergency influx sites didn't 
exist yet. I am happy that these intermediate facilities have 
been constructed to get children out of the crowded, fenced, 
cement CBP facilities and into a more suitable transition while 
awaiting placement in a licensed ORR facility.
    However, as you've heard, I understand there is quite a bit 
of variability in the EIS conditions. And some resemble the 
licensed ORR facilities, which is great, but one in particular 
that we've talked about today has been described as just a 
really gigantic, crowded tent with rows of beds, five on each 
side of a long central aisle, providing no privacy, limited 
staffing and oversight, and limited access to safe recreation--
in other words, as you know, falling far short of a healthy 
environment for children.
    So, Ms. Chang, seeing as these EISes are not regulated and 
given that we're still recovering from the pandemic, how can we 
make all of these EIS facilities a little more humane and 
child-friendly, more like their licensed ORR counterparts?
    Ms. Chang. That's a great question, Dr. Schrier. I, too, 
visited a licensed facility, and you're right, these are--it 
was so heartwarming. I saw kids playing outside with water 
balloons and screaming in joy and having fun. I saw them in 
classrooms, and I saw some of their incredible artwork.
    And we absolutely want every child in ORR custody to be in 
a licensed facility if at all possible. And, as I talked 
earlier, we are doing everything in our power to bring more of 
those licensed beds on line so that that can happen.
    But in the meantime we have also been working with our 
emergency intake sites to try and improve the quality of care 
that we are providing. Even though it's just a temporary site, 
we recognize that child well-being requires us to dedicate 
every ounce of energy and ability we have to make those sites 
work as well as they can.
    So a couple of things I will mention about Bliss in 
particular.
    As you noted, one of the things that I saw when I was there 
and that others have noted are the somewhat crowded conditions. 
There are a couple of things that we have done.
    One is to think about how we are using that physical space 
differently so that kids do have more space and privacy, 
perhaps cohorting kids by their age as well.
    We also recognize that what kids need are stimulating, 
engaging activities, and so we've tried to increase educational 
opportunities, recreational activities like yoga as a good 
stress relief, as well as ensuring that kids have access to 
religious services, which can be an important source of comfort 
to them.
    In addition, one of the things that one of our staff noted 
was that, yes, we have a soccer field where kids can burn off 
energy and have recreational time, but in Texas it can get 
really hot in the middle of the day, and so we have also 
created indoor recreational space so that kids can have 
options.
    Ms. Schrier. Thank you.
    I have a quick other question--and thank you for your 
attention to that.
    I have a question about the COVID-19 vaccine. Last week, 
HHS updated guidance surrounding COVID-19 vaccines for eligible 
children. Can you walk us through the new guidance and how this 
will be implemented?
    Ms. Chang. Yes. So I think, as someone else mentioned 
earlier, the law is clear about our need to make sure kids are 
safe and that their well-being needs are met, and that 
absolutely includes providing medical care. ORR has always 
provided needed vaccinations for all children in our care and 
custody.
    And we are working site by site to ensure that the COVID 
vaccine is also made available, as part of that suite of 
medical care, to every eligible child. And so we have already 
vaccinated hundreds of kids in Texas and are working alongside 
of our licensed providers, as well, to make sure they have 
access.
    Ms. Schrier. Thank you. It seems like getting those rolled 
out would allow you to fully fill the licensed facilities, 
because they would no longer have to be so separated.
    Thank you very much.
    I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you so much.
    Mrs. Trahan, I'm now pleased to recognize you for 5 
minutes.
    Mrs. Trahan. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Chair 
DeGette, for holding this important hearing today. This hearing 
is an opportunity to reflect on the errors of our recent past 
in order to forge a wiser and more humane path forward, one 
that better resembles our country's values.
    Two years ago, I joined a number of colleagues on a CHC-led 
codel to Texas so that we could see firsthand how the CBP 
facilities were handling the influx of children. Frankly, it 
was even worse than we'd imagined. No one expects CBP to run 
full-scale child centers, but there wasn't even an adequate 
plan to prevent overcrowding or prolonged detainment, or even 
to provide these children hot meals.
    As a mother of two little girls who are no older than some 
of the children we saw, it was an appalling and absolutely 
heartbreaking scene to witness. By separating these children 
from their families, they were being treated as though they 
were hostages rather than innocent children. This isn't one of 
those situations in which it takes time to reflect on the error 
of our ways. The prior administration's family separation 
policy was obviously abhorrent and indefensible at the time, 
and I regret that it will forever be a stain on our Nation.
