“We’re incentivizing the traffickers … The United States government is paying for the flights and the bus tickets to deliver these children to people who view children as assets,” says Health and Human Services (HHS) whistleblower Tara Rodas.

A federal employee for two decades, including 17 years in the inspector general community, she was among a number of people who answered a call from the Biden administration to help with the crisis at the border and a surge in unaccompanied minors.

“Everybody just believed we were reuniting children with families … I thought I would be able to help, you know—be that smiling, welcoming face to the children when they came. I just had no idea that the children didn’t know who they were going to,” Rodas says.

Large numbers of unaccompanied minors are being sent by HHS to sponsors that are not being properly vetted, Rodas says. In some cases, kids are being released to apartment buildings where dozens of other children have also been released. In other cases, there are sponsors using multiple addresses to sponsor children, she says. And in some cases, sponsors are submitting fake documentation—that no one is checking.