Concern grows over U.S.' ability to vet sponsors at border

By Susan Carroll
December 30, 2014 Updated: December 30, 2014 10:11pm

BALTIMORE - The Honduran man walked into the federal courtroom in handcuffs, his burgundy jumpsuit dwarfing his thin frame.

The judge read the charge against 42-year-old Pedro Lara-Portillo: aiding and abetting an "alien" to unlawfully enter the United States.

With the government's permission, Lara-Portillo had acted as a "sponsor" for a 16-year-old girl from Honduras who was caught in the Rio Grande Valley this spring without her parents or a guardian. He described himself as a friend of the girl's mother, picked her up from a shelter in Seattle and brought her to his home in Maryland.

She would later tell a social worker that she had a sexual relationship with Lara-Portillo after she arrived. She told the social worker that she wanted it to stop. He insisted it never happened, but admitted to authorities that he paid a smuggler $5,000 to bring her north to America.

The case - which played out more than 1,500 miles from the South Texas border - highlights a growing concern with the record influx of unaccompanied children: whether the U.S. government has the resources to properly vet the sponsors who take custody of them.

The strain on the government's shelter network has forced the Office of Refugee Resettlement to release children to sponsors at record speed. Last fiscal year, more than 53,500 youths were entrusted primarily to relatives. Harris County led the nation with more than 4,000.

Children spent an average of about a month in government custody last year, about half as long as they did a few years ago. At the peak of the influx this summer, some were released to their parents within days.

"More care needs to be taken because kids are being put into dangerous situations either through domestic violence, or through labor or sex trafficking," said David Walding, executive director of the Bernardo Kohler Center in Austin, which provides legal aid to unaccompanied children. "It's a very real risk."

Protecting the kids

ORR requires caseworkers to follow stringent procedures before releasing children, including interviews, background checks and signed agreements that the children will appear for immigration proceedings. But the need to free up shelter beds prompted ORR officials earlier this year to temporarily suspend a requirement that parents submit to fingerprint checks. The agency still required fingerprinting for other relatives and family friends, like Lara-Portillo.

The agency's policy prohibits releasing children to those who have been convicted of child abuse or neglect or violent felonies like rape and homicide. It specifies that the sponsor must not be convicted within the last five years of physical assault, battery or drug-related offenses.

Advocates and attorneys for unaccompanied children have collected anecdotes about troubling cases that have resulted in reports to both Texas Department of Family and Protective Services officials and local law enforcement.

Last fall, a Galveston woman found a Honduran teenager wandering on the beach and brought her to an emergency room after the girl reported that her sister tried to make her live with an older man in Houston.

Walding said he grew increasingly concerned for a 16-year-old boy from Guatemala who arrived in the U.S. in the summer of 2013. As the boy's court date approached this year, Walding said he was unable to reach the sponsor, who was not listed in government paperwork as a close relative.

An attorney for the center drove by the address the sponsor provided to the government before the boy's release. It was long strip of grass in front of a taqueria, Walding said. He said he and the attorney worried the boy was a victim of labor trafficking and filed a report with CPS in April. They have not heard from him since.

This week, Walding said, he started to worry about children placed by ORR with their grandmother at an Austin trailer park. He said he was able to see from a YouTube video that the children's mother worked in a brothel. The mother, who had a pending case for domestic violence, listed the same address as the grandmother, he said.

In another case, he said, a child's father had a domestic violence conviction. The boy was released to the mother, but they all live together.

"How is that protecting the kids?" he said.

Passing responsibility

Lawmakers, including Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Texas, have questioned whether ORR verifies the safety of unaccompanied children who have been released to sponsors. He sent the agency a list of questions asking how many children had been the victims of crimes after their release.

"Once a child has been placed with an adult sponsor," the agency responded, "the care and well-being of the child becomes the responsibility of the sponsor."

ORR has faced scrutiny for the screening of sponsors for years. In a 2008 report, the inspector general for the Department of Health and Human Services said ORR did not track children after they were released, which made it impossible to determine if the processes used to screen sponsors were effective.

ORR officials, under heightened attention given the recent surge in unaccompanied children, said they maintain a central database of all sponsors. But it is unclear how effective the system is at ferreting out potential fraud. A March 2013 bulletin sent out by ORR, obtained by the Houston Chronicle through a Freedom of Information Act request, shows a list of people with birth dates and addresses and warns they have been attempting to sponsor - or have already sponsored - multiple unaccompanied children.

The government does require a "home study" in cases that raise red flags or involve children who are suspected abuse or trafficking victims. That happened in 13 percent of cases, according to figures released by ORR this summer.

The agency did not respond to questions about whether it did a home study in Lara-Portillo's case. The criminal complaint shows a caseworker was told the girl would have her own room. But authorities said it appeared the girl had to share a room with Lara-Portillo.

'Trying to help a family'

At his sentencing on Dec. 18, his attorney said he thought he was helping the girl's family, and again denied any sexual relationship.

Chief Judge Catherine C. Blake sentenced him to six months, which works out roughly to the time he served.

"Obviously, had the allegations about the sexual relationship been proven, this might be a different situation," the judge said, "but they have not been, and I'm going to assume, for purposes of this sentencing, that this is simply a matter, as indicated, of trying to help a family."

The judge added that Lara-Portillo, who admitted he did not have legal status in the U.S., would be transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials for deportation.

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