    But today, having heard Secretary Chang's testimony, I'm 
grateful that those days are finally behind us and the Biden 
administration is taking the steps necessary to ensure that 
unaccompanied minors are treated with compassion, care, and 
dignity by moving them out of CBP facilities as quickly as 
possible and safely into the arms of sponsor families. 
Secretary Chang, according to your testimony, very few 
unaccompanied children are in CBP custody for more than 72 
hours.
    Can you just explain to the committee why it is so 
important to transition these children out of CBP custody and 
into ORR's hands as quickly as possible?
    Ms. Chang. Absolutely. Thank you, Representative Trahan, 
for the work that you've done and for your advocacy. As you 
noted, seeing those conditions, I think, makes it really clear, 
but I'll describe what I saw when I went to a CBP facility a 
few months ago. These were kids in these large rooms separated 
by plastic. They were sleeping on mats on the floor and had 
aluminum sheets as blankets. They often had really very little 
to do for most of the day, and as you noted--someone noted--
didn't always have hot meals available to them.
    Children do well and they thrive when they feel safe, when 
they are with a loving, caring adult who they recognize and 
understand cares about them. They need medical care, especially 
if they have gone through a traumatic and challenging journey, 
as many of these kids have. They need education, they need case 
management, and they need to get home. And none of those 
things, unfortunately, were available in CBP detention 
facilities, not because the staff didn't care deeply about 
their welfare but because the facility itself was not designed 
to do any of those things.
    And so, as you noted, we had to quickly stand up ORR 
facilities, maybe not the ideal, but places where all of those 
child-centered activities could happen.
    Mrs. Trahan. Well, thank you for that. You know, since 
October at least 550 unaccompanied minors have been released to 
sponsors in Massachusetts. And we're so grateful to your office 
as well as the many families and organizations who are 
providing them services. One of those organizations is the 
International Institute of New England, founded in Lowell, 
Massachusetts, over a century ago.
    The Institute has supported the reunification of hundreds 
of unaccompanied children with family members in Massachusetts 
and throughout the region. And one young person the Institute 
is helping arrived in the U.S. last year. He came to our 
country with severe intellectual disabilities as a result of an 
injury during infancy. Despite those challenges, he traveled to 
the U.S. with his sister and with the Institute's support, both 
children were able to reunite with their mom and he was able to 
attend a virtual class last year.
    So, thanks to the support of the Institute, he's also begun 
learning American sign language. He's being outfitted with 
hearing aids. But this is just one of a range of challenges, 
physical and mental, that unaccompanied minors face. I'm 
wondering if you could just speak a little bit more about ORR's 
standards of care, including services for the accompanied 
children who are suffering from a mental health crisis or other 
specialized needs.
    Ms. Chang. Absolutely. So one of the things that we do is 
to try to recruit places like the Institute that provide that 
kind of specialized care. We know that children will come to us 
with medical, mental health, other types of special needs, and 
we want to make sure that there is a bed available for each and 
every one of them.
    So we have been working to recruit more of those facilities 
and more of those beds and to connect children with the amazing 
people that you described who can provide for those needs.
    Mrs. Trahan. Thank you. I'm out of time.
    I yield back, Madam Chair. Thank you so much.
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you. Mr. O'Halleran, are you with us? I 
saw you appear briefly. I know Mr. O'Halleran has been having 
some technical issues. And so, when he's able to get back on, 
we will recognize him.
    In the meantime, it's the practice of the subcommittee to 
allow members of the full committee who are not subcommittee 
members to ask questions, and I'm very pleased, and I want to 
thank the witness for agreeing to stay for those questions. We 
appreciate it.
    And Mr. Bilirakis, I'm pleased to go to you for 5 minutes. 
Welcome.
    Mr. Bilirakis. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I want to thank 
the Secretary as well. Thanks for your patience. I appreciate 
it very much. Thanks for allowing me to waive on, Madam Chair, 
and the ranking member as well.
    Secretary Chang, President Biden was slow to acknowledge 
that there was a crisis at our southern border. Does ORR 
believe there's a crisis on our southern border? Yes or no, 
please. Is there a crisis on our southern border? I visited the 
border too a couple weeks ago, and I saw a crisis. Is there a 
crisis at the southern border, in your opinion?
