21st SW Grand Jury Releases Shocking Report

Attorney General Ashley Moody highlighted the release of the Third Presentment of the Twenty-First Statewide Grand Jury Regarding Unaccompanied Alien Children. The presentment outlines horrible atrocities inflicted on immigrant children in Florida and elsewhere who are under the authority of the Biden administration and nonprofit organizations receiving taxpayer money. Allegations from the presentment include the federal government losing track of more than 20,000 children, no background checks on the minors’ sponsors, human trafficking and child abuse.

Last June, after Biden’s policies caused an unprecedented immigration crisis compromising the safety of Americans and immigrants, Gov. Ron DeSantis filed a petition with the Florida Supreme Court to impanel a statewide grand jury to identify and investigate persons and international human-smuggling networks that move illegal immigrants, particularly children, across the Southwest Border into Florida and other states. The court approved the petition. Attorney General Moody’s Statewide Prosecutor serves as legal advisor to the jury.

Attorney General Ashley Moody said, “I want to thank Gov. DeSantis for standing up for children and calling for an investigation into the Biden administration’s abject failure to protect unaccompanied minors in dangerous situations. As a mother, I am outraged at how the Biden administration and others in authority have encouraged this nightmare through policy and are neglecting hundreds of thousands of children, subjecting them to abuse and sexual assault even after they cross the border. The federal government is knowingly aiding and abetting trafficking organizations and allowing horrific harm to happen to these children. I am calling upon Congress to investigate and consider federal law to stop these misguided programs.”

The Statewide Grand Jury is investigating the impact of international human-smuggling networks on the state of Florida and any violation of state laws when it comes to how children are transported and placed with sponsors. Jurors spent months investigating the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement and the organizations it contracts with to find sponsors for unaccompanied minors.

According to the grand jury presentment, “ORR is facilitating the forced migration, sale, and abuse of foreign children…This process exposes children to horrifying health conditions, constant criminal threat, labor and sex trafficking, robbery, rape and other experiences not done justice by mere words.”

The jurors discovered that more than 250,000 unaccompanied minors entered the U.S. since Biden became president. These children are immediately shipped to a federal facility. Then there is “incessant pressure on case managers to process UAC speedily with minimal, if any, scrutiny of sponsors or questionable documents, addresses, or stories told to them.”

The presentment released today found, among other things:

· During a 10-month period in 2021, ORR lost contact with nearly 20,000 UAC;
· A report showed HHS and the U.S. Department of Justice received thousands of allegations of sexual abuse;
· Testimony of UAC revealed that a minor was ‘pimped out’ by their ‘aunt’ (whom they did not know prior to arriving in the U.S.), some UAC ran away from sponsors for being sold for sex, and ORR placed a teenage girl in the house of unknown men with no private bedroom;
· ORR discouraged close checking of addresses of sponsors and some sponsors utilized addresses in Jacksonville including a strip club, empty lots surrounded by stacked shipping containers or open fields;
· During the Biden administration, case managers are only performing home studies in approximately 4.5% placements and discretionary home studies in less than one percent of cases.
· One case manager reported having to release a teenage girl to a male sponsor with multiple other unknown males living in the same residence—all unidentified. The presentment stated this is not an isolated incident.
· Criminal history, lack of citizen status and even total refusal to submit to a background check does not disqualify sponsors from receiving a UAC. One sponsor was given custody despite having been to Florida prison before for battery on a child;
· A disturbing pattern emerged with sponsors applying to receive multiple UAC. One address in Texas showed 44 children sent to a single residence. One contractor testified that it placed 598 UAC with only 132 sponsors or each sponsor receiving 4.5 UAC;
· In Florida, neither U.S. Department of Homeland Security or HHS actively coordinates or consults with the state on the UAC resettled in Florida. The state doesn’t receive meaningful notice when UAC are transported here. Florida receives no information on backgrounds, criminal history or immigration status of the UAC brought here, nor does the state have any assurance the UAC are in-fact minors; and
· During a six-month period in 2021, more than 70 airplanes landed at Jacksonville International Airport, arriving in the middle of the night at the commercial terminal with UAC. One of these UAC was actually 24 years old and ended up brutally killing his sponsor. ORR now conceals small groups of UAC on regular commercial flights.

To view the Third Presentment of the Twenty-First Statewide Grand Jury Regarding Unaccompanied Alien Children, click here.

The statewide grand jury is still in session; therefore, proceedings remain confidential under 905.24 F.S.S.