Tennessee leaders who accuse Biden administration of ‘human trafficking’ may be misusing the term

In the past few weeks, Tennessee officials have voiced a spate of allegations that the Biden government’s immigration policy is part of or aiding in human trafficking, particularly when it comes to unaccompanied minors seeking asylum in the United States.

Governor Bill Lee said he rejected an application by the Biden administration in March to house unaccompanied minors in Tennessee because, as he said last week, the state was “very concerned about child trafficking.”

Lee’s communications director, Laine Arnold, told Times Free Press that the Biden government’s moving unaccompanied children to federally funded shelters like the one in Chattanooga was like human trafficking.

“Reports of children being flown into our state on chartered planes in the middle of the night with no explanation or billing from federal agencies sound shockingly like human trafficking,” Arnold said in an email to the Times Free Press on May 26.

Tennessee Sens. Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty, along with US MP Chuck Fleischmann, released a press release last month in which they spoke out against “the Biden government’s trafficking of migrant children to Tennessee.”

It is not clear to what extent GOP leaders believe that President Joe Biden’s administration is child trafficking, which usually results in minors being taken through violence or coercion and being forced into sex work or other forms of gainful employment.

However, a poll published last month by the bipartisan Public Religion Research Institute found that 23% of Republicans believe that “the government, media and finance in the US are controlled by a group of Satan’s worshiping pedophiles who are running a global child sex trafficking operation operate”. . “This tenet of the QAnon conspiracy theory was believed by 14% of the Independents and 8% of the Democrats.

The event that sparked the latest concern from Tennessee officials was a video from WRCB-TV Channel 3 showing the children traveling, some to a Chattanooga shelter. Highland Park Animal Shelter was built under a federal contract and operational under the administration of former President Donald Trump and licensed last year by Lee’s administration, which renewed the license in February.

Tennessee officials also said that Biden’s immigration policy – such as allowing unaccompanied children to stay in the country while awaiting trial – encourages children to come into the country, putting them at risk of being on the land Way to be exploited. In a speech on Fox News last month, Lee told host Sean Hannity, “Traffickers are paid to bring children across the border into this country, and our government is making the final leg of this journey easier.”

Immigration experts and organizations focused on helping victims of human trafficking say the rhetoric tends to misuse the term “human trafficking” and confuse the subject.

The federal government is not known to recruit or detain children for forced exploitation. The reason given for transporting the children is to unite them with verified sponsors across the country. Most children arriving at the US-Mexico border come alone or are smuggled – which is different from human trafficking.

According to the Office of the Administration for Children and Families, victims of human trafficking are forced into forced labor or sex and do not have to be physically taken across borders to become victims of human trafficking. Smuggling, on the other hand, means the illegal movement of people across the border and requires the consent of the person to move because it is a business transaction between the person and the smuggler.

Eskinder Negash, president and chief executive officer of the U.S. Committee on Refugees and Immigrants, said that despite the marked differences, the terms are often confused as much as refugees are sometimes confused with migrants.

The federal government is pursuing its own immigration policy to help asylum seekers in this country, Negash said.

“This is not a human trafficking program,” he said. “Migration is people who ask for asylum. It has been going on in this country for years. People always come to apply for asylum because they have a well-founded fear of persecution by their government, because of their religion or political affiliation. “.”

(READ MORE: Refugee shelters for children referred to in the Tennessee debate are segregated by federal regulations)

Both smuggling and human trafficking are crimes, but smuggling is a crime against a nation because it violates immigration laws, while human trafficking is a crime against a person’s human rights.

According to the Policy of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, “a child smuggled into the United States may have been smuggled or trafficked, but smuggling does not automatically make the child a victim of trafficking.”

Kids in Need of Defense, an advocacy group for unaccompanied children, said human trafficking and smuggling are terms often confused by government officials and media outlets, despite having different legal definitions, according to a 2019 report on the subject.

“Failure to recognize the difference between smuggling and trafficking in human beings can lead to exaggerated and misleading claims about the prevalence of trafficking in human beings at the border and unhelpful policy responses,” the KIND report said.

State officials have been criticizing the federal government for its dealings with unaccompanied minors for weeks. Much of the current federal policy on the surveillance of unaccompanied minors was passed in 2008 under President George W. Bush with bipartisan support. The 2008 Re-Authorization to Protect Human Trafficking Act ended the adult detention model for children and moved them to less restrictive, government-funded shelters across the country.

Children who arrive at the border are screened to determine if they are victims of labor or sex trafficking, as per the policy of the Office of Refugee Resettlement. In the event of potential human trafficking, a report is sent to the Department of Homeland Security and additional care services are set up for the child.

(READ MORE: More migrant children placed with sponsors in Hamilton County and Tennessee in recent years than projected for Biden’s first year)

Biden allowed child immigration to be resumed despite the president’s failure to overturn several of Trump’s immigration policies related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including expelling people who illegally cross the border into Mexico or their home countries on fears to spread the virus in the United States states.

Previously, unaccompanied children were told to wait in Mexico for their immigration cases to be heard in the United States. Stakeholders like KIND and Human Rights Watch have argued that these guidelines make children vulnerable to violence or sexual exploitation in Mexican border towns, where asylum seekers may not have friends or family.

“The children who come from Central America come because they have a well-founded fear of gang violence and neglect,” said Negash. “They come and ask for asylum.”

Contact Wyatt Massey at wmassey@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6249. Follow him on Twitter @ news4mass.