    Ms. Chang. We have made incredible progress in spite of a 
lot of different challenges, including the COVID-19 impact on 
our licensed beds, the unprecedented numbers of children coming 
across to our care and custody, but we are pleased to see the 
progress that we have been able to make, including reducing the 
time that children spend in CBP care and custody, less than a 
day now, and we have fewer than 700 children in CBP detention 
centers to date.
    Mr. Bilirakis. OK, but would you declare it a crisis as the 
President has? Would you define it as a crisis at the southern 
border? Clearly, we had 12 Members go down just a--again, a 
couple weeks ago in El Paso on the border, and we declared it a 
crisis. Would you consider it a crisis?
    Ms. Chang. I consider that we've made incredible progress 
and that----
    Mr. Bilirakis. All right. Let me go on to the next 
question, though. Thank you.
    What is the average time of an unaccompanied child? How 
long do they remain, on the average, in one of these 
facilities, ORR facilities?
    Ms. Chang. So I can tell you that on average, any child who 
is in ORR custody will stay in our care for approximately 37 
days. That is the current average.
    Mr. Bilirakis. Has that changed over the past 6 months? Has 
it gotten better or worse as far as the child remaining in ORR?
    Ms. Chang. So this number is very fluid. It does tend to go 
up and down by a matter of days. Nearly every day, we track 
this information and we're happy to get you a breakdown from 
the last 6 months.
    Mr. Bilirakis. Has it gotten--has it increased in the last 
6 months?
    Ms. Chang. You know, to be honest, sir, I don't remember 
what the number was 6 months ago, but I'm happy to look at that 
and get back to you.
    Mr. Bilirakis. OK. Thank you. What happens when an 
unaccompanied child, let's say, one particular child does not 
have family or a sponsor that can't be identified, or if ORR 
determines if a child is a victim of trafficking during the 
migration? Does the child remain in the United States, or is 
the child returned to his or her home country?
    Ms. Chang. So I'd like to break that apart in two pieces 
because you mentioned two groups of kids, one that we are not 
able to locate a sponsor, and one who is a victim of 
trafficking. So, I want to talk about them differently because 
they're unique populations.
    So any child who comes into our care and custody, we work 
to find a sponsor and, quite frankly, our staff and our 
incredible licensed network organizations never give up, but 
there are some children for whom we cannot find a sponsor in 
the immediate term, and so we will place that child in a 
licensed provider that provides longer-term care, but even then 
their caseworker will continue to search for any relative or 
appropriate sponsor to identify and vet.
    And sometimes we do find children that we may have thought 
have no sponsor and actually have someone here in the U.S. that 
they can unify with. So it's important value proposition that 
they--we continue to search and they remain in our care as they 
await their immigration proceedings. And so they will stay in 
our care if they don't have a sponsor until they reach the age 
of 18 or their immigration proceedings determine what happens 
next with them.
    For victims of trafficking, there are special protections 
in place, including services that we provide, also special type 
of vetting and secure procedures that we use to make sure that 
wherever we place that child that their special needs are taken 
into account and that we heighten our safety protocols by doing 
things like home studies and fingerprint checks on the sponsor 
and any other household members.
    And we do take special precautions for a child who may be a 
victim of trafficking, but that doesn't mean that they won't 
have any sponsor, it just means we heighten our work to ensure 
they are safe.
    Mr. Bilirakis. OK. So that means that they do remain in the 
United States. Is that correct? And then they're not 
transported to their country of origin if they're trafficked?
    Ms. Chang. As long as they're in our care and awaiting 
immigration proceedings, they are--they're in our care, or they 
are with their sponsor while awaiting immigration proceedings, 
but we are not involved in the law enforcement or immigration 
processes.
    Ms. DeGette. The gentleman's time's expired.
    Mr. Bilirakis. I see that my time has expired. Thank you.
    I yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. Welcome back, Mr. O'Halleran. You are now 
recognized for 5 minutes.
    Mr. O'Halleran. Thank you, Madam Chair and Ranking Member, 
for holding this meeting. It is no surprise that the border 
crisis has been worsened by government failures to quickly 
reunify families. This has placed an untold burden on border 
communities like some of those in my district, just miles north 
of the southern border. I appreciate the Health and Human 
Services' recent efforts to reunite children with their 
families or with community nonprofits more rapidly.
    However, more must be done to ensure that NGOs and 
nonprofits are aware of the status of unaccompanied minors, 
have the resources to properly care for these children, and can 
ensure that they are placed with family or other long-term 
shelter services in the United States as soon as possible.
    And I congratulate the Department on moving as fast as they 
have been recently. Too often, the Federal Government has 
failed in collaborating with State and local governments in 
providing relief for entities and personnel who are in the 
front lines of managing the crisis.
    Assistant Secretary, I thank you for being here today. How 
is the Department of Health and Human Services working with 
Arizona's communities now to ensure that they have the 
resources they need to safely reunite children? And I must say 
that I don't know if you've answered it already, because I've 
been off for so long.
    Ms. Chang. So Representative O'Halleran, we work very 
closely with our licensed provider network in Arizona, but you 
are right that it takes more than the Government, it takes more 
than even our grantees who may be in your community. We have to 
work with other advocates and NGOs and communities to ensure 
that children are safe and that their needs are being met.
    We are trying to increase--and we can certainly do better, 
and we're trying to increase our ability to work closely with 
local community providers to understand their needs and how 
they can be part of the solution.
    Mr. O'Halleran. Thank you. Another question is, what 
additional actions do you think Congress can take to ensure 
that Arizona's border communities have the tools they need to 
solve this issue?
    Ms. Chang. So I have talked about how the President's 
budget proposal really re-envisions how we do this work, and 
how we can invest greater in community resources to support 
children and their families, not only while they're in our care 
and custody but after they go back into the community. And we 
would be happy as an administration to meet with you, sir, and 
other members of the committee to talk about what that means.
    Mr. O'Halleran. Specifically, what programs are in place 
now to help those communities from a funding standpoint and 
coordination?
    Ms. Chang. Sir, I'll have to get back to you if that's OK. 
I'll have to find out exactly what is available in your 
community, and happy to report back on that.
    Mr. O'Halleran. I thank you, and I'm going to continue 
monitoring this to ensure that the Federal Government is 
effectively working with local leaders and nonprofits.
    And Madam Chair, I yield.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman for yielding.
    The Chair now recognizes Mr. Johnson for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Johnson. Well, thank you, Madam Chair.
    Ms. Chang, I represent Ohio's 6th congressional district 
that includes eastern and southeastern Ohio. Last month, I 
traveled to the Rio Grande Valley portion of the southern 
border to see the situation myself firsthand. What I saw was 
astonishing.
    There is an unmitigated crisis, one that is self-inflicted. 
The Biden administration has effectively neutered our men and 
women of Customs and Border Patrol, and unaccompanied children 
are some of the biggest victims of these dangerous policies. I 
was repeatedly told by members of the Border Patrol that there 
are no longer consequences for those attempting to illegally 
cross the border. And make no mistake, the children in 
facilities like the Delphi one I visited in Donna, Texas, are 
victims of this administration's failures. We are not doing 
those children any favors by refusing to enforce our Nation's 
southern border security. This is neither kindness nor empathy. 
This is negligence of the highest order.
    Sadly, this administration has taken the policy stance of 
simply throwing money at problems and hoping they'll go away. 
We've seen this playbook time and again, whether it's disguised 
as COVID relief or a liberal wish list disguised as 
infrastructure investment. Our spending is simply out of 
control. HHS, your agency, is as guilty as any.
    So Ms. Chang, how many children are in HHS custody today, 
and where are these facilities located?
    Ms. Chang. So, as of this morning, at 8 a.m. we had 16,250 
children in ORR custody, and they are in a combination of 
emergency intake sites in Texas and California as well as 
licensed providers across the country.
    Mr. Johnson. OK. So they're spread throughout the Nation?
    Ms. Chang. That's correct, sir.
    Mr. Johnson. OK. According to HHS spokesman Kenneth Wolfe, 
we are spending approximately $775 per day on housing children 
in these emergency sites. Is this correct? Does this jive with 
your number?
    Ms. Chang. I don't have the figures he was relying on, but 
I'm happy to check in with him and get back to you on that.
    Mr. Johnson. OK. He's from your department. That's Kenneth 
Wolfe. So I'm going to use that number right now until you get 
back and correct us. Are you aware that according to the Census 
Bureau, on average, the United States spends approximately $35 
a day per American student on education? Are you aware of that? 
That's coming out of Census Bureau.
    Ms. Chang. Yes. I trust you, sir. I don't have that 
information.
    Mr. Johnson. OK. I'd encourage you to look that up, because 
it's a staggering number. I live in and represent one of the 
most rural parts of the country, Appalachia, whether it's 
broadband services or real legitimate infrastructure, I see a 
region ripe for investment. But we are spending over 22 times 
more money on children in these emergency facilities than our 
own children's education here in America. It looks to me that 
we're putting the children of other countries, Northern 
Triangle countries, above the children in places like 
Steubenville, Pomeroy, and Cadiz, Ohio. If those numbers are 
true, if that $775 per child versus $35 per child is true, 
that's a 22 times difference. Would you agree that we've got 
our priorities in the wrong place?
    Ms. Chang. Sir, I apologize. I have this elevator music. It 
seems to have stopped. Sorry. We have technical difficulties 
here.
    Mr. Johnson. Well, then, let me ask my question again. Let 
me ask again, because I want you to hear the question if you 
couldn't hear it.
    We're spending 22 times more money on these children in 
emergency facilities than our own children here in America. 
Would you agree that that's a disparity?
    Ms. Chang. What I would emphasize is that HHS is following 
the law. Congress----
    Mr. Johnson. Well, that's a yes or no. That's an opinion. I 
understand what the Biden rules are, and that's what's got us 
in trouble. What is your view on the 22 times more? Is that a 
disparity in your view?
    Ms. Chang. Sir, I just want to clarify that these are not 
Biden rules. These are----
    Mr. Johnson. Oh, sure they are. It's the Biden 
administration that has created this crisis. Let me move on. 
Thirty-five dollars compared to $775. Are these migrant 
children that much more important----
    Ms. DeGette. The gentleman's time is expired.
    The Chair will now recognize Mr. Cardenas for 5 minutes.
    Mr. Cardenas. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman, and 
thank you, Member Griffith, for holding this important hearing 
about the human beings who come across our southern border. In 
this particular case, we're talking about children. And we're 
talking about children who have arrived at what is supposed to 
be the most caring, loving, welcoming country on the planet. 
And I'm so glad to see, Acting Assistant Secretary Chang, that 
we are now returning to who we are as a great country.
    For the last 4 years, we had a Trump administration that 
actually violated human rights, children's rights, violated our 
own laws of the United States of America by denying these 
children the safety that we are capable of providing for them.
    So, my first question to you, Assistant Secretary Chang: 
The misguided policies and actions of the Trump administration 
within your department, Office of Refugee Resettlement--are you 
following those guidelines, or do you now have new appropriate 
mandates to follow the law that has been prescribed for your 
department?
    Ms. Chang. Yes, sir. We have made clear that things like 
the memorandum of understanding that inappropriately required 
us to share information with DHS is no longer valid. As I 
mentioned earlier, we, on day one of this administration, we're 
not practicing and enforcing that memorandum, but we wanted to 
be crystal clear that that is no longer the position of this 
administration. And so we formally rescinded that agreement. It 
had an unfortunate and terrible chilling effect on sponsors' 
willingness to come forward and unify with their own children. 
And so it was very important for us to publicly state that that 
is no longer the policy of this administration.
    Mr. Cardenas. Did that Trump policy that you just pointed 
out that you are no longer following, and that the President 
Biden and your administration has mandated that that policy not 
be followed, did it contribute to suffering to children for 
them being in a nonfamilylike setting for longer periods of 
time?
    Ms. Chang. What I can say is that I think all children 
yearn to be with a loved one, someone who cares about them, and 
certainly parents and legal guardians. And, yes, every day that 
a legal guardian or parent did not come forward out of fear was 
absolutely unfortunate and unacceptable. And so we have moved 
away from that policy.
    Mr. Cardenas. Thank you. And one--can you answer this 
question quickly? When a child is traumatized by being 
separated from their family, from their parents, does that 
trauma go away as soon as, fortunately, they are back in the 
arms of their family members, or does that trauma affect them 
for the rest of their life, negatively?
    Ms. Chang. So, obviously, every child is different, but I 
think the greater point----
    Mr. Cardenas. I'm talking about the science of it. It's my 
understanding that psychologists, psychiatrists, and people who 
actually study the human psyche have said over and over and 
over that the trauma like that to a little child actually, 
technically, never goes away. Yes, different individuals adjust 
differently, but that trauma is about as bad as it gets.
    Ms. Chang. Absolutely, sir. That kind of trauma is 
significant, and it can have impacts not only in that child's 
life but in the family dynamic. It can affect their ability to 
feel safe, which is critical for child development. A child 
actually has to be able to feel like they are safe in their 
environment and that they can depend on the adults who care for 
them. And that kind of trauma could have a very lasting effect. 
And so, absolutely, it's something to keep in mind and to make 
sure that we are addressing.
    Mr. Cardenas. Yes. Thank you. And that's why I very clearly 
depict the Trump administration actions as being unconscionable 
and also human rights violations, purposeful to human rights 
violations. And I'm just so pleased to know that we now have a 
President and an administration who refuses to participate in 
any way in causing any trauma on any children or any families 
who come to our great country to seek asylum and to start a new 
life because they've feared death, rape, and other atrocities 
in their home country.
    And also my last question is, are you diligently making 
sure that every facility that handles these children in your 
authority, that they are doing their job correctly? Are you 
checking up on them?
    Ms. Chang. Absolutely. We have Federal staff, ORR staff, at 
every single one of our emergency intake sites, sometimes 
dozens of them, to ensure that very thing.
    Mr. Cardenas. Thank you. My time is expired.
    And thank you so much, Madam Chairwoman, for allowing me to 
be in this hearing.
    Ms. DeGette. Thank you, Mr. Cardenas.
    The Chair's now very pleased to recognize Mr. Carter for 5 
minutes. Welcome.
    Mr. Carter. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. And thank 
you, Ms. Chang, for being here and for answering these 
questions. I want to go back, one of my colleagues earlier in 
this hearing, Representative Palmer, I believe you were talking 
about the fact that a lot of these children are coming to 
America to escape the violence in some of the cities in Central 
America, and as Mr. Palmer, as Representative Palmer pointed 
out, actually, some of the cities, quite a few of our 
metropolitan areas here in America, have a higher violence rate 
than they do in Central America.
    For instance, Baltimore and St. Louis, where they've 
defunded the police, both have significantly higher violence 
rates. Are we sending any of those children to those two 
cities, to Baltimore and St. Louis? I mean, wouldn't you agree 
that that would be like taking them out of the frying pan and 
putting them into the fire?
    Ms. Chang. We can certainly get you information about where 
children in ORR custody go when they go to a sponsor. We have 
that breakdown by State and by county, and we update that 
monthly. We're happy to share that with you.
    Mr. Carter. Well, I'd certainly like to see that 
information. I think it would be good for the committee to see 
because, if indeed this is the problem that exists, and that 
is, they're trying to escape violence in some of these areas in 
Central America and we're sending them to cities that actually 
have a higher violence rate, you know, how can you say that's 
humanitarian? I'm baffled by that.
    Nevertheless, I want to move on. And I want to tell you 
that, I wanted to mention the reports that came out about the 
allegations of neglect and abuse at an ORR facility in San 
Antonio earlier this year where they were holding more than 
1,600 unaccompanied children.
    Ms. Chang, I've been to the border, unlike the Vice 
President, unlike the President, I've been down there and I've 
seen it firsthand. I've looked into the eyes of those children. 
Regardless of whether you agree with the policy that is being 
implemented down there, regardless whether you're Republican or 
Democrat, to look into the eyes of those children, to see the 
fear in those children's eyes, to just look at them and to see 
and witness the overcrowding and what's happening down there, 
it is simply an humanitarian crisis, there's no question about 
that. But specifically to the problem in San Antonio, I want to 
ask you were there--were these allegations reported to the 
appropriate investigative entities?
    Ms. Chang. Sir, if the allegations that you're talking 
about are the same ones I'm thinking about, then, yes, 
absolutely. We also ensure that all of our staff, our 
contractors, our Federal volunteers are fully trained and 
educated on the importance of reporting any incident that 
raises concerns. And if those incidents involve any allegations 
of abuse or neglect, we immediately report that to law 
enforcement, child protection services, whatever the law 
requires. We take child safety very seriously.
    Mr. Carter. OK. So I am to assume, and please correct me if 
I am wrong, that those allegations in San Antonio are being 
fully investigated?
    Ms. Chang. So, sir, again, I'm not sure exactly if we're 
thinking about the same ones, but yes, any allegations that 
come up, whether it's in San Antonio or any other site, are 
fully investigated.
    Mr. Carter. And we will know about them, this committee 
specifically will know about those and the results of the 
investigations?
    Ms. Chang. I will have to check with our legal counsel, but 
to the extent we are able to share information protecting and 
following laws about sharing that information, we are 
absolutely happy to do that.
    Mr. Carter. I'm sorry. There are laws that said that you 
would not release that information, or----
    Ms. Chang. So I can only speak from my experience in child 
welfare. There are certainly privacy protections in place that 
prevent the reporting of information about individual cases or 
active investigations.
    So I just want to make sure I'm doing my due diligence and 
not overpromise, but anything we can share with you, sir, we 
will.
    Mr. Carter. OK. I want to ask you about another incident 
real quick. NBC News had reported last month about an incident 
about some migrant children that were stuck on parked buses 
overnight before going to a facility or a sponsor, outside an 
HHS facility in Dallas. And I assume you're familiar with that. 
Do you have any updates on that investigation?
    Ms. Chang. Yes. We immediately looked into that incident. 
It was terrible. No child should have been on a bus for as long 
as that child was. It is unacceptable behavior and actions. We 
took immediate action with the contractor who was in charge of 
that particular transportation. We have worked with them, still 
working with them. They're actually colocated here, so we can 
ensure that something like that never happens again. And I'm 
really pleased to say that that child is safe, and they are 
safely with their family right now.
    Mr. Carter. OK. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Ms. 
Chang.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman.
    This concludes the questioning of the Members, and I would 
defer to Mr. Griffith for 5 minutes for any closing statements 
he would like to make.
    Mr. Griffith. Thank you, Madam Chair. First, I would like 
to ask for unanimous consent to have placed into the record a 
letter from June 29, 2018, where the Members--the Republican 
Members of the Energy and Commerce Committee stated that we 
support keeping families together, and believe that children 
should not be separated from their parents. There was a 
misunderstanding apparently earlier, and somebody thought that 
we had supported separating families on this committee, and 
that was never the case.
    So if that letter could be submitted, unanimous consent, 
for the record, I would appreciate it.
    Ms. DeGette. Does the gentleman have any other documents?
    Mr. Griffith. I do. Yes, ma'am.
    Ms. DeGette. Go ahead. I'll put them both in.
    Mr. Griffith. I also would like to ask the Chair for 
unanimous consent to enter an April 22nd, 2021, letter sent by 
the Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans to Vice President 
Harris. This letter requested information about ORR's 
operations related to management, care, and treatment of 
unaccompanied children, related matters given the current 
surge. Secretary Becerra provided initial response on behalf of 
the Vice President, which we greatly appreciate. However, the 
response did not address all the questions in our letter.
    Our staff have been in contact with your staff to ensure a 
complete response, but I would like to ask the Assistant for 
comments, just at some point, if she could ensure that we get 
those answers, I would appreciate it. And in fact we could have 
that letter dated April 22nd of this year placed into the 
record as well.
    And with that, Madam Chair, I would say that I'm very 
appreciative of all the time that the Assistant Secretary has 
spent with us today, and look forward to getting a lot of 
written answers to many of the questions that were asked and 
that she had to defer on the answer because she does not know. 
I appreciate that. Can't know everything.
    But with that, Madam Chair, I will yield back.
    Ms. DeGette. I thank the gentleman. And without objection, 
both of those letters are entered into the record.
    [The information appears at the conclusion of the hearing.]
    Ms. DeGette. I would just like to also add my thanks to Ms. 
Chang. You have inherited a very difficult situation that you 
are striving mightily to resolve. And I do believe, and I do 
believe every member of this committee, Democrats and 
Republicans, care about these children, and we all want to make 
sure that we treat these children with dignity, that we unify 
them with any family members or other sponsors that they might 
have.
    I will just say a couple of things. Several of my 
Republican colleagues said that President Biden urged people in 
these Triangle countries or others to send their children 
unaccompanied to the United States. I have never heard 
President Biden say that, and I can't imagine that anybody 
would urge folks, desperate folks, to send their children at 
great, great personal risk to the United States unaccompanied.
    And these children are showing up for whatever reasons of 
desperation. I know that Vice President Harris is, right now, 
trying to work with these governments to see what she can do, 
but to say that Joe Biden would tell children to come 
unaccompanied many, many miles is beyond the pale to me.
    And I want to also say, I too have been to the border and I 
saw these facilities, and this subcommittee went to the border 
when President Trump was the President. Ms. Chang, we saw what 
you described, the children on the floors, on the mats, with 
the Plexiglass between them and the space blankets covering 
them, and it was terrible. It was a terrible situation for us 
to see.
    The difference between that administration and this 
administration was that the Trump administration separated 
those children from their parents--and some of those children 
still have not seen their parents to this day--and left us this 
big mess to mop up. And I will also say that the Trump 
administration did very little, if anything, to try to move 
those children into an appropriate ORR situation, which would 
be a much more humane situation, and did very little to try to 
expedite their reunion with their parents or their sponsors.
    So I want to thank you, Ms. Chang, and I want to thank your 
agency, I want to thank your employees, I want to thank your 
volunteers, for striving mightily under very, very difficult 
situations every single day to make sure that these children 
who show up at our border are treated humanely and that they 
have some hope for a reasonable life. I really do.
    I want to remind Members that, pursuant to committee rules, 
they have 10 business days to submit additional questions for 
the record to be answered by the witness. And, Ms. Chang, we 
want to thank you for your willingness to submit these 
responses to these questions and also any documents that the 
Members have asked. I know that you will respond promptly if 
you can. And we've inserted the documents into the record.
    And so, with that, I want to thank everybody, particularly, 
our witness.
    And this subcommittee is adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 2:03p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]
    [Material submitted for inclusion in the record follows:]

             Prepared Statement of Hon. Michael C. Burgess

    Madame Chair, thank you for holding this important hearing 
today. As we discuss this issue, 16,874 unaccompanied children 
remain in Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) care, the 
majority of which are in Texas. ORR has a responsibility to 
ensure the health and safety of these children, but the large 
influx in the number of unaccompanied children crossing our 
border, which reached the highest number on record this year, 
is making it difficult to find adequate, safe, and healthy 
conditions in which to house them.
    This is clearly a complicated and multifaceted issue. To 
ease the burden on our frontline border officials are ORR 
caregivers, as well as the American taxpayer, we must address 
the root causes of irregular migration. Since 2014, I have 
taken numerous trips to the border. This year alone I have 
visited the Kay Bailey Hutchinson Convention Center, Carizzo 
Springs, McAllen, and Ft. Bliss sites to learn firsthand how 
our Federal agencies were coping with influx migrant 
populations. Clearly I take this responsibility seriously. In 
2018, I traveled to the northern triangle countries of El 
Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras to assess the situation and 
determine how the United States can better help address the 
root causes of irregular migration. Subsequently, I introduced 
legislation to redirect some foreign aid for Central America to 
organizations in-country working with local populations to 
combat these drivers. Too often, American foreign assistance 
falls into the hands of corrupt foreign officials or is 
thwarted by gang violence and drug smugglers who thrive in 
chaotic environments.
    Yesterday, Vice President Kamala Harris visited Guatemala 
with President Giammattei. President Giammattei acknowledged 
coyotes and human smugglers as significant contributors to the 
instability driving people north. Unfortunately, children are 
smuggled and exposed to unimaginable and traumatic experiences 
on their journey to a better life.
    Reports indicate that Vice President Harris and President 
Giammattei discussed ways to broaden extradition treaties to 
allow Guatemala to send coyotes to the United States for 
prosecution. I agree that we must address the root causes of 
irregular migration and limit human trafficking to the best of 
our ability, but the United States cannot be solely 
responsible.
    While we cannot prevent all trafficking situations, once 
unaccompanied children are in our country, it is critical that 
health screenings are provided, including testing for COVID-19. 
My work on this subcommittee has led to each unaccompanied 
child receiving general health screenings and routine 
vaccinations. Furthermore, we must work to ensure that, when 
children are released to their sponsors, the identity and 
relationship of the guardian is verified. There have been far 
too many stories of children released to traffickers or abusive 
homes, which can be avoided through proper vetting.
    This is the third major influx of unaccompanied children 
since 2014, yet we seem to be repeating the same mistakes. It 
is paramount that we work towards meaningful changes to respond 
to this current crisis and prepare for future influxes.

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